Best in class: pronunciation (EN–DK school)
Word stress, weak forms, and Danish-specific traps (/θ/, /w/, /v/) — small fixes, large clarity gains.
Case: the week / weak minimal pair
“This week I’ll weakly agree” — the vowel length and the /w/ matter; practise three times slowly then at natural speed, record 10 seconds on your phone, listen back for stress on week vs the adverb weakly.
3 tasks
1) th-voice, ten words
List five words with voiceless /θ/ (think, path) and five with voiced /ð/ (this, mother). Read aloud; if you use /t/ or /d/, mark it, repeat.
Tip: tongue between teeth, not behind alveolar ridge — a mirror helps.
2) weak “of, to, the”
Transcribe or shadow a 20-second clip from a slow BBC learning audio; count how many times you hear /əv/ for “of” and /tə/ for “to”.
Point: weak forms are not “laziness”; they are the rhythm of natural English. Copy rhythm before speed.
3) sentence stress, one mark
Read: “I didn’t steal the book” (focus on I), then shift stress to book and change the implied meaning. Write one line, what the listener thinks happened each time.
Key: Stressed word carries the “news”; moving stress changes the implied contrast — great for short oral parts of exams (if you have any).