My feet are fit
April 5, 2008 6:23 AM Subscribe
What are some totally awesome free online ESL resources that focus specifically on how to produce the correct sounds in English words for people whose native languages don't contain them?
I'm an ESL teacher in Japan, and every once in a while I get a student who, due to no particular dearth of intelligence on their part, just can't for the life of them form the proper i sound, as seen in words such as: him, it, medicine, live, fit, etc.
They can recognize the sound, just not reproduce it, and generally the suggestions I give them that help others are ultimately futile. At one point I had stumbled across a website with an interactive interface that showed animated mouth and throat diagrams for all the myriad sounds in our wonderful language, but I'm completely unable to figure out where that page escaped to. All the resources I can find are simply databases of words that a user can click on to listen to, which is utterly useless when one's native language doesn't have the sound in the first place.
I'm an ESL teacher in Japan, and every once in a while I get a student who, due to no particular dearth of intelligence on their part, just can't for the life of them form the proper i sound, as seen in words such as: him, it, medicine, live, fit, etc.
They can recognize the sound, just not reproduce it, and generally the suggestions I give them that help others are ultimately futile. At one point I had stumbled across a website with an interactive interface that showed animated mouth and throat diagrams for all the myriad sounds in our wonderful language, but I'm completely unable to figure out where that page escaped to. All the resources I can find are simply databases of words that a user can click on to listen to, which is utterly useless when one's native language doesn't have the sound in the first place.
Response by poster: Hrm...can't play, need plugin. x-director? To the google machine!
posted by GoingToShopping at 7:51 AM on April 5, 2008
posted by GoingToShopping at 7:51 AM on April 5, 2008
Best answer: I suggest this one to students in my linguistics classes: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/
It has all the sounds of American English, vowels and consonants, and has an animation from the side that plays along with the sound, as well as a real person from the front.
It requires Flash.
posted by tractorfeed at 9:52 AM on April 5, 2008 [1 favorite]
It has all the sounds of American English, vowels and consonants, and has an animation from the side that plays along with the sound, as well as a real person from the front.
It requires Flash.
posted by tractorfeed at 9:52 AM on April 5, 2008 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
The Mouton Interactive Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology
posted by lumosh at 6:51 AM on April 5, 2008