IPA Chart PDF

IPA Chart PDF This is a great reference for you. The only problem is that this is unnecessarily complicated for out pronunciation class. This should represent all of the sounds in every language and not just American English. Just refer to the handout in class for a simplified list. Dan

Quiz: What American accent do you have? (Best version so far)

YouThink.com - Quiz: What American accent do you have? (Best version so far)

This is a fun quiz. The questions relate to many of the sounds that we talk about in class.

Answer all of the questions and let me know what American accent you have :)

Dan

English Pronouncing Dictionary with Instant Sound Free Online

English Pronouncing Dictionary with Instant Sound Free Online

This is a good tool for those of you trying to pronounce unfamiliar words. While many dictionaries have an audio feature, those are most computerized voices. This is an actual voice (at least it sounds like it) and, thus, a much better reference.

Dan

Assessment Paragraphs with stress and important vowels marked

This goes with the reading below. It is a marked up version of the paragraphs noting sentence stress and important vowels (using the IPA symbols from our list).

Please let me know if you see any mistakes or overlooked items in the document. This goes for both the pronunciation class students and anyone else who comes upon this.

Click here to download the document

Dan

Pronunciation Assessment Examples

Here are the examples that I promised for the assessment last Friday. Of course, if you haven't taken the assessment yet, you're cheating by listening to these :)

They are split into 2 files: Bariatric Surgery for Morbid Obesity and Why Do We Need Doctors.

I suggest that you download these by right-clicking and choosing "Save Target As...". That way, you can play them over and over again.

Dan

Pronouncing Individual Sounds : Part One

This is more of a teaching article, but it contains a good explanation for some pronunciation issues and some suggestions for working on those issues.

In short the author indicates that there are 3 reasons why language learners have difficulty with some sounds.
1) The sound may not exist in their first language.
2) The sound may exist, but it is used differently in their first language.
3) The sound may exist in their first language, but it is not perceived by them.

Dan

Dan Reading Pronouncing the Phonemes on the List

Here is a recording of me reading the list of Phonemes that I handed out on the first day of class.

Use this as a quick reference or see some of the other resources on this page for other pronunciation examples.

Please, right-click on this links and choose, "save file as..." to save it to your computer so you can play it over and over again and not use up my server resources :)
http://www.danielcraig.com/snu/pronunciation/phonemic_examples.mp3

Dan