Given the many different places that "native" English speakers hail from, there is no such thing as perfect English pronunciation. That said, knowing how to pronounce words is an important part of learning any language. If you are struggling with pronunciation or know a student who is struggling, the following free resources may help:
SpokenSkills - SpokenSkills offers many different resources for ESL teachers, language professionals and students, including vowel sounds, consonant sounds, audio and video clips, and listening comprehension podcasts.
Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary - This online learning dictionary from Merriam-Webster provides 15 free sessions of perfect pronunciation exercises for ESL students. Each session includes practice with words, phrases, and sentences.
New English File - This Oxford University Press site offers pronunciation practice for beginner, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced level English language learners. Students in each level can check their pronunciation of English sounds against audio files and play games to reinforce learning.
Fonetiks - Fonetiks offers comprehensive pronunciation guides for nine different varieties of the English language. Other site features include an online English dictionary with instant sound, minimal pair practice, an interactive reading course, a list of words that are difficult to pronounce, and a pronunciation guide for names of people and places.
Inogolo - Inogolo is an online American English pronunciation guide for ESL and EFL learners. The guide includes pronunciations for the names of people, places, and things.
Howjsay - Howsjay is a talking online dictionary that contains audio pronunciations for more than 130,000 English words and phrases. If the word you are looking for is not contained in the dictionary, you can post a question about the word on the site's comment board.
English Interactive - English Interactive links to a wide range of sites that offer English pronunciation practice. Other site features include interactive vocabulary practice with audio and conversation resources.
American English Pronunciation Practice - Charles Kelley, a textbook writer and ESL enthusiast, created this page for ESL and EFL students who need pronunciation practice. The page includes listen and repeat videos, tongue twisters, and game-like minimal pair practice using Flash and MP3 files.
Write Back Soon - Radio Lingua Network provides several different podcasts for English learners, including this phrasal verb podcast known as Write Back Soon. The podcast series consists of eight archived episodes that help ESL students understand and practice phrasal verbs.
Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab - This online listening lab is great for students who need speaking, listening, and pronunciation practice. The lab provides short listening quizzes and activities for beginner and intermediate students as well as videos of long conversations and interviews for more advanced students.
Phonetics Flash Animation Project - This online project from the University of Iowa features animated libraries of phonetic sounds of English. An animated diagram, description, and audio file of the sound being used in context are available for each English consonant and vowel.
KanTalk - Created specifically for English students who need spoken English practice, this online community offers a space to practice conversations and share recordings and videos.
Busuu - Busuu is an international language learning community for people who want to practice English and other languages with native speakers. The site's integrated video-chat-application makes it easy to chat with anyone you meet on Busuu.
SharedTalk - SharedTalk is a free Rosetta Stone community that provides both voice and text chat for members who want to practice their language skills online.
Livemocha - Livemocha is a popular online language learning community that supports six different languages, including English. Students can use the site to find language partners, user-made videos, and other ESL resources.
AddLang - AddLang makes it easy for students to practice pronunciation with native English speakers over Skype. Students can also practice their English with other AddLang members using MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and AOL Messenger
UsingEnglish.com - The English Language Discussion Forum on UsingEnglish.com has a special section just for students who want to discuss questions related to pronunciation, phonetics, and other aspect of speech. The forum also offers an "Ask the Teacher" section for students who need additional help.
Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about pharmacy technician certification for PharmacyTechnicianCertification.com.
It has been a long time ago since I wrote my last post, due to lack of time. However, today I found an incredible comic creator tool which I would like to share with you. It is called PLAYCOMIC and it has been designed and created by Antonio Muñoz Germán in order to help students to develop their writing and oral communication skills in English and in Spanish.There is a great amount of characters and backgrounds students can choose from, so the possibilities to create different kinds of situational dialogues is almost endless. They will be able to create their own comic strips, finish one of more than 40 stories included, transform a comic into a narrative and viceversa, fill the balloons with their own dialogues and add as many pages as they want to.
Teachers will benefit as well from this software since it include a didactic guide which includes a series of methodological principles, as well as educational suggestions for different kinds of activities using comics, and a detailed guide to learn how to use this tool.
Well, I hope you find time to explore and try this tool with your students because it is really worth it.
Participating in an online language learning community is a good way for ESL students to improve speaking and writing skills. The average community provides language partners to chat with in addition to other learning tools. Here are 10 online learning communities that can be joined for free.
Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to
Reading online is a great way for students to practice and improve English reading skills. There are many free libraries and reading rooms that allow you to read books, articles, historical documents, and reference materials online. Here is a list of 20 online libraries worth exploring:
The Free Library - The Free Library by Farlex features over 5 million articles and books that are viewable online. The site provides literature for business, health, humanities, law, recreation, science, communications, entertainment, social sciences, and general interest.
Project Gutenberg - Project Gutenberg is the largest single collection of free ebooks on the web. Within this site, browsers can find and read over 30,000 online books.
University of Virginia Library - The University of Virgina Library provides more than 2,100 ebooks that are available free to the public. The ebook titles include classic American and British fiction, children's literature, American history books, Shakespeare plays, and other documents.
The Online Books Page - This library, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, provides access to free books around the web. The site houses listings for over 35,000 books that are readable online.
Bibliomania - Bibliomania offers over 2,000 free fiction books. The site also features reference books, quotations, dictionaries, nonfiction, and biographies.
Baen Free Library - This online library features a number of free online digital books. The books are viewable in a variety of ways, including HTML download, Microsoft reader, Rocket ebook, and Rich Text Format.
Bartleby.com - This site provides free online readable books for reference, verse, fiction, and nonfiction. The literature on this site is searchable based on type, author, subject, or title.
Internet Public Library - The Internet Public Library offers links to catalogs of books that are free to read on the Internet as well as magazines, journals, and newspapers from around the world.
ReadPrint - ReadPrint is a free library of books for teachers, students, and booklovers. The books are completely free, easy to read online, and feature thousands of stories, novels, and poems.
Stanford University - The Stanford University HighWire Press features a large archive of free full-text journal articles dating back to January of 1994.
Free Online Books - With over 5,000 free ebooks, Free Online Books is a good place to find the books you're looking to read. This online library of books features many genres, including children's, fiction, autobiography, nonfiction, and much more.
Online Books 4 Free - Online Books 4 Free features over 9,200 free ebooks for students, researchers, or just enjoyment.
PublicLiterature.org - PublicLiterature.org offers a way for users to read a collection of public domain books, poetry, audio, and tutorials. This site also features a modern book blog with sample works form great authors around the globe.
Page By Page Books - This free online book site features hundreds of classic books that are accessible free online.
Historical Text Archive - The Historical Text Archive features hundreds of high quality articles, books, and links to a wide variety of historical subjects. Founded in 1990, Historical Text Archive is among the oldest history sites on the web.
Questia - Questia offers free book profiles, encyclopedias, journals, magazines, newspapers, and books that can be read online.
Free-eBooks.net - Free-eBook.net provides ebooks, magazine articles, and other resources for download or online viewing. The categories featured in this digital online library range from advertising to youth.
ChestofBooks.com - This free online reading room allows you to read books online. The books can be searched or users can simply browse through the titles.
Many Books - Many books provides more than 24,000 free ebooks that are searchable by author, title, category, and language.
DOAJ - The Directory of Open Access Journals is dedicated to increasing the availability of scholarly and scientific journals. The site has over 4,000 journals that cover a wide variety of languages and subjects.
California Digital Library - The California Digital Library features over 8,000 journals, databases, and other online resources. The interface is a little difficult to maneuver through but once you get the hang of it you can find links to all sorts of free online journal articles.
Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online classes for OnlineClasses.org.
From November 5th to 8th, 2009, there will be an open-knowledge event, Social Networking, organized by AVEALMEC and ARCALL, two LatinAmerican associations, one based in Venezuela and the other one in Argentina, interested in promoting the use of ICT in the language classroom. It will be completely online and free, and its aim is to encourage practioners to reflect the role of communities of practice as social networks in ELT.
Many of the best ESL/EFL teachers and ELT professionals from different parts of the world have been invited:
- George Siemens -Canada
- Etienne Wenger -U.S.A.
- Vance Stevens - United Arabic States
- Nik Peachey - United Kingdom
- Charalambos Vrasidas and Maria Solomou - Cyprus
- Nicky Hockly - Spain
- Erika Cruvinel and Ronaldo Lima -Brazil
- Rita Zeinstejer and Paula Ledesma -Argentina
- Nellie Müller Deustch -Israel
- Carla Arena -Brazil
- Graham Stanley -Spain
- Jennifer Verschoor, Evelyn Izquierdo and Erika Cruvinel -Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil.
All of them will be sharing their experiences and expertise with participants and will help us grasp abetter picture of how social networks can be used in the language teachingand learning field.
I think it will be a great experience to have the opportunity to discuss about the concepts and theories around social networks, communities of practice, the Web 2.0, experiences in the classroom, as well as about the use, advantages and drawbacks of social networking tools.
DON'T MISS IT!
Have you ever had problems to find useful resources on the net for teaching English? Have you ever wonder what are the best ESL/EFL resources, the best Edubloggers in the English teaching field? Many times when we want to use Internet as an education tool, we get lost due to the great amount of information contained on the net. In order to avoid this, Gorka Palazio, professor of the University of the Basque Country, has developed two great sites: English Harbour and English Tube.
English Harbour, a RSS website where you will find a selection of the best content for English teachers and students. This tool captures the last posts of top English edubloggers. Therefore, you can be up to date with these teachers' experiences in the classroom and with advances in new technologies applied to English teaching. But the advantage of visiting English Harbour is not only to read interesting post written by other ESL/EFL teachers or ELT proffessionals, but also to interact with those teachers who are interested in the same topics that you are. In this way, we are contributing to create a real learning virtual community, which can be expanded Twitter. The URL of Twitter is English Harbour.
However, if you are looking for new resources, English Tube can add visual spice to your University lessons mainly. After class, your students can continue learning English at home, in a cyber café or wherever they wish, watching videos on this site. The videos, which have been taken from the major video services such as Youtube, Blip, Vimeo, Veoh or Metacafe, are organized by level (beginner, intermediate and advanced) and by skills (grammar, listening, speaking and writing).
One thing I love about English Tube is that its content is really well-organized. Besides, it is an interactive site in which students can leave their comments on the videos they have watched. I hope that this is only the first step to expand and create a bigger English Tube full of videos for primary and secondary students, as well. A great idea would be that all those useful videos included subtitles, and there was an option to show or hide them depending on the student's English level.
Expocampus 09 Palazio
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If you are looking for a fun and interactive way to study English grammar, you can find almost everything you need on the Internet. There are exercises, tests, study guides, quizzes, and many other materials that make studying English grammar both simple and entertaining. Here are 20 resources to try:Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) - The Purdue OWL offers a wide variety of exercises in grammar, punctuation, and spelling for English students. The exercises cover everything from basic grammar rules to advanced grammar understanding.
Daily Grammar - The Daily Grammar site provides grammar lessons and reviews that make it easy to study English grammar. Reviews cover parts of speech, parts of sentences, and mechanics.
GrammarBook.com - This free online site for English usage rules has fun and interactive quizzes and videos for reviewing grammar rules. This is the perfect way to learn and refresh your English grammar skills.
FlashcardExchange - The FlashcardExchange provides several pre-made flashcard sets that grammar studiers will find extremely useful. This site can also be used to create and share original English grammar flashcards.
Chomp Chomp - This free grammar site provides interactive exercises for testing your grammar knowledge. The exercises include accompanying handouts to increase retention.
Online English Grammar - The Online English Grammar site provides a list of free online tests and games for practicing grammar. Most of the grammar tests and games are designed for intermediate to advanced users.
HyperGrammar - HyperGrammar, a University of Ottawa site, has free grammar lessons with an end-of-lesson review test for testing knowledge and finding the weak spots in your grammar knowledge.
Newroom 101.com - Newroom101.com provides thousands of free exercises for writers, students, editors, and other people who want to study or review grammar.
English Exercises Online - English Exercises Online has a collection of online grammar quizzes that can be used as study aids. The quizzes are mainly fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice and offer a guide for difficulty.
Oxford University Press - The online practice grammar guide from Oxford Press University features free online practice tests for basic to advanced studiers. The tests make it easy to figure out the grammar skills you have perfected versus the skills you still need to improve.
The Online Grammar Guide - This free online study guide is specifically designed for advanced English users. The guide, created by Jack Lynch, covers all grammar subjects from A versus An to Who versus Whom.
SpeakSpeak - SpeakSpeak provides advanced English grammar practice exercises for learning or studying grammar. Simply review the exercises and take the online tests to find out what skills you need to review.
English Grammar Exercises - These online exercises were written by an English teacher at College Claparede to provide grammar practice for advanced students.
Guide to Grammar and Writing - The Guide to Grammar and Writing features interactive quizzes and overviews for advanced English grammar study. The site also contains college level vocabulary lists and quizzes.
Quizlet - This free online flashcard site features 74 pre-made flashcard sets for studying English grammar. Users can use the flashcards to learn, familiarize, and test terms and usage.
Cengage Learning - This online study center features practice tests for learning and reviewing English grammar rules. Within this site users will find free practice tests for everything from apostrophes to subjects and verbs.
Learn4Good - Learn4Good, a free English study and exercise site, features grammar practice for SAT, PET, FCE, CAE, and more. The site lists and explains some of the more difficult grammar concepts and allows you to put your knowledge into practice with review tests.
Nonstop English - The Nonstop English site features advanced exercises for ESL students who are preparing for the TOEFL.
Activities for ESL Students - This site for ESL students provides a large collection of self-study grammar quizzes. Users can simply browse through the quizzes and pick the level that will challenge them.
The Tower of English - The Tower of English is a site created for ESL students to study and learn every aspect of English.
This post has been written by education writer Karen Schweitzer. She writes the Business School Guide for About.com and has been serving as an advisor to Business School as well. She also writes about online courses for OnlineCourses.org.
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