MASTER SPOKEN ENGLISH: DVD-2 Structural and Neutral Vowels

Main Menu for DVD-2

with links to five Sub-Menus.
Below are menus for:
Structural Vowels and
More Practice Material

A list of Operative Words
and those words
practiced in sentences.

Neutral Vowels are covered
in the other three menus.

Structural Vowels

Besides producing good sound and accurate vowels, Structural Action can be exploited in circumstances where your voice has to travel over a distance, or when speaking to small groups without the aid of a microphone, or where you are competing with background noise. In an increasingly noisy world, these occasions are more and more frequent. Structural Action can enable you to be heard clearly without straining your voice or without appearing to exert too much effort. Structural Action is an important vocal dynamic, which, when combined with good Tonal Action and Consonant Action, can overcome nearly any competition.

Structural Action
also employs a
Triple Repetition at
Three Levels of
Vocal Energy.

Students Learning On-Camera

These students were unrehearsed.
They learned how to do
Structural Action
as we filmed them in a
public coffee-shop near the
La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.

Yellow Letters = Major Vowels
Throughout the program, Yellow Letters always indicate the Major Vowels.
Sentences / Structural Action
After learning all the individual Structural Vowels, words are combined into Sentences, and performed inThree Stages. Stage 1.........Maximum Stretch for Sense Memory Stage 2.........Medium Stretch at a Faster Repetition Stage 3.........Normal well-formed pronunciation

Contents of Structural Vowels

Major Vowels.....
#5-AH..... #1-OO...... #4-0.....
#3-AW..... #21-OH..... #51-OW.....
#6-A..... #3Y-OI..... #6Y-I.....
R-VOWEL.....
PRACTICE SENTENCES

Neutral Vowels

Learning to use Neutral Vowels effectively is going to require good consonants. However, producing good consonants requires proper neutral vowels. Where do we start? I've put the Neutral Vowels first, because it's a short subject. As soon as you've gone through the Consonants, it would be a good idea to review Neutral Vowels and put into play all that you've learned about consonants. The Neutral Vowels must be kept very short and staccato. Consequently you must learn to play the consonants surrounding them.


Neutral VowelsThese four little sounds are big trouble. Much of your foreign accent comes from pronouncing these Neutral sounds like their larger Parent vowels.


	Neutral Word List Play these Neutral Vowels as short, staccato, grunt-like sounds, and observe how the Consonants on either side of it become more important--that is, you play Consonant to Consonant.