American English Day with phonetics exercises

Today’s session of the Gabfest Club was dedicated to the celebration of the American English Day.
The session started with the introduction of the American English Day. The WOA’s book displays with American English text books showcased the WOA’s resources for American English study. The American English website and Trace Effects video game were presented to the group.
This year the focus of the American English Day was on the phonetics. We have watched a series of You Tube videos that explained:-    the difference in pronunciation between British and American English
-    pronunciation of the weekdays in AE
-    phrases to end a telephone conversation in AE
-    phrases to order something (in a restaurant).
The videos demonstrated how far from the proper American pronunciation are the majority of the Club members. Not to discourage the group we set an objective – to be able to understand the spoken American English and train our ear for that. One more useful activity was offered – to train the pronunciation of compound nouns in AE. The group was given 2 pictures of the same room with a task to label the objects (using compound nouns) and find the differences between pictures. The group had to divide into 2 teams, both teams managed to find the differences and correctly pronounce the compounds (with stress on first or second element).
The second part of the session was dedicated to the Introductions of the new comers and making plans for the Xmas celebration.
The session was very educational as phonetics of the American English are vital for comprehension of the speech and speaking.
Participants number – 25 persons.