How many English sounds do ESL teachers teach?

The question is in the title - how many sounds do you introduce to your students? (I would appreciate the number and examples - the charts of English sounds that you use in teaching).

How many sounds I used actually to teach depended on the learners’ native language. With Czech speakers, for example, I would spend nearly as much time on aspirated /p/ as on most of the other phonemes together.


Much of my work on pronunciation was devoted to word and sentence stress, chunking and intonation, plus the usually small number of phonemes that the learners had difficulty with.

If you are asking about how many sounds I wanted my learners to produce as accurately as possible, the answer is the 43 phonemes here, plus non-phonemic /i/ and /u/, syllabic /l/, /m/ and /n,/, and the glottal stop. I did not worry particularly about /ʊə/, as many native speakers don’t use it. If necessary, I would work on allophones such as aspirated and unaspirated /p/ and clear and dark /l/.

5jj said:

If you are asking about how many sounds I wanted my learners to produce as accurately as possible, the answer is the 43 phonemes here, <...> I did not worry particularly about /ʊə/, as many native speakers don’t use it....

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How then the native speakers pronounce the words sure, pure, mature, endure, our, hour etc.? :-?

Sure

The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary gives /ʃɔ:/ and /ʃʊə/ for BrE, /ʃʊ[SUP]ə[/SUP]r/ and /ʃɜ: for AmE. The Cambridge English Pronunciation Dictionary gives /ʃɔ:[SUP]r[/SUP]/ and /ʃʊə[SUP]r[/SUP]/ for BrE and /ʃʊr/ for AmE.


Wells's LPD Preference Poll for BrE suggest that 46% of speakers say /ʃɔ:/ and 54% /ʃʊə/. /ʃɔ:/is becoming more common among young people.

Yes

5jj said:

Yes

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In what way?

In the way that you appeared to be asking about: /ʃɔ:/is becoming more common among young people.

Oh, do the Czechs not use /p/?

They do, but it's a lenis form that sounds very much like /b/ to speakers of English.