Forvo pronunciation official app. Learn everywhere.
Forvo is a great website for students learning any language. It’s a pronunciation dictionary. You can search a word or phrase, and hear recordings of English speakers from across the world saying it.
You might have seen this poem on my classroom wall. The title is meant to evoke the sort of problems that people learning English (and even plenty of native speakers) have with English pronunciation. Here’s a link to a recording of the poem - best heard with headphones, and not for the faint of heart!
When I teach English pronunciation, I try very hard to give students ‘rules’, which students often find in some way makes English pronunciation less confusing. This poem shows the exceptions. What a silly language we have!
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.
Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter how it's written).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid.
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as vague and ague,
But be careful how you speak,
Say: gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak ,
Previous, precious, fuchsia, via
Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir;
Woven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, shoe, poem, toe.
Say, expecting fraud and trickery:
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
Branch, ranch, measles, topsails, aisles,
Missiles, similes, reviles.
Wholly, holly, signal, signing,
Same, examining, but mining,
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far.
From "desire": desirable-admirable from "admire",
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
Topsham, brougham, renown, but known,
Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,
Please don't monkey with the geyser,
Don't peel 'taters with my razor,
Rather say in accents pure:
Nature, stature and mature.
Pious, impious, limb, climb, glumly,
Worsted, worsted, crumbly, dumbly,
Conquer, conquest, vase, phase, fan,
Wan, sedan and artisan.
The th will surely trouble you
More than r, ch or w.
Say then these phonetic gems:
Thomas, thyme, Theresa, Thames.
Thompson, Chatham, Waltham, Streatham,
There are more but I forget 'em-
Wait! I've got it: Anthony,
Lighten your anxiety.
The archaic word albeit
Does not rhyme with eight-you see it;
With and forthwith, one has voice,
One has not, you make your choice.
Shoes, goes, does *. Now first say: finger;
Then say: singer, ginger, linger.
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, age,
Hero, heron, query, very,
Parry, tarry fury, bury,
Dost, lost, post, and doth, cloth, loth,
Job, Job, blossom, bosom, oath.
Faugh, oppugnant, keen oppugners,
Bowing, bowing, banjo-tuners
Holm you know, but noes, canoes,
Puisne, truism, use, to use?
Though the difference seems little,
We say actual, but victual,
Seat, sweat, chaste, caste, Leigh, eight, height,
Put, nut, granite, and unite.
Reefer does not rhyme with deafer,
Feoffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Dull, bull, Geoffrey, George, ate, late,
Hint, pint, senate, but sedate.
Gaelic, Arabic, pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific;
Tour, but our, dour, succour, four,
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Say manoeuvre, yacht and vomit,
Next omit, which differs from it
Bona fide, alibi
Gyrate, dowry and awry.
Sea, idea, guinea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean,
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion with battalion,
Rally with ally; yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, key, quay!
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, receiver.
Never guess-it is not safe,
We say calves, valves, half, but Ralf.
Starry, granary, canary,
Crevice, but device, and eyrie,
Face, but preface, then grimace,
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Bass, large, target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, oust, joust, and scour, but scourging;
Ear, but earn; and ere and tear
Do not rhyme with here but heir.
Mind the o of off and often
Which may be pronounced as orphan,
With the sound of saw and sauce;
Also soft, lost, cloth and cross.
Pudding, puddle, putting. Putting?
Yes: at golf it rhymes with shutting.
Respite, spite, consent, resent.
Liable, but Parliament.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew, Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, clerk and jerk,
Asp, grasp, wasp, demesne, cork, work.
A of valour, vapid vapour,
S of news (compare newspaper),
G of gibbet, gibbon, gist,
I of antichrist and grist,
Differ like diverse and divers,
Rivers, strivers, shivers, fivers.
Once, but nonce, toll, doll, but roll,
Polish, Polish, poll and poll.
Pronunciation-think of Psyche!-
Is a paling, stout and spiky.
Won't it make you lose your wits
Writing groats and saying "grits"?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel
Strewn with stones like rowlock, gunwale,
Islington, and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Don't you think so, reader, rather,
Saying lather, bather, father?
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, bough, cough, hough, sough, tough??
Hiccough has the sound of sup...
My advice is: GIVE IT UP!
You can use the Symbol browser in Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, or Apple Pages to find and insert IPA symbols, but it can be quite labourious. This neat little website lets you type, copy, and paste the symbols and transcriptions you need.
This page gives you the rules for word stress, with audio. Two simple rules and five more complicated rules for which syllable to stress in English. Pronunciation for ESL learners.
This is not a definitive list - for every rule in English there will always be an exception. BUT, this gives you a very good start.
English tongue twisters from the world's largest collection of tongue twisters.
Tongue Twisters are fun in any language, and they’re a great way to practice your pronunciation. This website contains over 500 different English twisters, each a great, funny (and sometimes dangerous!) way of rehearsing your articulation of different vowel and consonant sounds in English.
Sounds of Speech (English) mobile application. This site contains animations of the phonetic sounds of Spanish and English. 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. It is intended for students of phonetics, linguistics, and foreign language. Recently added to help fund further development you may buy an Android or iPhone Mobile app for English Phonetic Sounds of Speech. Use this to help learn the sounds of English.
SOUNDS is a great App from Macmillan publishers. It comes with a fully interactive phonemic chart for you to practice listening to and producing the different sounds of English individually and in context with 650 high frequency words. There are also extra quizzes and practice activities. It works with iOS or Android, and best of all - it’s free! Just go to the App Store on your phone or tablet, download, and get practising!
Here’s an excerpt from a Fame Lab lecture by Monica Koperska from Poland. Have a listen to it. What do you understand? What words does she say differently to you or your teacher?
One of the most common requests I get from students these days is about listening: “where can I find English to listen to?”, “what’s the best way to improve my listening?”, and perhaps most common “where can I practice the listening exam?”
Common too, is this sentence when I ask students how their exam went: “yeah, it was OK, but the listening was impossible! You couldn’t hear a thing!”
Let’s take a moment to consider that last statement - “I couldn’t hear a thing.” Perhaps not the best reaction, I’ll follow this up with a little smirk and ask them why this was the case. That’s a lot more difficult for them to answer.
A few years ago, when we started to notice the current boom in demand for exams, you’d also start to hear claims that a computer-based exam was the better option. The favourite argument for this was that the listening paper could be done with headphones and so, logically, none of the extra noises or echos you’d naturally get when playing recorded speech in a room full of one hundred other students taking an exam. Incidentally, we haven’t seen any marked improvement of listening scores from students taking a computer based test with headphones.
But that is not the point I’m arguing here. Rather, I think we as teacher are doing our students a disservice by giving them a pin-drop quiet classroom with crisp loud audio to practice their listening skills. For one thing, when they find themselves outside that strictly controlled environment they can struggle. But for another, it’s not genuine.
An activity I like to run with a class is something that might break a teacher-trainer’s heart. “Let’s do some listening,” I’ll say. “Just listen, and then write down what they said.” No warmer, no idea generation, no gist activity. All of these are hugely important and valuable stages in building up students’ confidence to listen. But once in a while it’s fun to test what they hear. And they end up hearing a lot more than you or they might imagine.
Returning to that first question: what should I listen to? The more I think about this, the more I’m erring on the side of youtube. TED talks and the International Fame Lab are two great developments in recent years. Experts and individuals passionate about various subjects give a short videoed lecture. You’ll get neuroscientists discussing how language is learned (apparently, neuroscience is a very new science), you’ll get over excited Americans discussing space and make you want to throw up, and next in the playlist is that famous 11 year old girl that makes adults reconsider their place. And inbetween all of those are non-native speakers speaking fluently in a difficult accent and making tons of ‘mistakes’. THIS is what you should be listening to. Our students are far more likely to have to use their language to engage and interract with fellow L2 English speakers than they would L1 English speakers.
So in a final answer to the question: find someone speaking in English about something. Listen. What do you hear? What do you understand? And, if your students are interested in pronounciation: what do they say that’s the same as how you say it, different to how you say it, and maybe different to how your teacher says it? Maybe this is a pronunciation mistake. Maybe it’s just another way of saying it - but if you can understand them, then what does it matter?
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