Academic English Skills with Dr. Byrnes

/h/ is quite easy to recognize for most non-native speakers. An exception might be French speakers since the letter H is always silent in French. In Britain, using or not using the /h/ sound can signify class and status (posher speakers vs ‘H’ droppers). But in American English, unless ‘H’ is silent, H is always pronounced.  Silent H words The sound /h/ is spelt with an ‘H’ or ‘WH.’ With ‘WH,’ either /w/ or /h/ is pronounced, but not both. When ‘H’ is combined with other letters like TH, SH, CH, PH, GH, and RH, they make entirely different sounds: ‘TH’ makes /θ/ or /ð/; ‘SH’ makes /ʃ/; ‘CH’ makes /tʃ/; ‘PH’ makes /f/ (except for ‘SHEPHERD’ where ‘PH’ makes /p/). ‘GH’ can be either silent or make /f/, /g/ or /p/. H is silent in ‘RH.’  These words have silent ‘H’:  what, which, where, when, why, honor, hour, honest, heir, herb, vehicle, vehement, exhausting, exhilarating  /h/, no-/h/ minimal pairs This is the minimal pairs of /h/ and non-/h/ had add hair air hall all h...

  The 'sh’ sound /ʃ/ is unvoiced, and is the counterpart to the voiced /ʒ/. Both are fricatives. To create /ʃ/ and its voiced counterpart / ʒ /, the sides of the tongue touch the sides of upper teeth. The tip of the tongue does not touch anything. The blade of the tongue is concave. Air is forced between a wide groove in the center of the tongue and the palatal area. The lips are kept slightly tense, and may protrude somewhat during the production of the sounds. To say /ʒ/, additionally, voice the vocal cord. Words with /ʃ/ Many letters can make the /ʃ/ sound: SH, SS, TI, CI, CEA, CH and X. These are words with the /ʃ/ sound.  With "sh":  she, show, wish, push, fashion, publisher, relationship With "ss":  assure, commission, discussion, expression, issue, tissue, mission, pressure, profession  With "ci":  efficient, musician, racial, special, facial With "cea":   ocean With "ch": machine With "ti":  action, education, fu...

  Problem: R epeating the same words Let me ask you something: Have you ever finished a TOEFL essay and realized you kept repeating the same words over and over? Don't worry—we’ve all been there. Today, we're going to talk about how to fix that and impress TOEFL raters by showing lexical variety. What's that? Well, it just means using different vocabulary to express similar ideas. And trust me—this is one of the key things TOEFL raters are looking for. It's especially important in the Integrated Writing Task, where you need to summarize both a reading and a lecture. Let me show you what I mean. Here’s a repetitive version of a TOEFL response: "The passage talks about the disappearance of sea otters in North America. One theory for the disappearance of sea otters is that pollution caused it. The professor in the lecture disagrees with the idea that pollution caused the disappearance of sea otters. Instead, the professor maintains that predators like sea lions are th...