Understanding FAST Spelling in Spoken English

Spoken Spelling: Getting Down the Basics is the first book in the series Understanding Fast Spelling in Spoken English. This audiobook introduces the sounds of the 26 letters and puts them into three different groups in a brand new way. The audiobook is largely lecture and explanation, with listen-and-repeat drills provided throughout. You'll learn the names and sounds of the letters of English, the three groups that letters are divided into, and the different types of connection points that are created when pairs of letters are spoken.

Drilling the Letter Pairs from Top to Bottom is the second book in the series. Here, we're going to shift gears from Book 1 in order to get you out of your head and into your body. All of the books in the series contain drills, which must be spoken out loud. But, this audiobook has almost no lecture material. After one chapter with a short explanation, review, and instructions on how to use the drills, the rest of the course is made up entirely of sound, letter, and word drills.

We will now move from the drills back into more lecture material. We'll introduce new topics, such as intonation, and examine the different tones used for questions and for answers. We'll also go into more detail on topics already introduced, such as glides. Since our goal is both to easily understand other speakers and to speak with clarity and naturalness ourselves, a detailed look at glides, linking, and clean connections is worthwhile. We'll also compare different types of letter pairs to strengthen our ability to hear and say all letter combinations.

Understanding and Drilling Longer Words, book four in the series, focuses on the principles that must be understood in order to comfortably comprehend or speak longer words. These principles include breaking larger words into smaller groups of letters, or letter pairs, and being able to use breath control to comfortably say those letter groups. We'll extensively drill repeated letter pairs in order to be able to say longer strings of letters on a single breath. We'll also look at the precise ways certain letters can be greatly shortened and still efficiently understood.

Advanced Concepts and In-Depth Review, book five in the series, explores some more advanced concepts, as we'll look at the idea of "thinking the letter" and letting go of technique. We'll do some speed drills to continue to build up the number of letters that can be said in a single breath. In addition to name drills, there is a troubleshooting section, in which we'll explore how to get help from a speaker in the event we can't understand what they're saying or spelling. This book ends with several chapters of drills.

Technique Builder Exercises Plus, book six in the series, is made up of a technique builder and bonus material. The technique builder is comprised of two contrasting parts: a slow and a fast approach. Part one reviews earlier material, taking a slower approach to basic intonation, and the pronunciation of glides and shortened blocks. Part two of the technique builder also reviews earlier material, but takes a faster approach, revisiting both pronunciation and intonation, with a focus on allowing technique to become fully integrated into the body.

Forget the Technique; Just Speak - The Final Drills from Slow to Sprint focuses purely on drilling. The drill starts with single letters and expands gradually into very long words. The exact same set of letters and words is repeated three times at increasing speeds - slow, very fast, and sprint. In moving to the next level and fully incorporating this technique into our speaking, we want to, in a sense, “forget the technique” and just speak freely. If you run into trouble in any areas with any particular sounds, you can always go back to the technique.