Hello again. I'd like to teach you another sound that is key to developing an American accent. Today, I'm going to talk about the ear sound. The ear and related sounds are very frequent in English, so it's important to spend some time making sure you can accurately pronounce them. Like the schwa, or as a middle vowel. Your tongue position can vary somewhat. It can pull back and bunch up as you see in the photo, or it can curl back. It doesn't really matter whether your tongue tip is up or whether it's down. The most important thing about this sound is the tongue does not touch any part of the mouth or the teeth. It should not touch the roof of your mouth. The muscles are tense with this sound. You should feel your tongue and your mouth tense. And your mouth is open about midway. Your lips are loosely rounded. Let's go ahead and try the sound together. I'm going to give you a close up of my mouth so you can see exactly what I'm doing. Er. Er. Er. Let's play with this a little bit. I want you to growl like a tiger. But before we do that, I want to make sure that your mouth is set up to correctly pronounce the ear sound. So make sure that you open your mouth about midway. You round your lips. Your tongue is in the middle of your mouth. Pull it back. It should not be touching anything. Right? And then we're going to feel tension. Like hold the muscle tight. Now let's go ahead and growl like a tiger. Er. Er. Er. Er. Now that is the ear sound. So whenever you can't remember it, remember growl like a tiger and then that's going to help you make that sound correctly. Let's talk now about how to spell the ear sound. Oftentimes in English, we can't always rely on spelling to determine sound. And with the ear, this is particularly the case. There are several different spellings that can actually make this sound. And here are a few of the more common ones. The ER spelling is probably the most common as in words like her and were. You might see EAR as an early or learn. I are as in girl and third. OR in work and world. And you are in Thursday and burn. So these are some of the more common ones you may find. And there are also potentially other spellings as well. First I want to test your ear to see if you can hear the sound correctly. First I want you to locate this chart in your workbook so you can write on it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pronounce each word in two ways. I'm going to pronounce it once for you correctly and I'm going to pronounce it once incorrectly. Now I want you to circle the one that you hear pronounced correctly. Do you hear the one in column A or B correctly? Let's get started. The first one. Newspaper. Newspaper. Work. Work. Water. Water. Early. Computer. Computer. Research. Research. Doctor. Doctor. Now if you need to please stop the video and listen to that again and again until you are certain that you can hear the ear sound correctly and you have all the answers. When you do check your answers in the back of the workbook. Alright, that's all for this lesson. What I want you to do now is I want you to find the chart with the common ear words and audio recordings for these words in your class lessons. I encourage you to listen and repeat these common words to make their pronunciation a new habit. Thanks for watching.