Rachel'sEnglish is an amazing pronunciation site! Its uniqueness is that every lesson or blog entry has its own video (YouTube). Every video is just like a mini-lesson. If you go to “Sound Chart” or “Sounds” on the top menu bar, there is a series of videos on how each segmental sound is made in a great detail. Every blog post has its own video as well, dealing with diverse pronunciation features such as contraction, reduction, linking, flap, word stress, connected speech, grammatical endings, etc. And, all the videos are followed by their scripts. Rachel also suggests a good strategy of learning pronunciation. She asserts that “each language really has its own individual musicality to it” and “imitation” is a good way to perceive musicality of American English.
I believe this site is a wonderful web resource for self-study of pronunciation for advanced English learners, especially in EFL settings where there are not many native-speakers around who can help with pronunciation. This site is also great for both native and non-native teachers who need to address pronunciation aspects in their English classes.
I believe this site is a wonderful web resource for self-study of pronunciation for advanced English learners, especially in EFL settings where there are not many native-speakers around who can help with pronunciation. This site is also great for both native and non-native teachers who need to address pronunciation aspects in their English classes.
This site would be perfect for advanced students with a good knowledge of the technical terms for pronunciation. Rachel's introduction to each video is pretty cheesy (!) but once you get into the content, it's extremely detailed.
ReplyDeleteThis website covers all aspects of pronunciation with detailed explanation and pictures showing how to articulate certain sounds. This will be a good rescources for students to practice certain sounds they are not sure. Great!
ReplyDeleteHi, Enid, I know what you mean by cheesy. :) I totaly agree with you. This website is not meant for elementary and intermediate learners at all. The videos are too extremely detailed with too many pedantic words for those learners. I think, this site will be good only for advanced learners or teachers. But, I like the ways Rachel provides pronunciation lessons throuh videos and her attempts at very dtailed level are plausible.
ReplyDeleteMany adults in Taiwan would ask me how to improve their pronunciation, and the best answer I had was to listen to the radio or movies in English and imitate the word or ask me how to pronounce something. But since I can't be there all the time, this site is exactly what advanced adults need to practice pronunciation.
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