video, we're going to go over the pronunciation of words that start with an S consonant cluster.

Special thanks to my users who helped me develop this topic. In Spanish and Portuguese, words

do not start with an S consonant cluster. But in English, there are many common words

that do. For example, study. So, these speakers tend to put an 'eh' sound in front: eh-study.

Last week I went to a gala, and a woman there accepted an award. She was a native Spanish

speaker, and as she gave her speech, she said the word 'spiritual'. And she pronounced it

eh-spiritual, with that eh-vowel. I noticed it especially because so much about her accent

was very, very good. So, even after someone has done a lot of work and corrected a lot

of problems, this beginning S consonant cluster tends to stick around.

So how should you work on beginning words with the S consonant cluster? Luckily, in

both Spanish and Portuguese, there are words that start with the S consonant. For example,

'sin' in Spanish, and 'sem' in Portuguese. So, when you're practicing words that begin

with S consonant clusters, I would alternate this with your word that begins with an S

consonant. For example: sssssin, sssstudent, and so on.

Let's go over all of the different beginning S consonant clusters. ST, like student.

STR, street. SM, smart. SN, snake. SL, slap.

And, the SK consonant cluster, which can be spelled four different

ways: school, scoop, skip, square. SP, space. SPL, split. SPR, spring. And SW, swift.

I can hardly believe how many consonant clusters there are! But now that you know what they

are, practice them. Drill them. Look for words that you use in everyday conversation that

begin with an S consonant cluster. Keep track of that, and at the end of the day, use those

words to drill. If you can start a word with an S, you can start a word with an S cluster.

That's it, and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.