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This is an English lesson designed to help you practice and improve your English listening and pronunciation skills. The listening lesson is a short story about something that happened in my life in Canada. There is also a short pronunciation explanation about a word or sound I used in the story.

Story: Winter in Canada!
Pronunciation explanation: How to pronounce the letter ‘o’ in words with ‘com’!

If you have trouble with your listening skills, here’s something that may help:
How to practice listening

Listen to the podcast:
*Try to listen at least once without looking at the words!

*music by Incompetech

Download the podcast in .mp3 from Podbean.com or itunes!

Listening Comprehension Questions:

1. When does winter officially begin?

2. Why is winter an exciting time before Christmas?

3. Why does the excitement die after Christmas?

4. When is the next major holiday?

5. What is the weather like outside now?

6. What makes winter bearable?

Transcript:

(*Click on the links to learn more about the grammar, vocabulary and expressions used in the story!)

According to the calendar, winter officially begins on December 21st. That date is the winter solstice. It’s the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Unofficially, winter begins in late November or whenever the first snowflakes fall. Before Christmas, winter is an exciting time. People decorate their homes, put up their Christmas trees and generally get excited about Christmas. Everywhere you go, you hear Christmas carols being sung. After Christmas, people get excited about New Year’s Eve and welcoming in the New Year.

Then, all the excitement dies. After January 1st, people start taking down their Christmas trees and putting away their Christmas decorations. No one is singing happy Christmas songs anymore. There’s very little to look forward to except more winter, colder weather, and more snow. There’s no major holiday until Easter, which isn’t until the end of April this year! Valentine’s Day is celebrated on February 14th, and people like to drink Irish beer on St. Patrick’s Day on March 17th, but those aren’t really major holidays. People don’t get the day off from work to celebrate those days.

Before Christmas, it was freezing outside! As you may remember from my last podcast, we had a cold spell where it was -20 degrees Celsius outside. A couple weeks ago it was -5 degrees Celsius. Now? The snow has almost completely melted. Last week, northeastern states in the U.S. experienced a crippling snow storm, but here, it feels like spring! It’s deceiving though, because we know spring is not for another 3 months. We know that despite this warm spell, there is more snow to come!

It’s actually quite beautiful outside when everything is covered in white snow! When the sun is shining on the snow, it brightens up the day and makes winter more bearable! When it’s cold outside, however, with no sun and no snow, it’s just plain miserable.

[*I wrote this podcast on the weekend and recorded in on Monday; it started snowing again on Tuesday!]

Pronunciation:

One thing that’s very confusing about English pronunciation is that one letter can be pronounced many different ways, especially vowels.

When English learners see the letter ‘o,’ for example, many want to pronounce it like the name for the letter: / oʊ /. However, this is not always correct.

I notice that a lot of English learners often mispronounce the ‘o’ in words with the letters ‘com.’ In the story, I used the word ‘welcoming.’ Did you notice that I didn’t say /’wɛl.coʊm.Iŋ/? I said /’wɛl.cəm.Iŋ/. The letter ‘o’ is pronounced /ə/.

I often hear English learners say things like: ‘computer’ /coʊm.’pju:.ter/ or ‘comfortable’ /ˈkoʊm.pftɚ.bəl/. That’s not correct.

In the following words, the ‘com’ occurs in an unstressed syllable, so the ‘o’ is pronounced /ə/, like in the words ‘come’ or ‘cup.’
Listen carefully:
computer
community
commercial
communicate
compelling
command
compose
compassion

In those words, the letter ‘o’ is not pronounced / oʊ /, it’s pronounced / ə /.

In other words, when the ‘com’ occurs in a stressed syllable, the ‘o’ is pronounced / a /, like in the word ‘calm.’
Listen carefully:
commerce
competent
compromise
.com

So remember, looks can be deceiving! In English, letters, especially vowels, can be pronounced many different ways!

Vocabulary:

The blues
The Winter Blues
= In this context, ‘the blues’ is a temporary feeling of sadness or depression
(*it is also a type of music, but that is unrelated to this podcast)

the winter solstice
[December 21st] is the winter solstice.
= According to the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, a solstice is:
either of the two occasions in the year when the sun is directly above either the furthest point north or the furthest point south of the equator that it ever reaches. These are the times in the year, in the middle of the summer or winter, when there are the longest hours of day or night.

a Christmas carol
Everywhere you go, you hear Christmas carols being sung.
= a traditional, sometimes religious, type of song sung at Christmas

to cripple (verb) / crippling (adjective)
Last week, northeastern states in the U.S. experienced a crippling snow storm,…
= to cause a lot of damage (to something), so much damage that it can’t function normally or effectively; the snow storm that hit the northeastern states caused airports to close, people couldn’t drive on the road, and everything was covered in snow.

to deceive (verb) / deceiving (adjective)
It’s deceiving though, because we know spring is not for another 3 months.
= to deceive (someone) means you make them believe something that is not true. It looks like spring outside, but we know that it’s not true (it’s not really spring) because spring begins in April!

bearable (adjective)
= if an unpleasant situation (winter) is ‘bearable,’ people accept it or at least learn to live with it