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Pronunciation activities for short ‘a’

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News Stories

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! News Stories is a collection of interesting and feel-good stories from around the world. Each story is written in two levels – beginners and intermediate. All you need to do is identify the highlighted sounds and choose the correct phoneme that represents that sound. News Stories helps you to identify individual sounds in long and more difficult written text. This improves your pronunciation of the words you read and your reading fluency.

Snake Eats Tongs

Choose the correct sound: /æ/ (the short ‘a’ sound) or /eɪ/ (the long ‘a’ sound)

Sorry, this interactive activity is for members only.

A man ... from Adelaide ..., Australia ... was feeding his pet snake ... a rat ... using tongs, when the snake latched ... onto the tongs and swallowed them.

The man rang ... the vet immediately.

When the man arrived, the vet examined ... the snake. He could easily see the shape ... of the tongs through the snake. The tongs were jammed ... inside its body. The danger ... was that the tongs were made ... of metal and the edges were quite sharp.

The doctor wasted ... no time. He made an incision under the snake’s scales ... and removed the tongs.

The snake’s name ... was Winston. After the operation ... Winston recovered quickly. Now the owner is more cautious with feeding his pet snake.