Phonetics: The Sounds of English

Details

Activity Description

Use this site for accent reduction and pronunciation practice for students who have difficulties with specific phonemes. This site contains animated libraries of the phonetic sounds of American English and can be used by students individually in a computer lab setting or assigned for extra practice as homework/outside of class. Available for each consonant and vowel is an animated articulatory diagram, a step-by-step description, and video-audio of the sound spoken in context. There is also an interactive diagram of the articulatory anatomy.

Preparation

1. Make sure that the site is not blocked at your school before using it with students.
2. The site requires Flash 7 or higher plug-in, so check to see that it is installed on all computers you will be using. If you do not have it, you can download it free from the Adobe Web site .
3. The Web site's administrators recommend using the Firefox browser, but it should work fine with other browsers (IE, for example), as well.

How-To

1. Open the Example Web Site
2. Choose American English.
3. Choose Anatomy in the right panel for a visual with names and descriptions of the mouth, face, and vocal body parts to help understand where and how sounds are made. Close the browser window that opened to go back to the previous page.
4. For practicing the consonant sounds, select Manner, Place, or Voice and choose from the options displayed underneath. For practicing the vowel sounds, select Monothongs or Dipthongs and choose from the options displayed underneath.
5. After making a selection, the types of sounds in English that match the categories selected will be displayed in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Select one. In the middle of the pop-up window, a cross-section of a face appears with two video options:
   • Animation with sound – shows the movement of the face and mouth while producing the target sound.
   • Step-by-Step description – a slideshow that shows chronologically the mouth and face parts that are moved/used in producing the target sound with text explanations.
6. Finally, in the right panel video area, select the play button to see the front view of a real human face pronounce the sound and choose the play buttons to hear and repeat words that contain the sound.

Teacher Tips

• This Web site can be particularly helpful for students who have difficulty pronouncing certain sounds in English because of interference from their first language.
  • For example, for Spanish speakers, you can assign the consonant voiced section for them to practice and see the difference between /b/ and /v/.
  • For Japanese speakers, you could assign the liquid consonant to practice /r/ versus /l/.
  • For Cambodian and Vietnamese speakers, the /s/ is often difficult, so they could practice this sound, located under consonants (place - lingua-alveolar).
  • Speakers of all languages can practice the many vowel sounds in English in the vowels-monothong and dipthongs area.

Program Areas

• ESL: English as a Second Language

Levels

• Beginning Literacy
• Beginning Low
• Beginning High
• Intermediate Low
• Intermediate High
• Advanced
• All Levels

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