The speech accent archive

Posted by on May 14, 2013 in Speaking |

The speech accent archive is a project run by Stephen H. Weinberger at the George Mason University Program of Linguistics.  He and his colleagues and students have collected and phonetically transcribed hundreds of speech samples from English native speakers and learners from around the world.  Everyone reads the same short script so you can really hear the differences in accent!  It’s a fun way to travel around the world, linguistically!...

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IELTS Speaking Criteria

Posted by on Apr 23, 2013 in IELTS Speaking Assessment, Speaking |

You have probably read a lot about what you need to do to get a good score on the IELTS speaking test.  Unfortunately, a lot of this information is hard to understand.  But the British Council has recently published a series of videos that I think really explains these requirements well.  In the IELTS speaking test, you will be given scores in 4 areas: Fluency & Coherence Lexical Range Grammatical Accuracy Pronunciation To understand...

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Karaoke at home

Posted by on Apr 10, 2013 in Listening, Reading, Speaking, Videos |

Doing grammar exercises is not the only way to improve your English!  Sometimes you just want to have a little fun and sing a song.  Karaoke Party is a clever website where you can sing a bunch of different songs for free.  You can search by genre, year or keyword and you will see a flash video with or without the words and a representation of the melody (kind of like SingStar for the PS3).  You can already sing a few songs without registering,...

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Test your pronunciation in this game

Posted by on Mar 14, 2013 in Speaking |

Here’s a silly game for you to try: http://easywaytest.com/ Just pronounce the word on the screen (into your microphone), if you do it correctly you’ll see the next part of the cartoon.  The game understands the other things you say too, so be polite!

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How to pronounce English names

Posted by on Mar 13, 2013 in Listening, Speaking |

English names are notoriously difficult to pronounce when you can only read them.  For example, how many syllables are there in Loughborough or Leominster (these are towns in England)?  Two!  I know it’s strange, it’s strange to me too.  I come from the US, where our cities have normal-sounding names (that’s just a little joke!). So what can you do?  Here is one of those times when you just need to know the international...

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Train your accent

Posted by on Mar 11, 2013 in Listening, Speaking, Videos |

It is possible to do some speaking practice alone, especially accent training. Choose a speaker of English who you like, someone who you think has a good accent. Try and find some videos of this person speaking on youtube or on DVD, and take a section that’s about 30 seconds long. Listen carefully to it: pay attention to the speed, the rhythm, the intonation and the pauses. Now go to Vocaroo (or use recording software on your PC) and record...

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