In the next two lessons, we're going to focus on listening and pronunciation.

We're going to work on distinguishing the different vowels and diphthongs in the standard British accent.

As I've mentioned to you in an earlier video, there are many vowels and diphthongs in the English language.

And in order to improve your listening comprehension of native speakers,

it's important that you can distinguish between these different sounds clearly.

Of course, as you know, certain sounds are pronounced differently in different accents,

like in the American accent, Australian accent, even in different parts of Britain.

However, I feel that the standard British accent is a good place to start.

And from there, you can begin to learn the variations in the different accents as you come into contact with them.

I have divided this lesson into two parts. In the first part, we're going to contrast short vowels with their long version.

And we'll do this in minimal pairs. As you know, minimal pairs are words that have the same consonant sounds and by changing the vowel sound we change the meaning.

In the second part of this lesson, we'll look at differences between certain vowels and diphthongs that sound very similar to each other.

By the end of this two -part lesson, you will have tuned your ears into the vowels and diphthongs in the standard British accent.

This will have improved your listening comprehension of this particular accent and will have also improved your own pronunciation.

So, when you're ready, we can begin with part one.