Catenation is one of the ways speakers join words together.

student looking at phonemic chart

In catenation, a consonant sound at the end of one word joins with a vowel sound at the beginning of the next word.

Example
The two words an + apple become 'anapple' in speech, with catenation of the consonant n and the vowel a sounds.

In the classroom
Learners often have difficulty hearing individual words due to catenation. Specific listening tasks such as counting the number of words heard, dictation, and reading with a cassette recording can help practise this.

Further links:

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/sandymillin/sandy-millin-micro-dictations

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