Want some ideas?
Check out this crazy video by a slightly crazy man about his holidays.
Interesting, but remember he is telling the story "Tongue in cheek"
Click on the picture to learn about his vacation.
A special place for my English students and friends to meet and share. Many free lessons and exercises, and links to good study materials.
Showing posts with label pronunciation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pronunciation. Show all posts
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
HOLIDAYS
Isn't it true- we often get an assignment to write or tell about our most recent holiday, or vacation. Or our dream holiday.
Want some ideas?
Check out this crazy video by a slightly crazy man about his holidays.
Interesting, but remember he is telling the story "Tongue in cheek"
Click on the picture to learn about his vacation.
Want some ideas?
Check out this crazy video by a slightly crazy man about his holidays.
Interesting, but remember he is telling the story "Tongue in cheek"
Click on the picture to learn about his vacation.
Monday, 20 September 2010
One of my On-Line ESL learners, Boris from Russia, was very amused by my explanation of the importance of good pronunciation, and suggested I should publish it.
Well here goes! Some of my in class students will be familiar with my explanation, but for those of you who have not seen it, this may be amusing.
So, How important IS correct pronunciation? It can be quite important.
Situation 1. T v Th
Guys, You are talking to a beautiful girl and you want to make a comment on her appearance, so that she feels complimented.
You stare lovingly at her mouth and say, with poor pronunciation,
YOU HAVE SUCH BEAUTIFUL TIT.
But you meant to say
YOU HAVE SUCH BEAUTIFUL TEETH.
Oh MY!
Situation 2. s V Sh
You go to a restaurant and you are going to really impress all your friends with your excellent English and you say to the waiter,
CAN WE SHIT OVER THERE?
But you meant to say
MAY WE SIT OVER THERE?
Oh MY!
Please pay attention when your teacher wants you to practice pronunciation- Sure it can be boring, but the results of NOT paying attention to it can be embarrassing.
Monday, 6 September 2010
For my teacher friends, I want to recommend an excellent place to get some great resources for teaching kids, teenagers and even adults.
Its called
eslkingdom.com
Click the LOGO
Here is the link to their catalogue of everything that is included in their program.
When I was in Tay Ninh, I introduced the ESL KINGDOM curriculum to 2 schools there, and they have been using it to teach kids very successfully. In fact it is so successful, that they have discontinued using the “normal” text books and use only Esl Kingdom curriculum, which requires NO BOOKS- That’s right- NO BOOKS.
If you check it out, you will see you need to register, and you can take a look at some of the lessons, but if you want access to all the lessons it costs about $25 for a full year-It is very much worth it. There are over 50 complete lessons for kids, and each one can last for about 2 hours, with flash cards, speaking exercises, listening, reading, writing, and activities like cross word puzzles and word searches, plus many visual exercises for students as well. And all themed and level graded.
As I said before, 2 schools I know of adopted this curriculum, and at only $25 for a full year, it is the cheapest curriculum they ever had, and they don’t need to stock books.
It has certainly been a success, and the students are talking very confidently after taking this course.
Take a look-you WILL be very surprised.
In case you are wondering, I am not connected to Esl Kingdom, so there’s nothing in it for me if you decide to join them-its just that they are so good, I want to share this with you.
PRONUNCIATION:
The single most difficult task in learning English is- you guessed it- PRO NUN CIA TION.
Here is a link to a pronunciation series of exercises from the BBC- Try them out- there are quite a lot of videos on this problem area, and also some funny ones. Give it a try.
Click on the picture of the man who is wondering what his students is saying.
Good luck, and happy studies
Please tell your friends about our blog- Everything is FREE!
Sunday, 5 September 2010
TIps for IELTS speaking
IELTS SPEAKING TIPS
Speaking tips (Advice from a student)
Speaking is a weakness of analytic learners (who learn English from books and tapes). Moreover, in countries where English is not a first language, improving your speaking in English is really difficult. Therefore, I don’t have much experience in practicing speaking. Here are some tips that I got from my teachers and some suggestions that I think they might be helpful for you.
Pronunciation is the most important feature in speaking. If you speak correctly, academically and interestingly, but no one understands what you are talking about, you certainly lose your points.
One of my teachers, who is fluent in 5 languages, shares his experience that pronunciation is the key of learning a language. It might be true since native English speakers can pronounce a unfamiliar word correctly but don’t know how to spell it. Because English is a combination of many languages, there are no totally general rules for pronunciation. As a result, you must remember everything.
So how to pronounce the words correctly?
- Firstly, listen and learn what native English speaker said. As I mentioned, listening can help you in speaking. You can correct yourself in basic words if you listen a lot. Moreover, listening can also help you to learn how to stress important words, how to speak naturally and even how to organize your speech.
- Secondly, if you learn a new word, you must know how to pronounce it first. Typically, when people want to learn new words, they revise these words again and again, and write it down so many times. But now, to improve your speaking and listening, you must hear electronic dictionary pronouncing and repeat after it again and again.
- Thirdly, make sentences with new vocabulary. Everybody might know how to pronounce words correctly, but when they combine them all together, they cannot pronounce correctly anymore, or even if they do, their sentence may sound unnatural. The reason is they lack of intonation. Listening might solve this problem.
- Fourthly, practice pronunciation every week (3-4 times a week) by reading out loud a short passage. At first, you practice to pronounce all the words in that passage correctly. Then read the whole passage slowly and correctly (pay attention to ending sound).
Afterward, increase reading speed in each sentence (’read’ here means you must speak out the words, not read in your mind). If you speak quickly but start to pronounce wrongly, that means you reach your limit, don’t speak faster than that. And finally, you read the whole passage again at normal speed, or may be a bit faster than normal a little bit, but you MUST include intonation.
To find material for practicing this exercise, you can visit this website: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com. There are hundreds of short news and audio files spoken by a native speaker. I guarantee if you practice this kind of exercise gradually, you pronunciation will improve a lot. (Note: this is the exercise of my teacher, who speaks 5 languages, as I mentioned before)
Now, to prepare for IELTS Speaking test, you should practice some more exercises:
- Pick a topic and stand in front of mirror to practice speaking test. You should go through all three parts of the real speaking test. Standing in front of mirror will help you improve your body language and also your pronunciation. You might find it strange that mirror can correct your pronunciation. In fact, there are some vowels and consonants that you can’t pronounce correctly if you don’t know how to do that (not just simply remember the pronunciation).
- Try to speak naturally. You are advised to speak fast with intonation (the previous reading exercise will certainly help you). You should learn and apply some verb phrases, idioms and slang expressions. This is not the key part of speaking test, but it is better if you know, not only for your test but also for you speaking skill. If you want to get 7.0, you must master pronunciation, accuracy and intonation.
Important tip #1
When you practice in speaking, you must pay attention to the ending sound. But when you take the real test, don’t do that, because it will affect your fluency. In the real test, it is the time you show examiner what you got, not the time you can show them how good you can correct yourself. Using experience you gained from practicing to prove your speaking skill.
Important tip #2
Another wonderful way to practice speaking is to speak English in your dream. If you never do that, you do it now. I have already spoken English in my dreams even before my teacher advice me to do so. I just watch cartoons in English, films in English and listen to songs in English. As a result, I naturally dream in English. Actually, I can control my dreams, lol, it is very interesting, try to do that. By doing that, I can think quickly in my mind, but I still have problems when speaking my ideas out. So, you must do 2 previous exercises in order to improve speaking.
Just for fun, here is a link to a video I posted about prepositions. Can you guess who write the song, who played it and who is singing it?
Hint-he's a teacher you know!
CLICK THE DOG to be taken to the video.
Speaking is a weakness of analytic learners (who learn English from books and tapes). Moreover, in countries where English is not a first language, improving your speaking in English is really difficult. Therefore, I don’t have much experience in practicing speaking. Here are some tips that I got from my teachers and some suggestions that I think they might be helpful for you.
Pronunciation is the most important feature in speaking. If you speak correctly, academically and interestingly, but no one understands what you are talking about, you certainly lose your points.
One of my teachers, who is fluent in 5 languages, shares his experience that pronunciation is the key of learning a language. It might be true since native English speakers can pronounce a unfamiliar word correctly but don’t know how to spell it. Because English is a combination of many languages, there are no totally general rules for pronunciation. As a result, you must remember everything.
So how to pronounce the words correctly?
- Firstly, listen and learn what native English speaker said. As I mentioned, listening can help you in speaking. You can correct yourself in basic words if you listen a lot. Moreover, listening can also help you to learn how to stress important words, how to speak naturally and even how to organize your speech.
- Secondly, if you learn a new word, you must know how to pronounce it first. Typically, when people want to learn new words, they revise these words again and again, and write it down so many times. But now, to improve your speaking and listening, you must hear electronic dictionary pronouncing and repeat after it again and again.
- Thirdly, make sentences with new vocabulary. Everybody might know how to pronounce words correctly, but when they combine them all together, they cannot pronounce correctly anymore, or even if they do, their sentence may sound unnatural. The reason is they lack of intonation. Listening might solve this problem.
- Fourthly, practice pronunciation every week (3-4 times a week) by reading out loud a short passage. At first, you practice to pronounce all the words in that passage correctly. Then read the whole passage slowly and correctly (pay attention to ending sound).
Afterward, increase reading speed in each sentence (’read’ here means you must speak out the words, not read in your mind). If you speak quickly but start to pronounce wrongly, that means you reach your limit, don’t speak faster than that. And finally, you read the whole passage again at normal speed, or may be a bit faster than normal a little bit, but you MUST include intonation.
To find material for practicing this exercise, you can visit this website: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com. There are hundreds of short news and audio files spoken by a native speaker. I guarantee if you practice this kind of exercise gradually, you pronunciation will improve a lot. (Note: this is the exercise of my teacher, who speaks 5 languages, as I mentioned before)
Now, to prepare for IELTS Speaking test, you should practice some more exercises:
- Pick a topic and stand in front of mirror to practice speaking test. You should go through all three parts of the real speaking test. Standing in front of mirror will help you improve your body language and also your pronunciation. You might find it strange that mirror can correct your pronunciation. In fact, there are some vowels and consonants that you can’t pronounce correctly if you don’t know how to do that (not just simply remember the pronunciation).
- Try to speak naturally. You are advised to speak fast with intonation (the previous reading exercise will certainly help you). You should learn and apply some verb phrases, idioms and slang expressions. This is not the key part of speaking test, but it is better if you know, not only for your test but also for you speaking skill. If you want to get 7.0, you must master pronunciation, accuracy and intonation.
Important tip #1
When you practice in speaking, you must pay attention to the ending sound. But when you take the real test, don’t do that, because it will affect your fluency. In the real test, it is the time you show examiner what you got, not the time you can show them how good you can correct yourself. Using experience you gained from practicing to prove your speaking skill.
Important tip #2
Another wonderful way to practice speaking is to speak English in your dream. If you never do that, you do it now. I have already spoken English in my dreams even before my teacher advice me to do so. I just watch cartoons in English, films in English and listen to songs in English. As a result, I naturally dream in English. Actually, I can control my dreams, lol, it is very interesting, try to do that. By doing that, I can think quickly in my mind, but I still have problems when speaking my ideas out. So, you must do 2 previous exercises in order to improve speaking.
Just for fun, here is a link to a video I posted about prepositions. Can you guess who write the song, who played it and who is singing it?
Hint-he's a teacher you know!
CLICK THE DOG to be taken to the video.
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