Clear Speech from the Start offers a unique and creative approach to improving the pronunciation and listening comprehension of beginning ESL/EFL students. Like its higher-level counterpart, Clear Speech, this new text concentrates on teaching students to recognize and produce those features that will make an important difference in their ability to understand speakers of English and be understood by them. These features include speech sounds that carry specific grammatical meaning, such as the plural -s and the past tense -ed ending, as well as vowel length, syllable rhythm, work linking, stress, and intonation. The text uses and innovative graphics-based approach specifically designed for beginning students. Each feature is clearly described with a graphic icon that communicates in a visual mode, so that complicated descriptions of sound features are unnecessary and instruction can be kept to a minimum.