Instructions

This was my favorite exercise! I listened to the original recording many times, made notes and then tried to say it at the same time with the woman from the recording. She was speaking quite fast for me, but with every attemp I was improving myself. Then I recorded myself three times, and with the third recording I was finally almost 100% satisfied. Of course, my voice sounds completely different than the woman's voice, so I can't compare it in this aspect. But when speaking about the instructions, I suppose it isn't so bad. For my individual task I was considering for a long time whether to record myself reading again or practise one more time my TH sound. At the end, I practised both and published online the TH sound because the reading needs more practise and I'm a bit ashamed of it. I know it sounds silly, but when I don't feel comfortable about something, I can't publish it anywhere until I'm satisfied. So, hopefully next time I will be better.

American vs. British English

I generally prefer British English even though most of the movies and series are American. I would say that in my everyday life I hear much more American than British English. Right now we don't even have a British teacher which is quite sad because I would appreciate to hear the British accent more often. Sometimes I just mix up everything together, but I definitely don't do it on purpose, I'm just not fully aware that some words are pronounced somehow only in America. So, when I hear the pronunciation of some unknown words, I pronounce them in this way without actually knowing that in British English it sounds completely different. For my individual task I decided to try some reading. I found an article in my textbook and marked difficult words to pronounce, th sound and tried to read it about 6 times before I started the recording. I recorded my reading practise 3 times before I was quite satisfied with the result. At the beginning I was reading slower and concentrated on too many words. But with the next attempts I improved my reading even though it is not perfect. I think I will do this practise more often because it helps me to concentrate on the stress of the sentence, not just each word.

Strong and weak forms

This week's task was to record myself reading sentences and pronouncing either strong or weak form of a possessive, conjunction and preposition. In my opinion, it wasn't so difficult to decide which form of the word should be pronounced. On the other hand, sometimes in a daily communication it can be more difficult to pay attention on it, because it doesn't come so naturally yet. But after practising it for some time, I believe I would be more careful next time. It was interesting for me and for sure useful. For my individual task I decided to record myself pronouncing the strong or weak forms in short poems. The first one focused on the weak form of AND, the second one on OF, then BUT, AT, and finally YOUR. I really tried to say it many times before I was quite satisfied with myself. I spent the most of the time with the weak form of BUT, it's definitely the most difficult for me. I hope the result isn't ashaming so much, I really tried to do my best.