Oral English

Traps in Oral English

• Judges a sound by its spelling
  English spelling is a poor guide to sound. Say each word aloud (or think of its phonemic symbol) and compare sounds, not letters: 'blood' /ʌ/, 'food' /uː/, 'foot' /ʊ/.
• Confuses short and long vowel sounds
  Say minimal pairs aloud: ship/sheep, full/fool. Long vowels (marked ː) are held longer and the tongue is tenser. Spelling is not a reliable guide: 'women' has /ɪ/.
• Goes by a surface cue instead of the grammar
  Ask what the word is DOING in this sentence (subject? modifier? object?) and what the rule says, not what its ending or look suggests.
• Pronounces silent letters
  Common silent letters: k in knee, b in debt/doubt, w in wrist, h in honour, p in psalm, l in calm. Learn the sound, not the spelling.
• Over-applies a grammar rule
  Learn the exceptions with the rule: long adjectives take 'most'; 'look forward to' + -ing; only auxiliaries invert in modern English.
• Accepts an informal or local usage as standard
  WASSCE marks standard British English. When an option 'sounds normal' in speech, check it against the formal rule before choosing it.
• Picks a near neighbour of the right form
  Name the exact category the stem needs (third conditional; /əʊ/; 'call off' = cancel; clause of concession) and check each option against that name, not against how close it looks.
• Misplaces word stress
  Many two-syllable noun/verb pairs shift stress: a REcord (noun) / to reCORD (verb); a PREsent / to preSENT. Suffixes like -tion pull stress to the syllable before: inforMAtion.
• Rhyme judged by spelling
  Rhyme depends on SOUND from the stressed vowel to the end: 'bough' /aʊ/ rhymes with 'cow', not 'cough' /ɒf/.
• Confuses diphthongs and monophthongs
  A diphthong glides between two vowel qualities: day /eɪ/, go /əʊ/, my /aɪ/, now /aʊ/, boy /ɔɪ/, here /ɪə/, there /eə/, tour /ʊə/.
• Wrong verb form
  A sentence needs a finite verb that shows tense and agrees with the subject. "Be" and "having" alone cannot do that job here.
• Misreads emphatic stress
  The stressed word is the one being corrected or contrasted. 'KOFI bought the car' answers 'Did Ama buy the car?'.
• Picks a meaning that fits the context but not the words
  Test the option by substitution: does it mean the same as the underlined words, not just make sense in the story?
• Confuses consonant sounds
  Listen to the sound, not the letter: 'ph' /f/ (phone), 'gh' /f/ (laugh) or silent (night), 'c' /s/ before e, i, y (city) and /k/ elsewhere (cat).