With this exercise you’re going to practise the /e/ sound (as in the word “egg”). Exercise with 10 flashcards Exercise task: Press Play to hear the words on the flashcards. Does the word you hear have an /e/ sound? Press Play again if you need to hear the word once more. To see the answers, […]

With this exercise you’re going to practise the /θ/, /ð/ and /s/ sounds (as in the words “thin”, “then” and “sun”). 1-minute pronunciation exercise Exercise task: Say these sets of words out loud. To check that you’re saying them correctly, click the red arrows and press Play to hear the words said by a native […]

How to learn the phonetic alphabet fast The fastest way to improve your English accent is with the help of the phonetic alphabet. That’s why I’ve used it in every lesson. If you’re not familiar with the phonetic alphabet, you can learn it in less than two hours with my free course. You’ll never regret […]

Join my 1-to-1 lesson waitlist Hi, I’m Maria Fernandez, your English teacher. If your dream is to improve your English accent fast, I can help you with my 1-to-1 lessons. In my 25-minute lessons I show you the pronunciation mistakes you’re making and how to avoid them. Also, to help you make quick progress, I […]

Hi, I’m Maria Fernandez. I’m a native Spanish speaker and I’ve learnt most of the English I know as an adult. I used to have the same problems you’re having today with English pronunciation. To improve my accent, I had to train myself to distinguish and produce the 45 English sounds. Through personal practice, I’ve […]

Do you know the difference between /f/ and /v/? Let’s have a look. Say /f/ out loud. /f/ /f/ And now say /v/ out loud. /v/ /v/ Have you noticed that /f/ and /v/ are produced with the same lip shape and tongue position? The only difference between these two sounds is that /f/ is […]

Standard British English has 9 voiceless consonant sounds. Play each sound, and then say it out loud. Put your fingers on your throat and notice the lack of vibration. To hear the sounds said by a different native speaker, flip the flashcards. /f/ /f/ /h/ /h/ /k/ /k/ /p/ /p/ /s/ /s/ /ʃ/ /ʃ/ /t/ […]

Standard British English has 16 voiced consonant sounds. Play each sound, and then say it out loud. Put your fingers on your throat to feel the vibration. To hear the sounds said by a different native speaker, flip the flashcards. /b/ /b/ /d/ /d/ /g/ /g/ /l/(This is the “light L”) /l/(This is the “light […]

The difference between voiced and voiceless sounds is this: in voiced sounds your vocal cords vibrate, whereas in voiceless sounds they don’t. This happens not only in English, but in all languages. You can feel the vibration on your vocal cords by putting your fingers on your throat, like in this image, and saying a […]

The concept of “diphthong” in English is likely to be different from that in your first language. In English, a diphthong is a vowel made up of two different sounds and it may be spelt with one vowel or two: /aɪ/ mice /maɪs/ /aɪ/ height /haɪt/ But if two consecutive vowels have only one sound, […]