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Oral English

English Language · WAEC and JAMB · SS2 and SS3

Test of Orals carries its own section of the objective paper, and it is the part most candidates give up on, which makes it the easiest place to gain ground. The questions are about SOUND, not spelling, and the traps are built around the way English is commonly pronounced in Nigeria.

What you need to know

  • Rhyme and sound questions are decided by pronunciation, not by letters. 'Tough' rhymes with 'cuff' and 'rough', not with 'though' or 'through', even though all four end in -ough.
  • English has long and short vowels that change meaning, and Nigerian speech often merges them. The vowel in 'ship' is short while the one in 'sheep' is long; the same difference separates 'pull' from 'pool', 'bit' from 'beat' and 'full' from 'fool'.
  • The vowel in 'bird' is a long central sound, the same as in 'heard', 'word', 'shirt', 'nurse' and 'turn'. Many candidates replace it with the vowel in 'bed' or 'bath', which makes them choose the wrong option.
  • Diphthongs are gliding vowels that move from one sound to another within a syllable. The vowel in 'beard' glides and is not the same as the single vowel in 'bird'; the vowel in 'hair' glides and differs from both.
  • The 'th' sounds have no equivalent in most Nigerian languages. The voiceless one in 'thin', 'thank' and 'path' is often replaced with t, and the voiced one in 'this', 'those' and 'breathe' with d. In a test item, 'tin' and 'thin' are two different words.
  • The sound in the middle of 'measure', 'pleasure', 'vision' and 'television' is often replaced with the 'sh' sound or with a j sound. It is softer than both and sits between them.
  • Do not confuse the 'ch' sound in 'church', 'chair' and 'cheap' with the 'sh' sound in 'shirt', 'share' and 'sheep'; swapping them is a frequent source of wrong answers.
  • Final consonant clusters must be completed. 'Asked', 'texts', 'risks' and 'clothes' are commonly reduced in speech, and that reduction leads candidates to mishear which word is being tested.
  • Do not add a vowel to the end of words that close with a consonant. 'Bread', 'stand' and 'film' end on the consonant, and adding a final vowel changes the syllable count, which matters in stress questions.
  • Silent letters remain silent: the b in debt, doubt and subtle; the h in honest, hour and heir; the k in knee and knife; the p in psalm and receipt; the s in island; the t in listen and castle.
  • Stress means one syllable in a word is said with greater force. Words often misstressed in Nigeria include MAIN-ten-ance, COM-fort-a-ble, CAT-e-go-ry, COL-league, PUR-chase, MIS-chie-vous with three syllables, and ma-DAM said as MA-dam.
  • Some words change stress with their part of speech: a REcord but to reCORD, a PREsent but to preSENT, an INcrease but to inCREASE, a CONduct but to conDUCT. The noun takes the first syllable, the verb the second.
  • Emphatic or contrastive stress puts the force on the word carrying new or corrected information. 'SHE paid the fee' answers who paid, while 'She paid the FEE' answers what she paid, so read the question stem to see what is being contrasted.
  • Intonation falls at the end of statements, commands and wh-questions such as 'Where are you going?' It rises at the end of yes-no questions such as 'Are you coming?' and on each item in a list except the last.

Key terms

Vowel
A speech sound produced without any blocking of the air stream in the mouth.
Consonant
A speech sound produced by blocking or narrowing the air stream at some point in the mouth or throat.
Diphthong
A vowel sound that glides from one position to another within a single syllable.
Syllable
A unit of pronunciation containing one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants.
Stress
The extra force given to one syllable of a word or one word in a sentence, making it stand out.
Intonation
The rise and fall of the voice across a whole utterance, which signals whether it is a statement, a question or a list.
Emphatic stress
Stress placed on a particular word in a sentence to highlight new, contrasted or corrected information.

Worked examples

Choose the word whose vowel sound is the same as that in 'bird': A. bed B. heard C. beard D. bard

  1. Say the test word first. 'Bird' has a single long central vowel, the same sound heard in 'nurse' and 'word'.
  2. Check A: 'bed' has a short front vowel, the sound in 'pen'. It is shorter and further forward, so it is wrong.
  3. Check C: 'beard' glides from one sound to another, so it is a diphthong and cannot match a single vowel.
  4. Check D: 'bard' has a long open back vowel, the sound in 'car' and 'calm'. Wrong place in the mouth.
  5. Check B: 'heard' has exactly the long central vowel of 'bird', although it is spelt quite differently.
  6. Remember that spelling is irrelevant here; ear and ir represent the same sound in these two words.

In which of the following words is the stress on the SECOND syllable? A. maintenance B. develop C. advertise D. category

  1. Break each word into syllables and say it aloud, listening for the loudest one.
  2. A: main-ten-ance has three syllables with the force on the first, MAIN-ten-ance.
  3. B: de-vel-op has three syllables with the force on the middle one, de-VEL-op.
  4. C: ad-ver-tise has the force on the first, AD-ver-tise.
  5. D: cat-e-go-ry has four syllables with the force on the first, CAT-e-go-ry.
  6. Only one word carries its stress on the second syllable.

The mistake to avoid

Candidates answer sound questions by looking at spelling, so they match 'bird' with 'beard' because both contain the letters b-r-d around a vowel pair. The other standing trap is Nigerian stress habits: saying ma-DAM, in-TER-est-ed or MAIN-te-NANCE and then selecting the option that matches how they speak rather than how the word is stressed in standard English.

In the exam

Whisper each option to yourself before choosing, and judge by what your mouth does rather than by what the letters look like. For stress items, clap once per syllable and feel which clap is heaviest. Learn the noun-verb stress pairs as a set, since at least one of them appears nearly every year, and never leave an oral item blank because the options can usually be reduced to two by sound alone.