- To begin…
- To follow…
- Now, the tools!
👉 To help recognize and remember sounds
Phonemic chart
The British Council offers an interactive phonemic chart. If you click on the symbols, you can hear the pronunciation. If you click on the little triangle, you can see examples of words that include the sound.
Phonemic chart by Adrian Underhill
There’s another interactive phonemic chart based on the one designed by Adrian Underhill. You can choose a symbol, hear the sound and an example of a word with that sound.
Pronunciation apps & websites
There are lots of applications and websites that offer exercises and quizzes to practice pronunciation. Explore them:
- Exercises and quizzes by ESL Tower
- 9 best online resources at Busyteacher.org
- Vocabulary quizzes and practice at Manythings.com
- Sounds, the pronunciation app by Macmillan
- Spell up by Google
👉 To extend listening time & practicing beyond the classroom
Most tools that will help our students with pronunciation are called text-to-speech, or TTS for short. Basically, we type in text and the application or website reads it aloud. Some are very good, others are still working on that. The pronunciation is usually accurate but they don’t have intonation patterns, which makes them good for sounds rather than whole sentences. Let’s see some examples:
Talk it
This is a text-to-speech application. It is very simple to use and it works without internet. If you type in text and click on “Talk it”, you can hear words or phrases pronounced in different ways. You can choose the personality of the speaker, speed, pitch and other features.
SitePal
This is a text-to-speech demo by Oddcast Technology. It is available online. It is very simple to use. If you type in text and click on “Say it”, you can hear words or phrases pronounced in different ways. You can choose the speaker’s gender and nationality; as well as other features.
Google translate
When using the translator, both the website and the app, you can click on the loudspeaker icon and hear sounds. It is also possible to say something aloud, as if dictating, and check whether the pronunciation is clear.
Audacity
This is an application to record and edit sound. It is free and quite easy to use. You can record your voice, add sound effects and combine with music or sounds. It is a very good option for story-telling with sound effects. It shows stress and intonation visually, which makes it a good aid for students to understand rhythm and pitch.
Vocaroo
This is a voice recorder available online. It is free and very simple to use. Once the audio is recorded, it can be downloaded as an MP3 file, sent by email or shared online.
Voki
This website offers talking avatars and you can also record your voice. It’s a good tool to listen to texts read aloud with different avatars and it can be used to record your voice to practice pronunciation and reading aloud. Sign-in is required.
That's all for now!
Feel free to share your experience here :)
I remember when we taught in primary school and we recorded student's voices. They were fascinated with the idea! They loved listening to their voices, and they improve A LOT with their pronunciation!.
ResponderEliminarWe're lucky enough to have such applications to work with. We have to take advantage of them!
I remember when we used "Talk It" with adolescents they had previously written sentences, working in separate groups, and when they listened to the sentences they had a lot of fun! mainly, with the robot voice! XD
ResponderEliminarA fun and simple activity!
I find TPACK so amazing!
ResponderEliminarRegarding experience on teaching pronunciation, I guess the most remarkable ones are those I shared with Brazilians since their language has some features which don't allow them to pronounce English correctly, so,for example, instead of notebook, they'll pronounce "nouchibuki" (imagine the phonetic symbols :P ), of instead of coffee, they'll say "cof", I don't know way.
So, it was a real challenge to find ways of making them practice pronunciation. I guess that having known these tools last year would have helped me a lot! I will definitely include them from now on! I had lots of fun testing them, I can imagine students! :D
Thanks for sharing your experience, Constanza, Camila & Agustina!
ResponderEliminarOne of my most treasured memories regarding teaching English is a class that Camila and I shared teaching pronunciation.I really enjoyed that class and the outcome: students were eager to learn, to practice! I really loved it.
ResponderEliminar