TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO: How to Pronounce the CH and SH Sounds in English - Improve Your Pronunciation and Speak More Clearly

Hi everyone, it's Nicole here, and I'm answering a pronunciation question today.

One of my students is having difficulties between the ch and the sh sounds, and they're not a hundred percent sure how to pronounce them and how to make them different.

So, look, that's a difficulty for people of particular language backgrounds, but what I thought is I'll teach you today how to form the ch sound, how to form the sh sound, and then give you some words to practise. Does that sound good? Ok.

So, in English, we have what we call word pairs, ok, when it comes to pronunciation, this means that a lot of the sounds, you're doing the same thing with your mouth to pronounce them, but there is one small difference, one small difference between those two sounds, and that's why they're called a sound pair.

So, for someone listening to those sounds, it can be very difficult because they sound almost the same, or if you're looking at someone's mouth when they’re forming that sound, it looks the same as well. However, there is one small difference, one small thing that you're doing differently between these sounds, and that is why it's difficult. 

So the sh, the ‘shhhh’ and the ch the ‘ch’ is a great example of this sound pair and of one small change or one small difference between the two. Let's have a look. 

So to form the sh sound, and it exists in I think every language, the sh is simply you close your mouth, put your teeth together, and then you take your lips and you form them into a big circle like that, exactly, and then what you do is you breathe in, and then you take that air through this mouth position with the teeth closed, you release that air, you breathe that air out very very slowly through that opening. Have a look. ‘Shhhhhhh’ Can you hear that? It's very slow. It's like the air is escaping out of a tyre really slowly, easy.

Now, the ch sound, you are doing exactly the same, but there's one small difference, and the difference is the air. With the sh, you're releasing that air really slowly. But with the ch you're not releasing the air slowly, the air is released quickly, like that. It's what we call an air explosion.

So, look at this. ‘Shhhh’ ‘Ch’’ ‘Shhh’ ‘Ch’

So, the ch sound, think of it like you are sneezing, you know, the air is pushed out immediately. That's what you need to do to make the ch.

So we have the slow air release of the sh, and the air explosion, the fast air release of the ch, but the mouth position stays exactly the same. ‘Shhhh’ ‘Ch’ Easy. Well done.

Ok. So, some words, we've got ship and we've got chip, ship and chip, we've got sheep and cheap, sheep and cheap. We've got shoe and chew, shoe chew, so, with those those ones we want to really hold the sh sound for a second, sheep sheep ship ship shoe shoe. That's great. If you hold it for a second, you can hear it. The other one, the ch we want, like that, chip cheap chew chip cheap chew, exactly, so ship chip, sheep cheap, shoe chew, perfect.

In the middle of the word, we might have something like machine, again we're holding that sh for a second, machine, or parachute, or ch archery, or anchovy, again, sneezing it out.

At the end we might have wish, or English, much, teach, there you go. 

So the sh, slow air release, the ch, air explosion, all you need to learn, all you need to remember, and it will always Is be perfect. Well done. Go and practise them.

Have a really lovely day. Thanks. Bye.