English Pronunciation: /i/ Ship vs. /i:/ Sheep

how you doing guys you all right this is Elliot from etj English and what I'm going to be talking to you about today are some minimal pairs so we've got two different sounds that we're going to talk about today and these will really help you with your confidence in pronunciation your British accent and the way you sound when you speak now I've heard a lot of different ways of these sounds being made and it's these two sounds that people get very very confused with so let me go straight into the lesson let's start learning some

pronunciation and hopefully hopefully I can fix your problems now remember with pronunciation everybody has a different accent everybody sounds different okay but with these sounds most of my students seem to have a problem with these two particular sounds and they do get said wrong so if you already know how to do it that's great if you don't then this video is for you so we're going to compare the I and the e sound so we're going to go straight into this now first of all I want you to practice the I sound now notice how

I am shaping my mouth the mouth shape is always important with pronunciation especially when we have two sounds which are very similar so the I you notice how I'm creating more of a smile it's an unrounded sound which means we create more of a smile when we create this sound I the tongue goes kind of up not touching the top but it's near the top of the mouth and what we do is we quickly let a sound out it's a short vowel sound so it's a quick I I now for example think of words like

it with sit these words are very common words that you're going to need to use so make sure you're creating that quick I sound okay smile SL lightly tongue up it's not rounded at all and our mouth is almost closed really when we make this sound okay and the sound we're comparing it to is the e sound e okay now once again this shape is very very similar the e sound the shape is very similar we're creating a smile it's a bit more of a smile this time we really want to create that e sound

okay and we do exactly the same thing the tongue goes up e e e so once again for the e sound what happens is so once again for the e sound the tongue goes High We stretch our lips out and we create more of a smile don't be afraid to smile when it comes up in words e okay for example if we have a word like seat feet Beach you'll notice what's happening is I am creating a smile and what you need to do when when you first start making the difference between these two sounds

is you really need to express and exaggerate that shape because that will create the muscle memory to remind you that you need to make that shape and eventually that expression will slowly go away and it becomes more normal like it is when I speak but in the beginning you have to really Force The Sounds out to distinguish the difference and remind your body how to do it so what I'd like you to do first of all before we start any words is start with the basics okay the basics we want to do is just practice

going i and e so remember the tongue's always high we're creating a smile one sound is shorter than the other so three times let's say i e do it with me I E I E okay now hopefully you have that sound right now if you don't rewind try again keep practicing until you get that shape correct okay then once you've done that you can start moving on to putting it in words these sounds are really common and they're easily mistaken so let's make sure we get them right okay so we're going to be comparing some

minimal pairs which are really going to help you with comparing the two sounds in sentences and in different situations so first of all we have the difference between the words sit and seat sit and seat so so why don't we try a sentence I want to sit in the seat I want to sit in the seat try and get a bit faster every time pronunciation is all about repetition so keep repeating yourself I want to sit in the seat I want to sit in the seat get faster and faster and if you're not seeing any

Improvement slow down again start go back to the sounds again okay it takes time pronunciation let's try the words chip and cheap chip and cheap so what we're going to do is we're going to use a very popular British phrase when something isn't very expensive when it doesn't cost much money quite often we say that was as cheap as chips cheap as chips so just try that for me repeat after me cheap as chips cheap as chips cheap as chips try and get faster we've got eat and it now these words can come together quite

often in one sentence for example I could say can I eat it can I eat it can I eat it can I eat it and think about intonation there as well think about how the intonation goes when we ask questions in English it's a yes no question so we would go can I eat it up okay so we're learning some intonation here as well I'm so good to you guys how about we try a double one let's try two minimal pairs in one sentence now we know we're reaching the big time with this sound so

let's do it he's sitting on his seat he's sitting on his seat he's sitting on his seat try that one a few times when you get that right you should be on the right track so let's just try another technique which is where you just repeat them over and over again so what I would like you to do for some practice at home is practice these sentences but also practice just repeating these words one after another and see whether you make any Improvement so we've got cheek and chick cheek chick cheek chick de deep and

dip deep dip deep dip and each with it each it each it and what I want you to do is create some sentences use your grammar use your vocabulary and use your imagination to create sentences because it also helps you improve your English when you're learning these words with pronunciation create your own sentences using these sounds and practice so I really hope this helped you this sound like I said most of my students have a problem with this and even people say I don't have a problem with this sound but then when they get in

a Skype lesson with me they realize oh okay yeah I do have a problem with this sound and then we spend a while practicing it it's really important okay if you would like my help on Skype uh with some pronunciation lessons Expressions lessons British English lessons provided with voice recordings and images and Fe feedback then you're welcome to book a Skype lesson with me uh you can book a trial lesson there's usually a waiting list so you would book The Trial lesson and then we would decide a date when we'd both be free for you

to start thank you very much for watching I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you all very soon cheers guys thank you bye