Good Wikipedia: Japanese learners finally differentiating R and L

I am a big fan of John Wells' blog.  He does know I exist unfortunately.  My old email started spamming the world after I joined LinkedIn.  Yes, I'm making excuses.

So anyway he frequently mentions Wikipedia as a source. This may be because he is more a descriptive phonologist than a prescriptive one.  A smart choice and one which takes quite a bit more brains to pull off and is generally better for the world.  The last thing we need is another British accent dictator.

Anyway while looking to see what they mention there as "general knowledge" on one topic the article on Japanese Learners of English popped up.  It's great: well-researched and better referenced than the stuff I've written on the topic.  Give it a read if you have a Japanese student.  Send a note if you want a good resource for teaching it.

Here's the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_speakers_learning_r_and_l

For Gerry and John's Intermediate Class: Pronunciation Videos

I'm chuffed. John Wells wrote me an email.

I was looking for a video series designed symbol-by-symbol on the RP version of English. This is apparently just what Alex Bellem has done through the BBC's Learning English site. She's great and occasionally fun. The videos are short and easy. This is a link to the beginning with a full chart which corresponds to the symbols found in student books and dictionaries.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/

This is recommended for students at Pre-Intermediate levels or higher. Better Elementary students with an awareness of pronunciation issues may also benefit from these as reminders of similar sounds like the Hot vowel, the Four vowel and the Up vowel.