The aspects of oral English tested in the examination include the following: vowels, consonants, rhymes, word-stress, emphatic stress and phonetic symbols.
Vowels: There are twenty vowels in the English language. They include twelve pure vowels and eight diphthongs.
Consonants: There are twenty four consonants in the English language. They are classified into three groups, place of articulation, manner of articulation and state of the glottis.
Word-stress: This refers to the amount of pressure exerted when pronouncing a particular syllable of a word. The syllable with the stress is marked with a slash at the top in the dictionary.
Emphatic Stress: This is the stressing of particular word more than other words in a sentence. Such a stress normally has its implications in terms of the meaning of the sentence.
Rhymes: When two or more words have a similar sound at the end, they are said to rhyme.
