Improve your British English Pronunciation: The Vowel in Bear / eə /

In this Pronunciation Activation Pack we will be looking at the third of the gliding vowels / eə /.
We will look at the letter combinations that give the / eə / sound.
We will look at lots of words which have the / eə / sound in them.
Finally, we will activate your ability to hear and produce the / eə / sound correctly.
Letter Combinations for / eə /
This gliding vowel sound has these letter combinations:
AIR, ARE, A, AR, AE and EAR
and rarely
EIR, ERE, AYOR, AYER, and ER
This can be a huge problem for students as words like ear and bear, and are and rare, have the same letter combinations but completely different sounds.
Problems for Students
The only other vowel sound that can cause confusion with the / eə / sound is the / ɪə / sound, and I covered this in Pronunciation Activation Pack 13 - The Vowel in Ear.
In this Pronunciation Activation Pack I’ll look at words which have the same letter combinations as give us the / eə / sound but which have different pronunciations.
Pronunciation Activator
In this Pronunciation Activation Pack I’ll look at words which have the same letter combinations as give us the / eə / sound but which have different pronunciations.
I have created some interesting exercises in the Pronunciation Activator to help you better hear and produce the different vowel sounds.
Each time you do the Pronunciation Activator you will be given some random exercises from a large database of exercises.
Dictionary
There is a good chance that some of the words used in this Pronunciation Activation Pack will be new to you.
To help you out, I have compiled an extensive dictionary of vocabulary used.
The dictionary gives you the meanings of all the words used in this Pronunciation Activation Pack.
You can download the dictionary as a PDF document from the resources link at the top left of the Pronunciation Activation Pack.
Vocabulary Activator
In addition to the Pronunciation Activator, I have included a Vocabulary Activator which will test your knowledge of the 78 words in the dictionary.
You will be given random definitions of words each time you do the Vocabulary Activator.
This will also give you the opportunity to hear how each word is correctly pronounced in British English.
Add these words to your active vocabulary and make them your own.
Phonetic Transcription
I have also compiled a phonetic transcript of all the words included in the Pronunciation Activator.
You can read each word in Latin script alongside the British English IPA transcription.
With your growing understanding of the British English IPA chart, this will help you to see how different letter combinations can produce different sounds.
You can download the phonetic transcriptions as a PDF document from the resources link at the top left of the Pronunciation Activation Pack.
Use it in combination with the dictionary if you are uncertain of the meaning of any of the words included in the list.