Good to see you again, Max. Great work with the /r/ sound. You produce it well a lot of the lot of time, with just the occasional slips when it can sound more like a flap /r/ or almost non-existent. Obviously the key as with anything is PRACTICE. Remember that pronunciation is physical. So, when practising, whisper the sound or words so that you can still hear the sound and really feel it: the tongue tip raised up a little (but not touching anything), the tongue sides held in contact with the upper back teeth, the hollow feeling in the centre of the tongue, and the lips lightly rounded. Remember you can start with the /ɜ:/ ("er") sound and modify accordingly. Try to record yourself too in order to develop your ear more and your ability to judge yourself better. And utilise Audacity, as it's your friend in all this, and as I showed you, slowing the playback down, you can REALLY hear if you're doing the /r/ correctly or not. I've shared a short lesson doc with you for review/practice.

I wanted to build your awareness today about word boundaries, as this is something that you have a lot issues with. Most importantly, I wanted you to be aware that there are generally solutions for problematic word boundaries in English. From my perspective, the most important thing that the student can do is to build their awareness about English pronunciation so that they know how they can fix their problems. I can help you in class and give you advice on how you can improve, but ultimately, it will be down to YOU to improve your pronunciation in your own time. It's not just about the lessons, please be mindful of that. And for that reason, I like to give you homework in order that student's start to take responsiblity for their own learning. It sounds, bad, but my goal is ultimately to get students on their bike and get rid of them. So, whether you do that homework or not is up to you, but it's highly recommended if you really want to push on with your pronunciation. :)

After a ssecond great class with Max, I can see he already has a stong grasp of the English language. However, it is great to see that Max is commited to making improvements in those areas that he is focused on. As Max is a wide reader we have discussed a book, and focused on some very tricky vocabulary. Keep up the good work Max.

This is a particularly complex area of 'pron' and usually takes students a while to get their head around it. Even I, as a teacher and native-speaker, had issues (and still have! I've really struggled doing my version of the second paragraph!!!) understanding chunking and sentence stress when I first studied it. It totally did my head in! Despite that, you were able to make some excellent logical choices in terms of chunking and stress. Your actual production side of the chunks was also excellent. I really wanted to share this activity with you, as not only do you have problems in this area as already diagnosed, but I believe it will prove really useful for you, as you'll be able to use it to prepare for a presentation, a speech, or any other formal situation in the same way so that you deliver it to your listener(s) in the most effective way. Not only that, but the same theory can actually be applied to everyday English (more on that next time). Please remember, Max: if you have a doubt if a word should be stressed or not, read the words back to yourself that you have chosen to stress, and ask yourself if it would make sense to the listener if you only said those words to them. For example, as we said, just saying 'Narendra Modi' would not mean anything to a lot of people (especially people like me who have no real interest in Politics), but it would obviously be 100% clear to everyone if we said 'India's prime minister Narendra Modi'. Please review the homework task in order to reinforce the lesson material.