If a student pronounces relax /rɪˈlæks/ as ‘ruliax’ /ruːliæks/ or danger /ˈdeɪndʒə(r)/ as ‘daangger’ ˈdæŋɡər/, this is a clear indication that imitation alone is insufficient for effective pronunciation learning. Simply repeating what is heard does not lead to lasting improvement unless learners first understand the individual sounds of English, or phonemes, and how these sounds combine to form words.
For my student, those two words were not isolated cases – nearly 80% of his spoken vocabulary was mispronounced, largely because he lacked an understanding of the sounds of English and . . .
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