They had recently started my British English Pronunciation Course and wanted to make a few observations. With just a few days of training under their belt, they told me that they already felt they had discovered one of the keys to drastically improving their pronunciation - awareness . If you are not aware of common pronunciation mistakes, then how can you possibly correct them? Pronunciation training is often neglected in English lessons, with teachers correcting students on a word-by-word basis. In my course, we start by breaking pronunciation down into individual sounds . How can you master the pronunciation of a word, if you can't correctly produce one of its consonant or vowel sounds? Take a look at the schwa sound, for example: be hind am aze con trol finan cial sup pose All of these words feature the schwa sound. Any of the vowel letters can spell out the schwa sound - a, e, i, o, u and even y. How do we make the schwa sound?...