An excellent canon of online phonetics resources

I'm just looking at these resources from some guy in Washington called George Dillon.
It's essentially ClearCommunication.blogspot.com but again better organized.

Check it out. I'll be on it for a month.

Also if you check see his main page (just backspace through everything to the backslash) there's loads more.  Very interesting stuff.

Well I'll probably and reporting back on each thing and gushing thing again.

...

That said I've mentioned half of them before, but tell me if you see something cool. This almost makes me want to post what I'VE made. Almost...

Here's the link again: http://faculty.washington.edu/dillon/PhonResources/

The marvels of real writing.

I'd never done graduate research until last year.  I started at Trinity in Dublin last year this time and I'm back and happier this year.

One thing I had always wanted to learn was research.  It all seemed so ephemeral how this is good and valid and that is shoddy and not empirically grounded... We did a little bit this past year but choosing good writing was part of the process of it.  Doing the literature review is a major part of getting started in the research.

Access to all the world's research is amazing and throws up some nice stuff though there is a lot of "brilliantly and specifically useless."

While going through some papers for my dissertation project on technology and pronunciation, I found what should be a priority piece of reading for all of us.  This is from the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. Jennifer Jenkins is covering the pronunciation angle.  She does so expertly and I can't think of her as popular fluff after reading it.  Granted she blows her own horn but she deserves it.  Here's a massive quote that as teachers you must appreciate.

"Based on research into pronunciation attitudes, both that of other scholars (see below on sociopsychological issues) and her own EIL research, Jenkins (2000, pp. 209–210) proposes five stages of pronunciation learning:

1. •    Addition of core [i.e., Lingua Franca Core] items to the learner’s productive and receptive repertoire 
2. •    Addition of a range of L2 English accents to the learner’s receptive repertoire
3. •    Addition of accommodation skills
4. •    Addition of non-core items to the learner’s receptive repertoire 
5. •    Addition of a range of L1 English accents to the learner’s receptive repertoire

Learners who have elected to acquire an accent that enables them both to preserve their L1 identity in their L2 English and to be (pronunciation-wise) intelligible to other NNSs will probably aim for the first three stages. However, they may also wish to be able to understand the pronunciation of NSs, certain features of whose speech can, without prior familiarizing, present particular difficulties for NNS listeners (Bent & Bradlow, 2003). In this case, they will probably aim for all five stages. The critical point, though, is that there is no suggestion of losing their L1 repertoire and, by definition, their L1 identity. This change in emphasis has already filtered through to pronunciation materials, which are tending to incorporate a greater degree of learner choice of target than hitherto, and to move away from nativelike targets for learners whose goal is international intelligibility."

 It's like she's writing for us.  Good, isn't she?  Here she is again in case you missed the link above:


http://www.google.ie/search?q=trinity+college&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=yMG&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=wcNvTougO87n-gaat7mzCQ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CBYQ_AUoAQ&biw=1228&bih=838

Praat: an open source voice analysis tool

This is a great tool. Miraculously free.

It gives you info like this stuff here.

There's pitch analysis as well as waveforms which can be great to show your students to highlight syllable stress, rhythm and pitch.

So instead of drawing your impression on the board you can show them their voice in these visual forms. If you then do your YOURS, the differences become obvious and measurable quite a bit faster.

The download is free and is worth it if only to support the co-developer Paul Boersma in getting some press and eventually some hair gel.

Download as soon as you can. And bring that computer to class.

http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/

Paul Robinson's Pronunciation in Practice

This is just for Dublin EFL teachers.

This is a recording of Paul Robinson (DELTA) giving a workshop on integrating pronunciation work throughout your English lessons.

It was recorded impromptu at CES 2 February 2011 as a part of regular in-house CES teacher development.

Forgive the recording quality but the content is good.

Click here to download.

A big thanks to Paul for giving me permission to post this here.

It just keeps getting easier to do this stuff.

http://www.wtt.org.uk/index.html

This website lets you set up free transcription teaching classes.

I think you might want to give it a go if you are an EFL teacher trainer...



Logging on as a student is straightforward. I will leave a transcription for you to do if you want to try it.

The world is spinning faster and faster.

Adrian Underhill's (very good) Webinar on Pronunciation via Twitter's #ELTchat

http://www.macmillanenglish.com/BlankTemplate.aspx?id=50650

I picked this up on the Twitter machine. There is a thread called #ELTchat. Wednesdays at 9:00 there are loads of teachers like us who get together for an hour to swap shop talk about EFL Teaching.

It's a great place to pick up resources, ideas and pals.

Here's some more

Free booklet on prosody from Cambridge for EFL teachers (What's prosody? Ask me in a couple of minutes)

The RP Phoneme Chart for your iPhone

The RP Phoneme Chart for your computer from the BBC

The same as above but as a standalone page you can play with online made in Flash (I might have to learn this program. handy.)

Check it out some boring Wednesday.

English Central is a revolution

http://www.englishcentral.com/watch

Just do it. Watch it. This is basically the best thing from 2010 on the internet. It combines the best features of the BBC's pronunciation videos and the University of Iowa's Moving Mouth to just blow any other online pronunciation and speaking application off of the internet.

It is gobsmacking. Get a student on it now. Somebody has to show me how it fails them or I am going to never shut up.