Voiced and Unvoiced Sounds

I was working with an advanced ESL student today. Her English is excellent. We are mostly concentrating on accent reduction and job interview questions.

Today, we were working on past tense pronunciation using /t/, /d/, and /id/ sounds. Before teaching these three endings, I taught her about voiced and unvoiced (or voiceless) sounds. I feel that this concept needs to be taught before a student can fully grasp the past tense endings.

My student told me that this concept of voicing was very helpful to her, and that out of over six English teachers she has had, no one has ever taught her this before.

See Voiced and Unvoiced Sounds for more info about teaching this concept.
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