The pronunciation recordings.
Every demonstration Chapter 6 points at, in one place: listen, repeat, record yourself, compare.
How this page works. Each section carries the demonstration text and its recording. Play the clip, repeat aloud, then record your own version on your phone and compare the two. The clips are short by design: repetition is the mechanism. Scanned a code in the book? The section it points to is right on this page.
Word-stress patterns.
Which syllable carries the weight. Wrong stress does not just sound unnatural; it changes meaning or hides the word entirely.
The patterns from Chapter 6: two-syllable nouns usually stress the first syllable (TAble, DOCtor, STUdent); two-syllable verbs often stress the second (beGIN, deCIDE, forGET); words ending -tion and -sion stress the syllable before the ending (eduCAtion, deCIsion); words ending -ic stress the syllable before the suffix (ecoNOMic, geoGRAPHic). The develop family holds its stress on the second syllable across every form: deVELop, deVELopment, deVELoping. Where stress genuinely shifts, learn each form separately: PHOtograph, phoTOgrapher, photoGRAPHic.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
Sentence stress and rhythm.
English is stress-timed: content words carry the beat, function words compress between them.
Stress the nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs; reduce the articles, prepositions, auxiliaries and pronouns. ‘I WENT to the SHOP to BUY some BREAD’, with I, to, the and some compressed between the beats. Stress placement also carries meaning: ‘I didn’t say HE stole the money’ points at someone else; ‘I didn’t say he STOLE the money’ questions what he did; ‘I didn’t say he stole the MONEY’ questions what was taken.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
Falling and rising intonation.
The melody that tells the listener whether a thought is finished.
Falling intonation for statements, wh-questions and commands: certainty, completion. Rising for yes/no questions, unfinished thoughts and interest. Fall-rise for uncertainty, contrast and politeness. The most common error is ending statements on a rise, which makes every sentence sound like a question and every opinion sound unsure: let the voice drop to close a thought.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
List and choice intonation.
Lists rise until the final item; choices rise on the first option and fall on the last.
In a list, each item rises to signal ‘more coming’ and the final item falls to signal completion: apples, oranges, and bananas. In an either-or choice, the first option rises and the second falls: ‘Would you like tea, or coffee?’ Get these two tunes right and enumerations in Part 2 and Part 3 immediately sound organised.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
Linking.
Final consonants flow into following vowels; the words join hands.
‘An apple’ sounds like ‘a napple’; ‘turn it off’ flows as one shape; ‘I asked about it’ links end to start. Practise by refusing to pause between words: let each final consonant belong to the next vowel.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
Elision.
Sounds that vanish at speed, and are meant to.
‘Next day’ loses its t; ‘sandwich’ its middle d; ‘comfortable’ compresses to three syllables. Do not force elision: it arrives on its own as fluency increases. What matters is recognising it, so natural fast speech stops sounding like missing information.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
The one pattern everyone must master.
Regular past tense -ed endings: three pronunciations, and IELTS Parts 1 and 2 use them constantly.
A t sound after voiceless endings: worked, helped, watched. A d sound after voiced endings: played, lived, used. An extra syllable, id, only after t or d: wanted, needed, decided. The two classic errors: adding a syllable where none belongs (help-id) and dropping the one that should be there (want instead of wanted). Test yourself with: worked, studied, decided, lived, finished, started, played, wanted.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
Th versus s versus t.
The contrast that turns think into sink.
The th sound is made with the tongue between the teeth; s and t stay behind them. Pairs to drill: think, sink, tink; three, tree; thank, sank, tank; path, pass, part; mouth, mouse. Remember the honest rule from Chapter 6: an occasional th substitution inside otherwise clear speech does not cap your band; a flat monotone does.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
Short i versus long ee.
Ship or sheep: a length contrast that changes the word.
Pairs to drill: sheep, ship; cheap, chip; seat, sit; feast, fist; leave, live. Practice sentences: ‘I need to sit in my seat.’ ‘The cheap sheep is on the ship.’ Common for Spanish, Arabic and Japanese speakers; only drill it if your recordings show the confusion.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
V versus w.
Teeth on the lip for v; rounded lips for w.
Pairs to drill: vine, wine; very, wary; vest, west; veil, wail; verse, worse. The v needs the top teeth touching the bottom lip with voice; the w needs rounded lips and no contact. Common for Slavic and some Indian-language speakers.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
The most common vowel in English.
The relaxed, unstressed uh that most unstressed syllables collapse into.
English reduces unstressed vowels to schwa: about begins with it, support hides one in its first syllable, police too. The article ‘the’ reduces to ‘thuh’ before consonants; ‘a banana’ carries three of them. Full vowels in every syllable is one of the clearest signals of syllable-timed first-language rhythm; letting the unstressed syllables relax is what unlocks English timing.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
Content word stress.
The forty-eight-hour fix: stress the content words, reduce the rest.
In every sentence, stress the nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and let the articles, prepositions and auxiliaries compress. The drill sentence from the book: ‘I’m STUDYING ENGLISH because I WANT to WORK ABROAD.’
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
Final consonants.
Complete the ends of words: grammar clarity lives there.
Dropped final consonants blur grammar (work against worked) and word recognition. For forty-eight hours, consciously finish every final consonant: last year, first time, most people. Exaggerate at first; the brain calibrates to natural within two days.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
Slow down by fifteen per cent.
Most pronunciation errors are speed errors.
Record yourself, replay at 0.85 speed: that is your target pace. It feels unnaturally slow and sounds composed. The recording below is read at that deliberate pace so you can hear what it gives you: full articulation, clear word boundaries, natural stress.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
The self-assessment passage.
Read it aloud, record yourself, then compare against this recording.
The Week 1 diagnostic from Chapter 6: “Last year I worked hard and achieved my goals. I studied every day, practised speaking with friends, and gradually improved my confidence. When I finished my course, I decided to take IELTS because I wanted to study abroad.” Listen for: the vowel contrasts (finished against achieved), every -ed ending (worked, achieved, studied, decided, wanted), the final consonants (hard, goals, friends), the stressed content words, and whether the words link or arrive one by one.
Computer-generated British voices for now, at natural pace.
Recordings demonstrate. A tutor corrects.
Your own stress habits are inaudible from inside.
In lessons the correction happens in real time, against your own recording, with a written report after every session – £20 for fifty minutes.