3. Relieved, Paco was ready to visit the city

Icono IDevice Reading activity
When Sonia was helping Paco improve his English, she talked a lot about English sounds and pronunciation. Paco learned a lot. Now, he remembers she taught it to him by means of minimal pairs, that is, pairs of words which differ in one only phonological element. She started by distinguishing two frequent vowel sounds in English: /ɪ/ and /i:/.

Have a look at the following minimal pairs and guess which ones are pronounced /ɪ/ and which ones /i:/. If you need any help, ask our friend, the robot, for help.

seat sit
bin
 been
filled
 field
leave
 live
sin
 seen


Icono IDevice Further knowledge

If you click here you will find a longer list of minimal pairs including these two sounds. 

Now, watch the videos to see how both sounds are correctly pronounced.

 

/ɪ/

/i:/

Finally, click here and you will, undoubtedly, improve your knowledge on the subject and, of course, your English (netsurf all the sites which talk about these two sounds by clicking next and continue).


Although there are not specific rules to know how to pronounce words or sounds in English, we will try to help you distinguish both vowel sounds by means of common spellings for them.

As you can see in the chart above, there is one common spelling for sound /ɪ/: i, mainly in monosyllables (one-syllable words: e.g. sin, bin) and before a double consonant (e.g. click, its). On the other hand, there are three quite common spellings for sound /i:/: ee, ea, and ie.
Nevertheless, they are not the only spellings for these sounds. Click on the pictures below and study the charts.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Icono de iDevice Example activity

Find five words in the text of the story at the beginning of the topic containing vowels that are pronounced in the same way as i in championship and ea in steamy.

 

By net efekt. C. Commons

 

i in champhionship ea in steamy
   
   
   
   
   

 

 

Icono de iDevice Self-Assessment
Write all the words from the sentences below containing /ɪ/ or /i:/ at least once. Use the same order as the words appear in the sentence.

 

By DarkComeSoon. C. Commons

1. My team was winning the game.

a. /ɪ/:

b. /i:/:

2. ... but even so, we were surprised at how soon it started to rain.

a. /ɪ/:

b. /i:/:

3. He seemed very worried when he said a tornado was forming.

a. /ɪ/:

b. /i:/:

4. I remember being scared but also thinking that the two tornadoes were the most surprising things I'd ever seen.

a. /ɪ/:

b. /i:/:

5. Relieved, Paco was ready to visit the city.

a. /ɪ/:

b. /i:/:

  

This is the end of topic 3. In it, we've checked the form and uses of two important verb tenses, the Past Simple in contrast with the Present Simple, we've also studied present and past participial adjectives as well as some common suffixes to form adjectives from verbs and nouns. We've also worked a little on the difference between two frequent English vowels. We really hope you've enjoyed it! See you in Topic 4!
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