December 16, 2010

5 Online (EFL/ESL) Pronunciation Resources

I'm back! And I hope to be able to get back to blogging more frequently...

For this comeback post, I decided to write about one of my favorite topics:

On my Phonetics and Phonology wiki there are hundreds of resources, including dozens of links
similar to ones posted here, so feel free to drop by and take whatever you want (as long as it is for educational use and with the appropriate references, of course).

Here are my 5 of my favorite online resources for EFL/ESL pronunciation:
  • Phonetics: The Sounds of American English - This website was created by the University of Iowa and it has a great visual display. The sounds are divided into manner of articulation, place of articulation and voicing (for the consonants); and monophthongs and diphthongs (for the vowels). Once you click a symbol, you can see the movement of the speech organs on an animation, you can break this animation into step-by-step movements/description, you can see a video of a person pronouncing the sound, and you can hear words that contain the sound. It's great for professionals wanting to learn/review the symbols and for students looking for specific pronunciation practice/reinforcement.
  • Cambridge Pronunciation - Very simple yet useful information in great animations (simulating a movie theater). You choose to work with sounds (which are actually diphthongs), stress (word and sentence), intonation and the phonemic chart. 
  • Another resource by Cambridge, with lots of pronunciation games, is Cambridge English Online.
  • BBC Pronunciation Tips is a website with videos, charts, videos, quizzes, podcasts, and the three programs that BBC Learning English produced on pronunciation as part of the Talk about English series in 2005. The best of all is that most things are downloadable. 
  • Rachel's English is a website that I have discovered recently. Its greatest highlight is the videos produced by Rachel. The videos are useful for both teachers and students, for Rachel doesn't drone on and on about terminology and theory, but rather shows the subtleties of the movements of the speech organs in high quality videos. You can also connect to her youtube channel and her twitter account.
I hope you enjoy it!

Coming next: Phonetics and Phonology online resources for graduate students and professors.