Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Speaking and Pronunciation resources

http://esl.about.com/od/speakingenglish/Speaking_English_Pronunciation_and_Conversation_Skills.htm

This site has a lot of exercises and information for all levels.
It also has conversation and pronunciation lesson plans.
Also- check out the speaking strategies they offer.

http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/index.htm

I think this one is interesting because it focuses more on word stress/ sentence stress, phonetic spelling, etc.

http://www.esl-galaxy.com/speaking.html

This site gives "communicative lesson plan resources", they also offer role plays, have quizzes and podcasts

http://www.talkenglish.com/

This site seems well structured for what it provides. 
It offers English lessons based on travel, business, interviews... 
also links for phrases and idioms, grammar 

It does sound like they are trying to make it sound easy to learn English, however.

"To become a fluent English speaker, you must study and master reading, listening, and speaking. At TalkEnglish.com, the lessons are structured to give you practice in all three areas at the same time."

Typical sales pitch, eh? It just takes three steps: identify, integrate and understand.

The speaking lessons offer a music player where you can hear certain things like greetings being said in correct pronunciation.

It just all seems to be based on a 'repeat after me' type of instruction. 
The site spends no time working on common problems- it's just- this is how it is said, 
repeat after me... 

The student is asked to perceive all that is required from listening to the sound files. 
There is little help with the production of these sounds.

I think this could be good practice for advanced learners possibly 
but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.



This seems like a good resource for practice with perception of English sounds. The quizzes are cut up between easy, medium and difficult. I also like the 20 minute voc. lesson.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Joe,

    I am familiar with a handful of the resources you posted and think they would all be great. I've used the ESL about.com site for my listening activities, as well as ESL galaxy and ESL lab. English Club and Talk English were both resources I found while searching for Speaking activities.

    You bring up a good point. I noticed (like you did) that many of the resources are "Listen and Repeat." I was hoping for more...

    SpokenSkills.com is a site I found where the student has to record him/herself after hearing the clip. I think this would be fun for the student and also help them realize their mistakes. Worth looking into!

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  2. Hola Joe,

    ESL-Lab is a good site. I used it often with my students and now I recommend it to my teachers along with other sites. I think this one presents complete, well rounded lessons.

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