There are lots of things that we don’t notice about our own languages until we come to teach them. We are happy to talk and write without too much effort and with little thought for what a language learner may have to cope with. One such aspect, in English, is the length of vowel sounds. We have short sounds and long sounds. The sound is almost the same, it’s just elongated in some words. Now, much will depend on regional variations in accent and even dialect, of course, but if we look at ‘standard English’ then we can see the long and short sounds more easily.

For example, if we listen to the words ‘good’ and ‘food’ we can hear the same vowel sound but one is longer than the other. We only change one letter in the spelling but when spoken, one word sounds longer than the other. The most common difficulty that I have witnessed with learners has been with numbers. For example, the number thirty and the number thirteen. The difference can be difficult for learners to detect when listening and, consequently, to create when speaking. As a guideline, you can see in the spelling that thirteen has a double ‘e’ which makes a longer sound so emphasising it will help with clarification. It can be worth practising, especially if dealing with money and times. Such as: How much does it cost? Fifteen fifty. What time is the flight? Thirteen thirty.