How Do You Read This Word?

As I wrote before, there are many things that don’t help your pronunciation of English sounds (phonemes), below is one of the issues. Sometimes, the pronunciation of a word isn’t what you expect when you look at the spelling, for example: plaid, knight, psychology, chic, plumber.

Written word, spoken word

Don’t always go by the spelling, when studying alone this may seem impossible but there are a few ways you can help yourself:

Use technology

Solution 1 – Hear how the word is read.

Technology is your friend and there are many ways it can help, you can use: an electronic dictionary, a smartphone application, or any internet search engine; even my word processor has a function to read aloud what I have typed.

Unfortunately, it isn’t always the correct pronunciation as it is possible to choose the wrong meaning of the word, look at read (reed) or read (red). Another issue is if you’ve heard the word and don’t know how to spell it.

Ask for help

Solution 2 – Hear how the word is read.

When taking English lessons ask, “How do you read this word?”! Your teacher will be able to help you with the sound or sounds of the word. It will only be your efforts of listening carefully to the phonemes and trying to copy them that can improve your pronunciation.

Read the sound, phonemes

Solution 3 – Read how the word is pronounced.

Another way, which is very useful for self-studying is to use a phonemic chart to help. Did you know there are symbols which represent English sounds? Each English phoneme has a symbol to represent it; unlike letters, the symbol is always the same sound. Not all phonemic charts are the same; I use a Received Pronunciation chart (I’m British therefore, I use a British chart), and there is an International Phonetic Alphabet, too.

The process is:

1. Learn the sound with its symbol, this takes pronunciation practise anyway.

2. Use an English dictionary to look for the word you want to pronounce and the phonemic symbols for the “spelling”.

3. Read aloud the phonemic spelling; at first these are just the sounds to make the word but when combined it will sound like the word.

It’s a longer process and you still need to be careful to make the sound but it is the same as any exercise, the more you practise the easier it becomes.

Here are words with their phonemic spelling – plaid (plæd), night (naɪt), psychology (saɪkɒləʤi), chic (ʃiːk), plumber (plʌmə). That’s how you read these words, now make the sounds.

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