Hi again and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy and this is our 165th episode.

I talk a lot about the vocal tract when I'm explaining how to create sounds.

But what exactly is the vocal tract?

An illustration might be helpful during this episode,

so I'll link to the pronuncian.com vocal tract lesson

so you can see an illustration of the vocal tract from this episode's transcript page.

You can find all of our transcripts, including the episodes we have translated into Spanish,

by going to www.pronuncian.com slash podcast.

The vocal tract is really pretty big.

From top to bottom, it begins at the nose and goes all the way down to our vocal cords

deep in the throat.

From front to back, it begins with the lips and goes all the way back to the back of the

throat. Let's explore this in a little more detail.

We're only going to use consonant sounds as examples today

because those are the easier sounds to feel,

and I want you to be able to feel all the parts of your vocal tract.

Let's begin with the lips.

We use our lips to create the M sound, P sound, and B sound.

Make a P sound with me and notice that the sound needs both lips to press together

and then open again for the sound to occur.

Behind the lips, obviously, are the teeth. Some sounds like the V sound and F sound require interaction

...