How to Teach Linking in Connected Speech

Linking in connected speech, also known as “catenation”, is the process by which words ending with consonants don’t sound like they have their normal written word transition when they are followed by vowels. This is sometimes described as the words merging, as if “an orange” becomes “anorange”. However, I find it is far more useful to explain it as the consonant moving to the beginning of the following word, making it sound like “a norange”. This is because this explanation more clearly represents possible confusions like “an app” and “a nap”, and can also make this pronunciation point seem like a more manageable change.

Such linking between words is a common reason for students finding fast speech difficult to understand. However, it can also help them, as it makes the final consonant in words like “can’t” clearer than usual (though moved to a different place). Catenation is also much easier to explain than other features of connected speech like intrusive sounds and weak forms, making it is a great place to start to looking at how English can sound at natural speeds. This article gives some teaching tips.

What students need to know about linking in connected speech

What students need to most understand about linking is:

• it happens when one word ends with a consonant sound and the next begins with a vowel sound (“get on”, etc)
• the effect is like the two words merging (“geton”) or like the consonant moving to the beginning of the second word (“ge ton”)
• although most students don’t really need to think about this during speaking, linking is well worth practising orally because of its importance for listening comprehension
• catenation can also sometime help make the pronunciation clearer (e.g. as the sounds in “can’t exercise” are much more clearly pronounced than in “can’t take”)
• although there are often small differences in pronunciation that show word transitions (so that “a nail” doesn’t usually sound exactly the same as “an ale”), it is usually much easier and more reliable to use the context to work out which of the two possibilities is being said (that “keep stalking” is a crime, so your boss probably means “keeps talking”, etc)

How to present linking in connected speech

Long before presenting this point, it’s best for the teacher to make sure that they use as much natural linking as they can in their own speech, both in modelling the target language and in classroom phrases like “Can you two mo vover here?” for “move over here”. As well as helping with comprehension of natural speech, this also gives you examples that you can refer back to when you get around to actually presenting catenation.

As students will be studying this mainly to help their listening comprehension, probably the best time to present catenation is when students can’t fill a gap with the right word because they are confused about where the word transition is. For example, students might be tricked into writing “mart” instead of “art” if the word before it in the recording ends with M. When you pick up the error, the first step is to get students to use the context to work out that the answer makes no sense and what similar-sounding answer matches the topic better. You can then drill what the word sounded like with linking to show them why they made that mistake, explain the final consonants and initial vowels rule, drill some other similar examples, and perhaps move onto the lesson ideas below.

If you’ve already decided to do a lesson on catenation and want to make the need for it really clear to your students, the best way might be with pairs of phrases that have to be distinguished through context like:

• an app/ a nap
• an aim/ a name
• grade A/ grey day
• might rain/ my train
• might earn/ my turn
• an ice tea/ a nice tea

If you want to tie catenation to one particular language point, it can work with almost anything that has more than one word, such as:

• phrasal verbs and other idioms (“get on with”, etc)
• functional language and situational phrases (complaints phrases, phrases in the airport, etc)
• determiners, quantifiers, etc before nouns (“some advice”, etc)
• proverbs

A good way of presenting both that language point and linking in connected speech is to give students the target phrases with the final consonant written with the next word, as in “Ca nI help you?” and “Would you li kea cu pof tea?” for offers. After moving the letters to where they usually go in a written sentence, students try to work out why they were written in those places, try to remember where the linking was in the initial sentences, and/ or practise pronouncing them with linking.

Especially if this is your first lesson on connected speech, it’s best to choose language that doesn’t also have similar but trickier aspects of connected speech like intrusion.

How to practise linking in connected speech

As long as students understand that it is mainly to help with comprehension, it is well worth some limited speaking practise such as marking the linking on a useful sentence and then practising saying it that way. For example, you could give students different sentences to mark the linking on and then drill, show their sentences one by one to the whole class as they say them that way for other people to mark the linking on, then discuss what linking they heard and what other linking is possible.

A good practice task that focuses more on listening is dictating phrases, sentences or short texts which are chosen for the amount and maybe trickiness of the linking they include. These can be done as a traditional dictation, done with students dictating to each other (after marking and practising the linking), or done as a dictogloss/ grammar dictation in which they listen with their pens down, try to reconstruct the text together from memory, then listen again to check.

Related Posts

• Linking
• Linking Consonant to Vowel
• Linking Quiz