IPA 

Our aim is to promote the teaching and learning of English phonetics in Hongkong. We provide high quality English phonetics (IPA) and pronunciation courses for people at all levels of spoken English.

The course "Practical English Phonetics and Phonology" is one of our most popular choices. We are very proud to say that the quality and popularity of this course has been key to establishing the good reputation of IPA (HK). Mr Derek Kwok, the Course Lecturer, is an experienced phonetics educator with over 10 years teaching experience in English phonetics. His innovative teaching techniques and moderate sense of humour make the complex phonetics principles all the easier to understand.

The courses "English Phonetics Classes for Students" and "Practical English Phonetics and Phonology for Teachers" have provided students and teachers of English in HK with a better channel through which to understand the most important theories and key skills in pronunciation and many other features of spoken English.

As this Web Site comes into existence, we can now offer our students of phonetics with continuous learning and practice support. The pages under our "Club News" section are especially dedicated towards this goal. We believe that through this Web Site, the students of IPA (HK) will be able to further enrich their knowledge of English phonetics and pronunciation even after they have completed our courses.

 

Today's selected word:

now vs mow
讀音注意:
英文字母ow, 可讀 [aʊ]音(如now)或[əʊ] 音(如low),
不要把mow讀成/maʊ/. !

以下例子, 示範了英文字母拼音(phonics)的限制;
順序讀出以下字例(提示, [aʊ] [əʊ] 梅花間竹地出現)
how, low, now, tow, brow, blow, chow, show, cow, crow, pow, bow (noun)

參考IPA, 能清楚分辨出兩組不同的讀音.
how[haʊ], now[naʊ], [braʊ], chow[tʃaʊ], cow[kaʊ], pow[paʊ]

low[ləʊ], tow [təʊ], blow[bləʊ], show[ʃəʊ], crow[krəʊ], bow[bəʊ] (noun)

香港學校只教學生phonics而不教IPA, 學生根本無法有效分辨相同字母組合的不同讀音, 容易導致發音錯誤.
再試讀以下字例.
allow, arrow, bellow, below, endow, bestow
[əˈlaʊ, ˈærəʊ, ˈbeləʊ, biˈləʊ, ɪnˈdaʊ, biˈstəʊ]
香港大多數人, 學了十多廿年英語, 連最重要的語音參考工具(IPA)卻不認識, 實在可惜.

Derek Kwok
E.D.530468