The 9 Best Online Resources for ESL Pronunciation Practice

by Claudia Pesce

As ESL teachers, we are responsible for coaching our students towards better and improved pronunciation.

But it is also our responsibility to coach them in better ways to study and practice on their own. In other articles, I list The 10 Coolest Pronunciation Tools for ESL Students, five mobile apps and five websites that are ideal for self-study. But the wealth of resources does not end there. Here are some online resources that every ESL student – and teacher – should access for reference and continued pronunciation practice.

Try These 9 Online Resources for ESL Pronunciation Practice

1. 1

Okanagan University College Pronunciation Guide

This Canadian college offers a comprehensive practice guide to English pronunciation, divided into 13 units. Each unit focuses on a particular sound or set of sounds and is packed with activities to help students practice them including video, audio and dictation. Students have the option to record their voice in a conversation. Of particular use to teachers are the workbooks available for each unit – available in MP3 audio, too!

2. 2

University of Iowa – Phonetics Flash Animation Project

The University of Iowa offers an amazing flash interactive guide to American English pronunciation. It is a complete guide to phonetics, presented in a clear, concise manner that even ESL students should be able to grasp. A series of buttons help students navigate the different aspects of vowel and consonant sounds, which are demonstrated with animation with sound and video.

3. 3

Sounds of English

The website provides a great guide to how to pronounce different sounds in English. The sounds are presented in contrasting pairs (like heat and hit); click on each and you have access to a description of how each sound is produced, plus video and audio files for each. And there’s a bonus for ESL teachers – a “Tips for Teachers” section with some fabulous ideas for pronunciation activities.

4. 4

ESL Station

San Jose City College has an excellent ESL department, which in addition to its regular course, provides and online lab called ESL Station. It offers interactive pronunciation activities that include Syllables and Stress Patterns, Stress Patterns in Words and Rhythmic Patterns. It also has a very complete pronunciation guide with listening exercises and quizzes.

5. 5

ManyThings.org

ManyThings.org has an American English Pronunciation Practice page specifically designed for ESL students. It offers great minimal pair practice with Flash and MP3 audio. The site also features “Listen and Repeat” videos that are really useful for students to practice pronunciation at home.

6. 6

SpokenSkills

SpokenSkills is a site that has tons of resources for the ESL student and teacher, but in terms of pronunciation practice, be sure to check out the exercises for vowel and consonant sounds. For each sound, there are lists of practice phrases that students can hear. They may also record their own voice and repeat the process till they are satisfied with the results. There are also intonation exercises and minimal pairs for practice.

7. 7

Learner’s Dictionary

Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary has Perfect Pronunciation practice exercises, including 15 sessions in all, each featuring a different set of sounds and five exercises for each. Students first listen to a set of words with the same sound, then listen again and repeat each one. Finally, there’s a quiz to test a student’s ability to recognize different sounds. There are also exercises for syllable stress and those labeled as sentence practice, review everything learned during the session.

8. 8

Words and Pictures

And just when you thought there weren’t any resources for young learners to practice pronunciation with, here comes the BBC with their Words and Pictures site. Through a variety of fun, interactive games, little ones can practice consonant and vowel sounds, as well as CVC words. Probably the best way to introduce young ESL learners to phonemes.

9. 9

Sound-O-Matic

Also great for young learners, the Sound-O-Matic lets them choose different vowel-consonant combinations like –as, –an, –ap,–at, etc… and explore the different words than can be made with these combinations.

Every year, the Internet gets bigger and better in terms of video and audio quality, and interactive software becomes increasingly more sophisticated.

This can only mean good news for ESL teachers as we have access to more resources and not just simple lists or exercises to copy. We have access to technology that can put ESL students in the driver’s seat and really take charge of their self-study time.

Source: https://busyteacher.org/15081-esl-pronunciation-practice-9-best-online-resources.html

21 Reasons Why The English Language Is Hard To Learn

English has many words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently. Often, but not always, these are two-syllable words in which case if it is a noun, stress usually goes on the first syllable whereas with a verb, the stress usually goes on the second syllable. To help you, I have underlined the verbs. Not all of the double words are nouns or verbs.

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend? 

When to use 'than' or 'then'

The difference between then and than is fairly simple, but many people, including experienced English speakers, have difficulty with these two words. In fact, “than” and “then” are different parts of speech, used in entirely different ways; the confusion is probably linked to the fact that they sound very similar in spoken English, making it difficult to tell which word is being used. Knowing the difference between then and than will greatly improve the readability and quality of your written English.

The word “than” is a conjunction, which means that it connects two clauses and it establishes a relationship between two clauses. For example, you could say that “A mango is bigger than a lemon,” or “The book was better than the movie.” Any time you are comparing two things, “than” is the appropriate word to use.

On the other hand, “then” is an adverb, meaning that it modifies a part of speech or a clause. It joins two clauses which are separated by time; “then” telling you when something happened (or is going to happen). For example, you could say “he went to the store (first), and then stopped by the park,” or “please do your homework, and then you may watch television.” In both of these sentences, the word “then” could be replaced by “after that,” and the sentences would make sense.

Try this quick quiz:

1.       I like rice better ______ potatoes.

2.       We went to the Mall and _____ we went to see a movie.

3.       She put on her raincoat, _____ she put on her hat.

4.       An elephant is bigger _____ a mouse.

5.       We turned right. _____ we turned left.

6.       The girls decided they would rather just go to town______ drive all the way to the city._____

they changed their minds and drove to the city!

********

I shall post the answers tomorrow!

Robert

Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year for 2018

Oxford Dictionaries has announced that its Word of the Year for 2018 is toxic, which visitors to its websites searched for not only in isolation but as an element in multiple phrases.

Toxic, which derives ultimately from the Greek term toxon, meaning “arrow,” came to apply to poison delivered on the point of an arrow. In Greek, toxikon meant “poison arrow,” and later, the Latin word toxicum pertained to poison itself. The primary definition of the adjective toxic is “poisonous,” though by extension, it has come to mean “harmful” or “malicious.”

Although several phrases frequently used in searches on the Oxford Dictionaries sites pertain to the literal meaning of toxic—reflecting concerns about pollution—several pertain to the latter senses, including “toxic culture” and “toxic environment,” which allude to a physical realm that is unhealthy for one’s psychological (and therefore physical) health, such as a company or other organization that tacitly condones sexist or unethical behavior, or a dysfunctional domestic situation.

A toxic relationship, meanwhile, is one in which one of the parties is emotionally and/or physically abusive toward the other, and toxic masculinity is the concept of a distorted perception about what it means to be a male in modern society; symptoms of this malady include aggression and excessive competitiveness, as well as sexism and homophobia.

Toxicity is the quality of being toxic, and a toxin is a poison; antitoxin is an antidote to poison. The study of poisons, meanwhile is toxicology, and one who studies poisons is a toxicologist. (Toxic- and toxico- are combining forms referring to poisons.)

The Oxford Dictionaries also listed other words and phrases that were most frequently entered in search boxes on its websites this year, including a couple that are little known in the United States—and, interestingly, they all are associated, more or less, with toxic behavior.

One British English–centric term is cakeism, which alludes to the saying “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” meaning that one should not be greedy or try to have two things that are incompatible. Cakeism, by contrast, suggests that one can or should exploit two alternative opportunities at once. The other is gammon, extrapolated from the term for salted pork leg (which turns pink when cooked) and describing a white person, especially one with a conservative sociopolitical worldview, who develops a florid complexion due to the person becoming emotionally exercised about an issue such as Brexit, the controversial and contested decision by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union.

Other terms on the list also reflect current events and reactions to them. The phrase “big dick energy,” for example, pertains to an outsize confidence that suggests that the person in question (generally, a celebrity) has such an attitude because he is genitally well endowed, though the term is applied to charismatic women, too (and the idea is not to be confused with toxic masculinity, though someone with BDE may be a toxic person).

The term gaslighting, referring to psychological manipulation to undermine a person’s confidence or sanity, is inspired by the title and plot device of the 1938 stage play Gas Light and its subsequent film, television, and radio adaptations (the titles of which treated the phrase as a closed compound), in which a man surreptitiously dims the gas-fueled lighting in the home he shares with his wife and then insists to her that the lights are as bright as usual, among other tactics, to drive her insane.

Incel is a truncation of the phrase “involuntary celibate,” describing a man whose difficulty forming healthy relationships with women (or even obtaining dates with them) leads to sexual and emotional frustration that escalates to hostility toward not only women but also the men incels resent for being successful in sexual and romantic pursuits. The term applies especially to virtual communities of men who commiserate with each other in online forums, which, as closed (and therefore toxic) environments, amplify the condition.

Orbiting, meanwhile, is when someone no longer communicates directly with another person through social media but still keeps track of that person online; the term, suggesting someone periodically looming over someone else, is a loose synonym for lurking (though lurkers usually leave no trace of their visit) and differs from ghosting—the term for a sudden, complete cessation of contact, generally from someone one has been dating—in that an orbiter leaves evidence of a continuing (and perhaps toxic) interest.

The concept of the deleterious effects of excessive numbers of travelers to a vacation destination, including damage to historical sites and the local environment as well as negative impacts on the location’s residents, is called overtourism.

Finally, techlash describes negative and hostile attitudes toward large technology companies because of the pervasive influence on society of their products, erosion of privacy for people who use them, and their inability to prevent identify theft. The term is a construction based on backlash, which means “adverse reaction” (or “sudden backward movement”), from the notion of a whip or rope inflicting pain or damage as it unexpectedly strikes someone or something when one uses the whip or rope.

Source: https://www.dailywritingtips.com