English Pronunciation in Use (Advanced)

Martin Hewings

Paperback, CD-ROM and CDs pack

Cambridge University Press

ISBN 978-0-521-69376-9

This book can be used in the classroom or by an individual learner who may be working alone. As the blurb says: "This book covers all aspects of pronunciation in communication including word stress, connected speech and intonation. It recognises the importance of pronunciation for listening as well as speaking and learners are provided with both receptive and productive practice."

Read More The two-page units follow the usual ‘in Use' format, explanations and examples of key pronunciation points are presented on left-hand pages with a range of exercises on facing right-hand pages. There are 60 units plus an extra unit on the phonemic alphabet (one of my weak points), another on Consonant clusters - further practice and one on Word stress - further practice, followed by a Glossary of terms used in the book. Finally, there is an extra unit advising on "Further Reading", followed by the key.

There are 5 CDs mostly with a ‘BBC English' accent but also including other accents with native speakers from the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Jamaica, India and various parts of Britain as well as non-native speakers of English from China, Spain, Poland and Japan. The non-native speakers' accents are not very strong so easily understandable. There is one example in Unit 1 of a real ‘Brummy' (Birmingham) accent. Perhaps this was spoken by Martin Hewings himself, as he gave us examples of this accent in his workshop at the Cambridge Day in Bern last November.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to work through the CD-ROM as the sound system is not working on our laptop and our old computer has Windows 98. This CD-ROM requires a sytem of Windows 2000/XP or Mac OSX (10.3 and 10.4) both with 1GHz processor, 256MB RAM. Looking through the CD-ROM without sound, I think it could be fun to work with.

This book would be a great help to advanced learners as it shows where to stress syllables and how native speakers ‘swallow' some syllables.

Diane Lohri-Newman