Interactive Lesson - Drones

Task 1 - Speaking

Discuss these questions with a partner:

What is a drone, and what are they used for?
Do you think the skies will soon be full of them?


Task 2 - Reading 

Below, you will find four BBC news articles involving drones.

Work individually.
Read one of them and make notes under these headings:

• Summary of story (maximum 3 sentences)
• Advantages of using drones
• Problems arising from using drones
• If I was Prime Minister, I would pass legislation (make a law) which said...

Here are the links to the news articles:

Bears       Knock Out       Airspace       Sea Gulls


Task 3 - Vocabulary Check

After making your notes, go back and underline any difficult words or phrases in the article (maximum 4 examples).

Discuss these with a partner without showing them your notes.

Modify your notes if you need to.


Task 4 - Presenting 

Use your notes to explain your news stories to your group.

While you listen, make notes under the same four headings: summary, advantages, problems, if I was prime minister...



Task 5 - Discussion and Writing

With a partner, look at all the different laws that the whole group came up with.

Agree and write down one law that covers all the situations.

Include penalties for breaking the law.



Task 6 - Testing Your Law

Is this man breaking the law? Should he be punished?
What do you think of his "invention"?

Task 7 - Internet Research (homework)

Find out what you can about Zano drones.

• What is the concept of Zano drones? What are they designed to do?
• Zano is a modern company, funded by Kickstarter. What is Kickstarter?
• What problems has the company experienced?
• Do you think that Zano drones will be a success?

Vowel Sounds Overview

This post gives a short overview of the vowel sounds in British English.  I use a system called SPELL to represent the individual sounds.


Short vowels

Three-letter words in English are very predictable.

The word “cat” contains three sounds: c, a, and t

“Red” is r, e, d

“Dog” is d, o, g

“Big” is b, i, g

And “bus” is b, u, s

It doesn't look like we need a special way to represent sound with funny symbols. We can just use the alphabet, can’t we?

Yes… and no.

The word “push”, for example, causes a problem. The vowel sound is a different (deeper) sound than the u in “bus”. If we want to show that they are different, we need some kind of symbol.

Let’s define u as the deeper sound.

So “push” is p, u, sh

That means that we have 6 short vowel sounds but only 5 letters.

Our short vowel sounds then are a, e, i, o, u, u

Click here for more on the short sounds


Long vowels

These are the vowel sounds that we hear when we say the alphabet.

A     cake      caek

E      teeth     teeth

I       kite        kiyt

O      boat      boet

U      tune      tyuun

In written English, we can write the same sound in different ways, using a combination of two or more letters. For example, the words ‘male’ and ‘mail’ are pronounced in exactly the same way.

The sound-symbols that I use for these long vowel sounds are a combination of two letters, but I always use the same two letters to represent each sound.

I will write them as: ae, ee, iy, oe, uu.

So the sound of both “male” and “mail” is mael.

Notice that the name of the letter of the alphabet, U, is actually pronounced yuu. It begins with the consonant sound, y.

The combination of ‘u’ and ‘e’ in “tune” also makes yuu:

      the word is made from the sounds: t, y, uu and n

However, the combination of ‘u’ and ‘e’ in “flute” makes uu:

      the word is made from the sounds: f, l, uu and t (there is no y sound)

There is no rule for this. Sometimes there’s a y; sometimes there isn’t.

Click here for more on the long sounds


Cowboy vowels

There are two ‘cowboy’ vowel sounds, which, in English, are written using a combination of letters. Here are some examples:

cow      cŏ
boy       boy

sound   sŏnd

coin      coyn

We use a special symbol, ŏ, to represent the vowel sound in “cow” and "sound" because the letter combinations 'ow' and 'ou' don’t always make that sound. For example, in the word  “town”, ‘ow’ makes the sound ŏ but in the word “show”, ‘ow’ makes the sound oe.

We use oy to represent the vowel sound in boy and coin.

Click here for more on the cowboy vowels


The R-vowels

There are three different vowel sounds that are often written using a combination of a vowel and the letter ‘r’. Here are some examples:

purple      pūrp~l
car           cār
door         dōr

In these words, the letter ‘r’ is part of the vowel sound. It is not pronounced as a consonant sound (in British English).

I will write these sounds ūr, ār and ōr.

Notice that the vowel sound ūr can be spelt in three different ways:

purple      pūrp~l
person     pūrs~n
girl           gūrl

The first vowel sound in the words “person”, “girl” and “purple” is exactly the same: ūr.

Click here for more on the R-vowels


The lazy vowel

Some vowels make a very weak, lazy sound. This happens when they are part of an unstressed syllable. Here are some examples:

alive        ~liyv
waiter      waet~
person     pūrs~n
pilot         piyl~t

I will write ~ for this sound. We don’t want it to look very much like a letter because it is so relaxed that it’s almost not there!

Click here for more on the lazy vowel


The Sliders

There are five more vowel sounds that native speakers of English may think of as individual sounds, although they are really combinations of the sounds I have already introduced. Here are some examples:

beer      bee~
fire        fiy~
cure       cyuu~
flour      flŏ~
chair      che~

For each of these sounds, we slide from one sound to another.

I will write them: ee~, iy~, uu~, ŏ~ and e~

Click here for more on the sliders


So those are the vowel sounds of English. If you’re not sure how they sound, go to the Individual Vowel Sounds posts in the Vowels Menu where you can listen to them one by one.

Pronunciation 9: Standard Spelling and How It Works!

If we go back to the vowel sound table, you'll remember that each column has a letter at the top. This is the root letter and it is associated with all of the sounds in that column.








Let's look at root letter A.

The short sounds, in row 1, are written using the root letter on its own, surrounded by consonants.

For example, in the word 'cat', there is one vowel, on its own, so the sound is a.

When two vowels are next to each other, we usually get the long sound in row 2. Also, if vowels are separated by only one consonant, we also get the long sound.

For example, in the word 'nail', there are two vowels next to each other. In the word 'cake', there are two vowels separated by only one consonant. In both cases, the first of the two vowels is 'a', and we get the long sound, ae.

The vowel sound in 'nail' and 'cake' is the same but it is written in different ways. The combination 'ai' spells the sound ae, and the combination 'ae' (here separated with a 'k') also spells the sound ae.

So how do we know which sound a particular combination makes? Well, you can learn them. This is the spelling table for Root Letter A.

You can see that another spelling of the ae sound is 'ay', as in 'pay'. Most of the spellings start with the root letter.

Now, you will notice there is one spelling of ae that doesn't use the root letter, and that is 'ei'. This is a surprise but it is still one way to spell the ae sound.

Unfortunately, the same combination, 'ei' sometimes makes an ee in other words, such as 'receive', and sometimes an iy, as it does in 'poltergeist'. Letter combinations like this that can make different sounds will be highlighted in green and I will refer to them as chameleons.


From the table for Root letter A you can see that:

• there is one standard way of spelling a: 'a'.
• there are four standard ways of spelling ae: 'ae', 'ai', 'ay' and 'ei'.
• there is only one standard way of spelling ār: 'ar'.
• there are three standard ways of spelling e~: 'air', 'are' and 'eir'.

Note that the sound e~ is included under Root letter A because it is usually associated with the letter, 'a'. Spelling e~ 'are' or 'air' is much more common than spelling it 'eir'.

Also, I can hear you complaining that the word 'are' is not actually pronounced e~, and is in fact pronounced ār. You are right, of course. But, my friends, the word 'are' is non-standard spelling! The words 'care', 'dare', 'fare', 'hare', 'mare', 'rare', 'ware', 'share', 'spare' and 'stare' are all pronounced e~, like the good, honest, standard words that they are!

In the next pronunciation post, we'll look at the spelling tables for each of the root letters, A, E, I, O and U.