The "O" sound in English

Hi everyone!

have you ever heard a foreigner here in Brazil trying to say "vovô" and "vovó"?

Well, for those of you who don´t know, they would say "vou-vou" for both; it is very hard for them to distinguish these sounds, and you know why?

Because in English, the sound "ô" DOES NOT EXIST!

Exactly! Do not be shocked! (I always say this when I post about pronunciation, right?)

In English, the letter "o" can have many sounds, but the main ones are:

ó- BLOG COLOR FOR DOOR

OR

OU- JONES (it´s not "Jones", but "Jounes")

NOTE ( it´s not "note", but "noute")

VIDEO (it´s not "vidjo", but "videouuuu")

how about the word PROJECT? Is it PROUJECT or PRÓJECT? It´s either one of these, but not "PRÔJECT". (it´s próject, actually)

The letter O can still have other sounds:

â- idiom, idiot

and the most shocking of all:

u- tomb is pronounced "tum"!!!!!

Don´t believe me? Check it out: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tomb

Yes guys, as you can see, pronunciation in English is very very tricky!!!

Hence, the importance of learning the phonetic symbols, because, as you can see one more time, LETTERS DO NOT REPRESENT SOUNDS, phonetic symbols do.

SAA-Student´s Awesome Assignment

Hey everyone!

Every once in a while now I will post some amazing assignment a student of mine has done and I think is worth showing.

This brilliant assingment was done by my student Leonardo, who has just concluded his advanced course here at havad (congrats, congrats!!!)
It´s an essay about a video he has found on the website www.ted.com.br about Creativity. The speaker is a Creativity Expert called Ken Robinson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

Schools kill creativity

We don't have any idea what's going to happen in the future. And, whereas we don't know the future, we don't know how we can prepare a child who will retire in 2065. All kids have tremendous talents. They were born with creativity but schools kill these talents.

Ken Robinson told a story to show the creativity of kids: a little girl who was in a drawing lesson and the teacher asked her, "What are you drawing?” And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God". And the teacher said "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl answer, "They will in a minute".

Robinson defends that if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. Adults have become frightened of being wrong. We stigmatize mistakes. And now, we have an education system that mistakes are the worst thing you can make. Picasso once said “all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up”.

Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and as the bottom are the arts. And there is a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance.

The objective of public universities is to produce university professors. The whole system was invented before the 19th century to industrialism. The most important subjects for work are at the top. If you aren't good at these subjects, you aren't worth its. But intelligence is dynamic and interactive. The brain isn't divided into compartments.

Robinson interviewed Gillian Lynne who did "Cats", "Phantom of the Opera" and she is a very good dancer. Lynne said that, when she was child, the school wrote her parents saying that she had a learning disorder. When the professional analyzed her, he said to her mother "Gilliam isn't sick, she is a dancer. Take her to a dancer school.” Her mother did and Gilliam became a soloist and she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet School.

To conclude, Ken believes that our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of the richness of human capacity. And say “ if all the insects were to disappear from the earth within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all the human were to disappear from the earth within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.”

Leonardo Zeferino

Story of success- my former pupil Julia tells about her life in college in the USA.

Oh, I DO love my profession and my dearest students!

I´ve been asking some of my students to share a bit here on the blog!

This is from Júlia. She was my SAT/TOEFL student in 2009 and now she lives in New Jersey studying at NJIT (New Jersey Institute of Technology) and playing volleyball!!!

You make me so proud! Thank you!

Here is a brief testimonial about her life in the USA:

“Read, read and read”

This is what Andrea used to say all the time! And unfortunately this is the best way to memorize the crazy vocabulary that our adorable SAT demands haha

My third year of High School was not easy, but I can tell you that all that work was definitely worthy. Now I’m living in New Jersey, where I study and play volleyball for NJIT, my university. It’s a new life that I love, and even though Americans have a bad reputation about being rude and stupid I think that 95% of them are pretty cool!

As a student-athlete I have to take seriously my responsibilities with studying and practicing, but of course that we can always find an extra time for having fun too haha

I’m not gonna lie, the first weeks outside the country are hard, but after a while you get used to it and start enjoying college. Now I’m on vacation in Brazil and I can’t wait to get back soon! I miss a lot everything there!

Whoever wants to go and try a new life as foreigner, I say: go forward! AAh, and don’t forget to do EVERYTHING Andrea asks!!! hahaha

Good Luck J

Julia

Intonation videos

Hi everyone!

The seminars were great! Today I´m posting some cool videos that talk about pronunciation and intonation. They are good for those who would like to reduce accent and make the English sound more natural.

Teacher Jennifer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2bHdXcszJ4 INTONATION LESSON 10a

I love this teacher! She´s so didactic and has such a sweet voice! There´s no way you can´t learn with her!

There are 4 lessons for intonation with this teacher (I think her name is Jennifer) . I put the link for the first class and you can find the other classes directly on Youtube.

Mr. Duncan in England

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPcBJfBTlNo&feature=fvst

Honestly, I don´t get the British sense of humor, but this teacher explains the difference between pronunciation and intonation. It´s a good video though, very very British indeed!

Accent Reduction

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSms8DYnjGs&feature=related

This is from an Accent reduction institute. It´s so interesting and real! It actually shows a class and an excellent teacher teaching phonetics. Loved it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSVk61szem0

I don´t like this video as much as I like the previous ones, but still, if you´re really in the mood, go ahead and watch it.

OUR SEMINARS

Hey everyone!
I´m writing to promote our traditional SEMINARS.
I will be presenting the seminars in English, so, I´m going to explain the purpose of each.

PRONUNCIATION FOR BRAZILIANS HAVAD BARÃO GERALDO 14/06 7PM

This seminar focuses on the basic principles of phonetics applied to English as a Second Language. I will talk about most common mistakes Brazilians make when they speak English, mistakes that many times cause embarrasing communication breakdowns. There will be many examples of mispronunciations as well as tips and mnemonics to improve these unwelcome errors.

INTONATION: HOW TO MAKE YOUR ENGLISH SOUND MORE NATURAL HAVAD TAQUARAL 16/06 7H30PM

Intonation helps to create the "music" of a language. There are high notes and low notes when we speak. If we didn´t have intonation in languages, our voices would all sound very robotic and boring, wouldn´t they? The problem is that the intonation patterns in Portuguese are different from the intonation patterns in English. So, sometimes we speak English, using the intonation in Portuguese and the result of this could be funny, weird, unintelligible or even misunderstood. This seminar is aimed at explaining the most common intonation patterns in English.

Everybody is welcome to attend! Do your inscriptions by taquaral@havad.com.br or barao@havad.com.br

Places are limited

OFF versus OF

Hi everyone!

Hey, what´s the difference (in pronunciation) between OF and OFF? Don´t know? One thing you must know for sure: neither of them is pronounced "ófi"!

So, let´s get down to business.

OFF: it´s pronounced ÓF

Turn off the phone

I need to put off the meeting

She asked me to take my shoes off

This is the easy one, right? Let´s check the other one now...

OF: it´s pronounced ÂV

What??? V sound?

EXACTLY!

So, time to practice:

A friend of mine (ÂV mine)

the storm of the century (ÂV the century)

Because of this (ÂV this)

See?

Living and learning!

POCAHONTAS AND AVATAR- the same movie?

Hey everyone, for those who don´t know me, I am a cinephile.
I have a daughter, and since last April, I´ve been watching the Disney Movie Pocahontas with her about... 4 times per week, AT LEAST! And the funny thing is that I cry every time! What a sad endind, Pocahontas and John Smith don´t stay together... (oops, sorry for the spoiler!!!)
Oh well, I was surfing the net and started to find many things comparing Pocahontas with Avatar. And it was like a revelations, because whenever I was watching Pocahontas, it did remind me of Avatar! Then, I found this file about the synopsys of Pocahontas, crossed out with Avatar info! Indeed, they are very similar! And I particularly liked the abbreviation that this guy used at the end: "IMHO", which stands for IN MY HUMBLE OPINION! HAHA, loved it.
So, I found many videoclips comparing these 2 stories/movies, it´s very interesting!
Check them out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGOCodaM4UM&feature=related

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UajX9NZlONE&feature=related

And there´s this very funny guy comparing these movies on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn84d2VUlvQ&feature=related

Anyway, I don´t care!

I love Pocahontas and I love Avatar, even though they are most likely, to say the least, the same story!