PHONETICS: LONG VOWEL SOUNDS

Today we will be learning about phonetics, specifically about long vowel sounds. In English there are many different ways in which we can pronounce a vowel sound, and these sounds can be either short or long. So, we will take a look at some words below:

Fish- Tree            Cat- Car            Computer- Horse            Bull- Boot            Egg- Bird

Can you see the difference? Those on the left are short vowel sounds, and those on the right are long vowel sounds. So let's see some usual spellings for those long vowel sounds:

a: -ar (car, far, scarf) -a (fast, pass, after) 

e: -er (person, verb) -ir (bird, dirty) -ur (curly, turn)

i: -ee (tree, feel) -ea (teach, mean) -e (she, we)

o: -or (horse, north) -al (walk, ball) -aw (awful, saw)

u: -oo (school, choose) -u (use, polluted) -ew (few, knew)

So, taking all of this into account, let's now practice for a bit. Listen to Catherine the Cow's message:

https://tinyurl.com/2xusoovj

Here's the text that Catherine the Cow has said in the video. Now read it carefully:

Hello people! My name is Catherine the Cow. I live in a very beautiful field in Scotland. The grass is very green and the sky is blue and bright. There are a lot of trees and a beautiful lake where the sheeps drink water. It is so cool! When it gets dark, the rest of the cows and I go to a park that is not too far away. We can sleep there together and no one loses their way! In the morning, we wake up with the birds singing. It's so charming! Come and visit us someday!

Exercise 1: Listen to the Catherine the Cow's video again. Now underline the words from the text that have a long vowel sound.

Exercise 2: Put all of those words in the table below.

Exercise 3: Think of other words that may have these long vowel sounds and add them to the table below.