Speaking Online

Over the weekend, I found a couple of good sites for speaking and conversation practice and remembered another one I hadn't visited in some time. There are many Internet resources for pronunciation, but I haven't found many that provide speaking practice with feedback. The first two sites listed below are for students to use to improve their pronunciation. The last three are not for students, but they provide ideas for teachers to encourage and facilitate conversation in the classroom.

To start with the basics, there is a fantastic site from the University of Iowa for practicing the segmentals of American English (or German or Spanish, if you prefer): fənɜtIks—the sounds of spoken language. System requirements are Flash 7 or higher and Firefox browser (preferred), but it's worth it for the animation and video. Each of the phonemes of American English is categorized by place, manner, and voice. When the user clicks a phoneme, there are options to hear it, see a video of its production, watch a flash animation of its production, and/or see a written description of exactly what is going on inside the mouth to produce the sound. The written descriptions represent very advanced reading for English language learners, but the animation, video, and sample words would be helpful to learners at any level.

The other pronunciation site I'm going to share is less academic and a lot of fun to use (my opinion corroborated by feedback from my students). It is Oddcast's text-to-speech site, which uses virtual characters to speak text entered by the user. Variations include type of English (US, UK, Scottish, or Australian), a variety of avatars, and special effects (pitch, duration, speed, and more). However, I recommend listening with the effects set to none, as the effects tend to distort the more natural pronunciation rendered with them. The appeal of this is that students enjoy having different avatars repeat a given phrase or sentence, with the result that they get multiple repetitions without becoming bored.

ESL Flow has hundreds of ideas for teachers to use to promote dialogue in the classroom, grouped by Elementary, Pre-Intermediate, and Intermediate. Most activities are in downloadable PDF or MS Word format, but there are also some can be used online. It includes assorted speaking and icebreaker activities, interview topics, and information gap activities. I found some files to be better than others, and there's no way to preview before you download, so it may be necessary to download a few files you don't want before you find the gem you're looking for.

The online journal from TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) has more topics for classroom conversation than I care to count and many, many questions for each topic to keep the conversation going. So if you have a topic you want your students to discuss, it's probably on this site, and the questions provided will help you keep the conversation going without running out of steam. My favorites include What if… and Gender Roles.

An excellent conversation/interview modeling site for teachers shows a series of videos from the Coalition of Limited English Speaking Elderly (CLESE), a project to help elderly refugees in Chicago learn English. Heide Wrigley, Jim Prowie, and their colleagues created three videos as part of the Bright Ideas project. In the first video, the teacher poses a problem (e.g., Your landlord says you did not pay the rent) and asks "What would you do? What would you say?" Students discuss possible solutions to the problem. The second video, Coming to America, shows Heide Wrigley in individual interviews with students, prompting them to tell their stories. Be prepared for tears because these stories are highly emotional. Heide provides good examples of recasting and paraphrasing in this video. The third clip is a comprehensive lesson plan on shopping for fruits and vegetables, which culminates in beginning-level students going on an actual field trip (they pick their own food in the field) and asking questions in English. When they return to the classroom, they discuss differences in prices at the farm they visited with prices advertised in supermarket flyers. I find it helpful to see the student/teacher interactions in these videos. They are valuable models that I can carry with me into my own teaching.