Spoken EnglishC1Lesson 1.1
🗣️ Spoken English C1 · Lesson 1.1

Accent & minimal pairs

Can-do: I can identify and produce minimal-pair contrasts that mark my speech as native-like, reducing mother-tongue interference.

Listen first

A pronunciation coach isolates one learner's v/w merge and drills it.

🔊 Real audio — spoken by your browser in Spoken English. Tap any word below to hear it.
New vocabulary — tap to hear
vine / wine/vaɪn/ vs /waɪn/ · v = top teeth bite lower lip; w = lips only, no teeth 🔊
ship / sheep/ʃɪp/ vs /ʃiːp/ · short lax ɪ vs long tense iː 🔊
cat / cut/kæt/ vs /kʌt/ · open front æ vs central ʌ 🔊
three / tree/θriː/ vs /triː/ · tongue-tip between the teeth for θ 🔊
pull / pool/pʊl/ vs /puːl/ · lax ʊ vs long uː 🔊
berry / very/ˈbɛri/ vs /ˈvɛri/ · b = both lips; v = lip and teeth 🔊

Now say it

Tap the phrase to hear it, then press the mic and repeat — we score your pronunciation for real (Chrome/Edge).

« A glass of wine from that old vine. » 🔊
Bite your lip for the /v/, lips-only for the /w/ — exaggerate the difference until it feels absurd, then dial it back.
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Pronunciation

Live conversation lab

Practise this dialogue live with a native-trained tutor. Next session opens soon.

Read the dialogue

Tap any line to hear it. Grammar appears in context, never as a dry rule.

Say it back to me: 'I'd love a glass of wine from that old vine.' 🔊Coach sets a trap sentence
I'd love a glass of... wine from that old wine. 🔊Learner merges v into w
Hear it? Top teeth on your lower lip for 'vine' — bite gently. 🔊Physical cue, not theory
A glass of wine from that old vine. 🔊Learner splits the two sounds
That's the whole game. One clean contrast beats an hour of rules. 🔊Coach's payoff line
Grammar in focus · weak forms and stress-timing

English is stress-timed: content words (nouns, verbs) get full value, while function words (of, from, and) shrink to weak forms like /əv/ and /ən/. Advanced learners often give every word equal weight, and that — not the vowels — is the real reason a grammatically perfect sentence still 'sounds foreign'. Squeeze the small words so the rhythm stops being syllable-timed.

Full lesson: stress-timing and weak forms

Write it yourself

List five word-pairs a listener has misheard from you, and write the IPA for the exact sound you confuse in each.

Saved to your writing portfolio
Tip for this task
Don't just write the words — mark the phoneme. 'ship/sheep' isn't a spelling problem, it's /ɪ/ vs /iː/.

Quick check

An adaptive quiz confirms you've got it and schedules the right words for review.

1. Which pair contrasts /ɪ/ and /iː/?
2. For a clean English /v/, what touches?
3. 'Stress-timed' means...
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