My Father’s a really nice guy.
Last christmas, I went to Canada and I met him at the airport.
Then, from there we went to his house and I stayed at his house for the whole holiday.
It was really nice.
That is the script I use to reinforce the silent ‘h’ phenomenon I pointed out a few weeks ago here in スミス英会話、生駒(Smith School of English, Ikoma). My students liked it because it was short, and they could try listening to it 2 or even three times. The simple question I asked was, “What happened at the airport?”
The sound change is in the phrase, “I met him at the airport.”
This comes out sounding like, “I medi mat the airport.”
Of course I care about my students here in my Ikoma English school (I am practicing using the kanji and inputting kanji on my computer… it looks like: スミス英会話、生駒). That’s why I want to practice listening with them; so they can really understand what they listen to outside my class, and then repsond well, or even mimic it to build their own English. Listening practice (in japanese they call it kikitori rensyuu -,) takes up 5 to 8 minutes of my time; no more. The students find it fun and interesting practice, and they are starting to see their levels rise! Then we can get down to the nitty gritty of practicing speaking English.
The disappearing ‘H’ phenomenon is easy to set up; ‘his’, ‘him’, and ‘her’ often drop the ‘H’ sound when they follow verbs. Making short stories to practice this is easy and effective. Try it yourself!
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