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By Zach Patrick-Riley, CASLS Fellow

A goal of many language educators is to be aware of the uniqueness of each student and their reasons for learning the language. Yet this goal is often difficult to achieve because of teachers’ workload and students’ varied interests. One of the best ways to account for this variation is to use technology as a supplementary tool that considers the proficiency level and the background of your learners. Digital resources can be used for targeting all skills, but this topic focuses on pronunciation.

As ESL/EFL teacher, I am personally attuned to technological resources for improving English pronunciation; however, the same principles can be applied to any language teaching context. Two resources that are user-friendly and scaffold learners’ individual interests are YouGlish and VoiceTube. These sorts of tools are valuable because they provide pronunciation practice in contextualized videos. Such authenticity provides the opportunity for learners to develop their linguistic ability and socio-cultural awareness (knowledge of social and cultural customs in a given context) at the same time. For example, in terms of linguistic ability, learners strengthen their receptive skills by training their ears to distinguish the individual sounds in words (segmental pronunciation) and features such as tone and stress that apply over syllables, words, and longer stretches of discourse (suprasegmental pronunciation). They subsequently enhance their ability to produce segmental and suprasegmental features through this awareness and by repeating after the audio. For sociocultural awareness, often the videos on these websites were not artificially created videos for language learning, but instead include discourse that more closely represents a real life cultural context: examples include TV shows, TED Talks, music, etc. (Jin, 2017; Karaty, 2017). Learners are thus exposed to and better understand communicative practices and cultural customs in a target discourse community.  

In YouGlish (https://youglish.com/), learners type in a word or topic and the tool provides qualityYouTube videos where that word occurs. When facilitating learner agency, learners should type in topics that they find most relevant personally or professionally. For instance, if the learner wants to be a marine biologist, they can type in marine biology. Or if they love soccer, the can type in a soccer team like Real Madrid. Or if they are doing a unit about sustainability, they can type in words like recycling, solar panels, renewable energy, and so on.  

VoiceTube (https://www.voicetube.com/) encourages student choice as well with different video channels such as Business, Kids Channel, BBC Learning English, IELTS and TOEFL test prep, TV shows, and more. When listening to VoiceTube, words the speaker in the video says are broken down clearly for the listener, making it easy to follow along and repeat the word or phrase. For example, as seen on the image on the right, the video is giving the learner explicit instruction on how to listen for and produce sarcasm.

© REDIdea Co., Ltd. 

Other online sources are beneficial for pronunciation as well. For example, chances are your learners are already watching streaming services like Netflix for fun, so it would benefit them to be taught how to listen to the pronunciation patterns in the video. They could pay attention to the speakers’ intonation and how it connects to the socio-cultural situation in the video. For instance, building off the sarcasm example, they could have a thinking routine of, “Was that person being sarcastic? How do I know? Do people often use sarcasm in ___ (fill in location)?”  Such attention develops their awareness of how intonation and meaning are interconnected. The good thing about Netflix and YouTube is that each tool incorporates videos from many languages and countries.

As always should be the case with online learning, learners benefit when reflectively engaging and using these tools in their own meaningful way. The eventual goal is learners begin digital resources in their free time because they enjoy interacting with the tools and find the content relevant to their lives. By scaffolding strategic use of technology, teachers can empower learners towards their academic, professional, and personal goals. By focusing on pronunciation within the context of natural speech, learners are exposed to a broader range of authentic sociocultural situations and scenarios. Through exposure and mindful engagement, learners become more interculturally, pragmatically, and phonetically competent - not to mention have fun all the while.

References:

Jin, H. (2017). VoiceTube (Review). In M. O’Brien & J. Levis (Eds). Proceedings of the 8th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, ISSN 2380-9566, Calgary, AB, August 2016 (pp. 248-253). Ames,IA: Iowa State University.

Karatay, Y. (2017). YouGlish.com (Review). In M. O’Brien & J. Levis (Eds). Proceedings of the 8th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, ISSN 2380-9566, Calgary, AB, August 2016 (pp. 254-259). Ames, IA: Iowa State University.

VoiceTube image © REDIdea Co., Ltd. (2018) What They Really Mean: Sarcasm. Image screenshot taken and retrieved from the video at https://www.voicetube.com/videos/64840?ref=bbc

Additional resources for improving pronunciation:

Spanish: LingroToGo http://lingrolearning.com/

Chinese: Tone Perfect https://tone.lib.msu.edu/, https://www.hackingchinese.com/24-great-resources-for-improving-your-mandarin-pronunciation/

French: https://www.talkinfrench.com/french-pronunciation-guide/

English: English Central https://www.englishcentral.com/videos