Thursday, October 7, 2010

Class picks words for review

We had a very good class today.

Some of the lessons we learned:

  • we aren't doing as well as we thought, especially in the differences between [aw] and [ah] 
  • we are making some careless mistakes
  • we need to practice diction and review the reasons why we miss things
Most commonly missed words on test:
  • stall
  • Lord
  • call
  • salt
  • coffin
  • quality
Recurring and frustrating errors:
  • using [c] for [k]
  • using [x] for [ks]
  • remembering that a word that ends in [i] is usually modified to [I] if it is an unstressed syllable (quality)
One of the evolving lessons involves wisdom:
  • sometimes, we make mistakes because of our particular dialect
  • sometimes, we make mistakes because we out-think ourselves and modify everything to [ah]
  • sometimes, diction sources (Wall textbook, private teachers, pronouncing dictionary) are at odds about proper pronunciations
  • we have to learn to make the best choice 

Here are the words and ideas you submitted to me.  I will choose many of them for the re-test of Chapter five on Thursday, October 14.