The word changes if you drop the last sound: complete each sentence
My brother helps in the kitchen and he cooked dinner last night.
We need two more chairs for our guests.Each sentence below has a gap, and two possible words are printed in brackets at the end of the line. The two are identical except for the sound at the very end. Say both of them aloud at normal speed and make sure you can hear a difference between them. Then decide which one the sentence actually needs, and write that word in the gap. If the two members of a pair sound the same when you say them, the ending is not being pronounced.
1. I paid for the tickets with my ___. (car / card)
2. The ___ blew all the papers off the table. (win / wind)
3. There was one empty ___ at the back of the bus. (sea / seat)
4. My sister ___ in a hospital in the city centre. (work / works)
5. We ___ tennis in the park last Sunday. (play / played)Show the answers
1. card
2. wind
3. seat
4. works
5. playedIn every pair the two words share the same opening and the same vowel, so only the last sound separates them. A learner who lets that sound fade produces the shorter member of the pair every time, and the listener has nothing else in the word to work with. The first three pairs are ordinary vocabulary, so a lost ending simply delivers a different word and a puzzled face. The last two are more serious, because the sound that goes missing is the whole of the grammar: in the fourth item it is the only mark of a present verb with a third-person subject, and in the fifth it is the only thing placing the action in the past, which the time expression closing that line has already fixed.