Month: May 2019

“Truly innovative and packed with fun activities”

“Follows the approach that pronunciation should be taught for intelligibility rather than ‘correctness in terms of a particular accent’”

“Written in a language that is accessible to teachers with any level of classroom experience”

“Your eyes will be caught by the professional and appealing infographics and illustrations”

“The ready-to-use worksheets have been laid out to be easily projected, printed or photocopied for classroom use”

“A perfect example of quality self-published supplementary material”

Review of Geoff Lindsey (2019) English after RP: Standard British Pronunciation Today Palgrave Macmillan

If you teach English pronunciation, you will know that most text books present a model which claims to be either standard American or standard British. The latter is often referred to as RP (Received Pronunciation), and is usually represented by a set of phonetic symbols chosen over half a century ago by A. C. Gimson. Geoff Lindsey makes the point that if a person speaks in exactly the way that these symbols indicate, they will sound comically old-fashioned. His new book English after RP sets out to describe they ways in which standard British has evolved away from RP. He suggests alternative phonetic symbols which would be more appropriate for modern Standard Southern British English, but he also recognises that the traditional set will not be changed overnight, given the number of text books still using them. If we are to stick with the symbols currently in use, we will need to avoid taking them at phonetic face value – the symbols no longer accurately describe the facts.