🎧Listening: A1 - Common Contractions
Learning Objectives: By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
- Understand what a contraction is in English.
- Recognize common spoken contractions like "I'm," "you're," and "it's."
- Match spoken contractions to their full forms (e.g., "I'm" = "I am").
- Feel more confident understanding simple sentences with contractions.
Key Concept: Short Sounds, Same Meaning
In spoken English, we often make words shorter by pushing them together. These short forms are called "contractions." Hover over (or tap) the card to learn more.
Example: "I am" becomes "I'm". "It is" becomes "It's".
✍️ Practice Activities
Activity 1: Contraction Match
Choose the correct full form for the contraction.
1. What is the full form of "You're"?
2. What is the full form of "can't"?
Activity 2: Hear the Difference
Listen to both A and B. Which one uses the contraction (the short form)?
Note: This activity uses text-to-speech. For the best practice, listen to different human voices in real conversations!
Which one was the contraction?
Activity 3: What did you hear?
Listen to the sentence. Choose the sentence that you heard.
1.
2.
- Contractions combine two words into one shorter sound (e.g., "we are" → "we're").
- They are very common in spoken English, especially in informal conversations.
- Listen for the apostrophe sounds like 's, 'm, 're, and n't.
- Remember, the meaning is the same! "He is a student" and "He's a student" mean the same thing.
Summary: In this lesson, you practiced recognizing common English contractions. Understanding these short forms is a very important first step to understanding natural, everyday speech. The more you listen, the easier it will become!