In fact, it’s the top source of pronunciation mistakes among English learners! When you check out pronunciation guides in dictionaries, you’ll often spot an inverted E (/ǝ/), which actually symbolizes the schwa.Īlthough the schwa is found in so many words, it’s not surprising that ESL students struggle with it, even at advanced levels. Most unstressed syllables get their vowel turned into a schwa sound.
The schwa matters so much because it’s the most common sound in the English language. (Download) The Schwa Sound: Invisible but Everywhere This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬlick here to get a copy.
In this post, we’ll go over the top strategies for teaching the schwa sound so ESL students can really understand what it’s all about (and keep on practicing it after your class!). There are ways to teach the schwa sound that won’t have your students blinking in confusion. You can’t really tell if a word uses a schwa just by looking at the spelling.īecause of this, a lot of ESL teachers can feel nervous about teaching the schwa sound, even though it’s extremely common in English. However, students tend to forget about it or fail to notice it in words because it’s “invisible.” Technically, it’s easy to pronounce on its own-no tongue-twister required at all! I’m willing to bet, though, that nearly all ESL students will agree on one thing: The schwa sound in English is a challenge. FebruSuccessfully Teaching the Schwa Sound: 6 Tactics to Magnify the Most Common Sound in Englishįrom their hobbies and native language to their favorite vocabulary, every student approaches English learning in a different way.
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