I had the opportunity of attending a workshop on Pronunciation skills and Accent neutralization. The workshop was conducted by Centre for English Language Training, Department of English, University College of Engineering, Osmania University campus, Hyderabad. The workshop was of six hours which was divided in to two sessions. The morning session was Pronunciation skills and the afternoon session was Accent neutralization. The class started with Ms. D. Grace Sunitha, explaining some of the words which were wrongly pronounced. We usually find some symbols beside every word in the dictionary, which shows how a word should be correctly pronounced often. These symbols and the way it sounds were interactively practiced in the workshop. There are 44 sounds in English. Out of which 24 are consonant sounds and the rest 20 are vowel sounds. The workshop provided me a chance to better understand the British and American accents.
Usually in British English (which is commonly spoken in India) mostly the stress on the letter “R” is missed or not pronounced clearly and where as in American English quite oppositely the letter “R” is stressed and pronounced clearly. And we were taught many exceptions in English language pronunciation. Here I would like to mention some of the words, like “CRICKET”, the actual pronunciation is “CRICKIT” and the word Menu which should be pronounced like “Menyu” (please don’t consider the spelling, it is just for pronunciation). And in the dictionary you can find the word Menu transcribed as /menju:/ for pronunciation.
In the end of the first session, Ms. Grace has suggested to purchase Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary and practice the pronunciation part. In the second session, Mr. P. Shreehari, for a short while imitated how a native speaker of different languages (Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam etc) would have spoken English language. I could very easily notice the influence of mother tongue of various languages on English. Humorous, but it is a fact. Mr. Shreehari took us through the ways of neutralizing the mother tongue influence by proper pronunciation of English language. Some of the books and dictionaries suggested by Mr. Shreehari are 1.Longman Dictionary of contemporary English (with CD) which has both the British and American way of pronunciations, 2. English Pronunciation in U.S by Mark Hancock (with CD), 3.A handbook for English Language Laboratory by Suresh kumar and Shreehari, 4.Murphy’s English grammar by Raymond Murphy.
The courses offered by CELT-Osmania are 1.Advanced course in Communication skills and personality development, 2.Interactive course in English grammar and Vocabulary, 3.Workshop on Pronunciation skills and accent neutralization, 4.Workshop on English grammar. The center also offers tailor made courses for corporate sector and Individual groups. Fresh batches commences every month, usually in the second week. The one day workshop fee is Rs.300 and Rs.2500 for regular courses.
English language Work shops and courses show us the door, the key to speak or write good and correct English is in our hands. I hope this piece of writing/ information would prove to be a useful one for my friends and individuals who are interested in sharpening their other tongue language (English).
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