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Unit 19: A place to live
Goldilocks

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Session 3

Finding a place to live can be very difficult for young people. And in London it's almost impossible for some. One idea is to get elderly people to move to smaller houses to make room for younger people who need somewhere to live. Read an article to find out more and learn a pronunciation tip with Alice.

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Activity 2

Pronunciation tip: 'ough' words

A difficult string of letters to learn

Have you ever thought to yourself that English is a really funny language? You might have got a headache about English spelling and pronunciation. That's because we don't always say the same letters in a word in exactly the same way.

What can you do about and how can you learn this crazy English pronunciation?

Here's Alice with a tip for you - and a challenge!

Watch the video

Show transcriptHide transcript

Alice

That’s enough work for me today. Oh, hello. I’ve just finished work, although I think I’ve got just enough time to go through a language challenge I thought you’d like.

OK. I’m going to say five words. See if you can spot the link between them. OK, are you ready? Here goes.

Enough

Thought

Although

Through

Cough

[Coughs] Oh. Excuse me. Cough.

What’s the same about these words? Well, they sound very different, don’t they? But there is a link. They all use the letters o-u-g-h. Have a look.

Listen again.

So, enough. Here the sound, o-u-g-h is /ʌf/ like rough and tough.

Thought. Here o-u-g-h sounds like /ɔː/ It’s usually like this before the letter ‘t’, the /t/ sound. So, like bought and brought and ought.

Although. Here o-u-g-h sounds like /əʊ/ Though is the same.

Through. Here o-u-g-h sounds like /uː/

And cough. Here the sound is /ɒf/

And unfortunately, that’s not all the ways we can say the letters o-u-g-h in English. And I’m afraid there aren’t any easy rules to learn how to say these words. It’s best to just learn each word individually and practise saying them in example sentences whenever you can – like I did at the start of the video. Watch again and see if you can spot the first times I used enough, although, and thought.

Good luck. See you next time. 

End of Session 3

That's enough for this session! We hope you found it interesting to read about the housing problems there are in London. We also hope you feel a bit more confident about saying those tricky 'ough' words!

In Session 4 we'll look at using too, very and enough to talk about some problems you might have at home and at work.

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