Learn Consonant Clusters S Sound - Consonant Clusters in English Examples

Hi, everybody. I’m Doctor Don here  to give you some more tips and  

exercises to use to improve your  English pronunciation skills.  

This is my third video in a series on  pronouncing initial consonant clusters. Later,  

I’ll show you how to do medial and final  consonant clusters, diphthongs, and vowels.  

Keep watching and practicing this series, and  your English pronunciation will improve.

In the first two videos, which  you can find linked below,  

I showed you how to pronounce consonant clusters  with the L and R sounds. In today’s video  

and the next video I will show you how  to pronounce consonant clusters with  

the S sound. There are lot of these,  so I’ll need two videos to do it.

Let’s start with an easy one: SM. To make  this sound, try saying the word “some”  

and then shorten it until you’re only making  the “sm” sound. Like this: Some… Small, Smack,  

Smog, Smug. Try to repeat these words slowly,  then quickly. Small Smack smog smug.

Now let’s try: SN. To make this sound try  saying the word “sun” and then shorten it  

until you’re only making the “sn” sound.  Like this: Sun. Snail, snore, snout, snooze.  

Try to repeat these words slowly, then  quickly. Snail, snore, snout, snooze.

Now let’s try: SP. To make this sound try  saying the word “sap” and then shorten it  

until you’re only making the “sp”  sound. Like this: Sap. Span, speed,  

spoil, spur. Try to repeat these words slowly,  then quickly. Span, speed, spoil spur.

The next clusters are spelled differently but  pronounced the same way. The clusters are spelled:  

SC (like in the word scam) or SK (like in  the word skill). But the sound is always an  

S sound matched to a hard K sound. Try to  say the word “sack” and then shorten it until  

you’re making the “sk” sound. Let’s look at some  different examples for each of these spellings.  

Scan, score, scum. Try to repeat these words  slowly, then quickly. Scan, score, scum.  

Now the SK spelling. Skill, skeleton,  skull. Skill, skeleton, skull.

Another cluster similar to the previous two is  SCH. This one is sometimes pronounced like SC or  

SK, as in the example word SCHOOL. You make this  sound the same way as the previous two examples:  

School, Scheme, schism. School, scheme, schism.  But sometimes this word is pronounced SH. Say  

the word “hush” and the sound at the  end of that word is the one you want.  

Words using this pronunciation are: SCHWA,  SCHMOE, SCHTIK. That one’s pretty hard!

The last cluster is SH. You pronounce it  the same way as the previous example words  

SH. This is the more normal  spelling for this sound in English.  

Try to repeat these words slowly, then  quickly: shape, show, sheep, ship.

Here are some challenge sentences for you. Try to  say these quickly. The small snail sped to school.  

The short schoolboy is scarily smart.  I snuck a spear from the smoking shed.  

Practice those clusters and I’ll be  back later to show you the fourth set.