NOW READ THIS
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Preliminary Lessons
The 'uh' toon
In the beginning there was a grunt. These sounds are important when learning to pronounce words the same way that native English speakers talk. These are the soft vowel sounds. They are the starting point for speaking English.
The Soft Vowel X-ray
This cartoon illustrates how the soft vowel sounds are made. Our cartoon character affectionately known as Spingey, is x-rayed and his exagerated throat allows us to see the order of depth used when we make these same sounds.
... how deep we go to make these sounds and the order they are made as we grunt up the throat.
Dull Orange = short uh / shorter uh
The user of Now Read This will get very familiar with this very important pronunciation hint. It is written on very many pages as a link to this page. The dull orange colour is used consistently to remind the student reader that the particular sound is sounded as 'uh'. There are many syllables in English that native speakers simply replace with the 'uh' sound. When reading the passages in this program, any letter or syllable that is coloured this dull orange colour is pronounced as 'uh'.
These images are screen shots from the Now Read This interactive program.
In the images, there are buttons on the bottom edge of the pages. In the complete Now Read This interactive program, these buttons link to other activities. The links on these buttons will not work on these images.
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