Kristin's ESL Pronunciation Work Page

Listening

Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab
I suggest you work on the difficult and/or very difficult passages and activities. Make sure you look all the way down the page. There are various topics and activities. Some accents here are from the northern states.

All Things Considered - NPR
These are interviews or stories that have been on National Public Radio. (In Gainesville, 89.1)

Dave Sperling -- The power of the internet in ESL teaching
An actual presentation from the webauthor of the popular site, Dave's ESL Cafe. California accent. Listen especially to emphasis and pausing.

Poetry Readings
If you want something a little different. Listen for word stress, thought groups, and intonation. Sometimes you may even get to hear some alliteration (same sounds repeated for an interesting poetic effect).

National Public Radio Programs
There are a variety of different kinds of programs here: news, commentary, true stories, etc. Listen to their speech.

English Channel
Listening and information about telephoning and presentations. British and American accents. The listening section about complaints on the telephone is quite useful for hearing emphasis.

English Listening Lounge

Practicing

Using these links you can hear specific sounds and can practice duplicating them. Remember that you can also use the TEAM software to get visual feedback.

Pronunciation for Korean Students
Not only for Koreans!!

English Pronunciation

Consonants

ELF Free Activities
Different listening and pronunciation activities such as a "mouth workout". The idioms page is good as well.

Accent Listening Gallery -- A guide to regional accents with descriptions, listening passages and quizzes. (Thanks Richard)

More Information

How to have a standard American Accent -- A. Cook
She has great reminders of what makes an accent American. Look down the homepage for topic page links.

Speaking Tips for Presentations
by H.P. Boas

Word Stress
Listen to examples of the patterns of American English word stress.

Stressing words and sentences (from English club)

How to pronounce "-ed" (English club)

Heteronyms
Words that are spelled the same but have different meanings when pronounced differently. Note: the pronunciation is marked here with approximations of sounds, not with the phonetic alphabet.

Using Technology to Enliven Pronunciation

SoundsOfEnglish.org
Pronunciation Links

Praat Small yet incredibly powerful speech analysis software -- and it's free! Here's a page describing one way to use it.