Interesting Websites
for Pronunciation Practice

Deborah Healey, English Language Institute, Oregon State University

This page used some information from Sunburst Media's Pronunciation Web Resources, a very comprehensive list at http://www.sunburstmedia.com/PronWeb.html, as a basis for this much shorter list. The goal is to focus on sites that are good and easy for students to use.

Very interesting, but you need a fast connection

Okanaga's English Pronunciation at http://international.ouc.bc.ca/pronunciation/ This has a series of activities. Start with the introduction, then try the tongue twisters and dictation exercises. If you have the Shockwave plugin for Netscape or Internet Explorer, at least 16MB of RAM, and a direct Internet connection, it's worth the wait.
It works on th sounds, l and r, long e and short i, s/sh/ch, j and zh, v and w, and short a and short e.

Diphthong Calculator by Steve Chadwick is at http://www.stuff.co.uk/calcul_nd.htm. This lets you put vowel sounds together to end up with a dipthong.

Charles Kelly's American English Pronunciation Practice at http://www.manythings.org/pp/. This uses Flash and offers a number of minimal pairs, using mp3 files, as well as tongue twisters and a couple of songs.

Jim Duber's Cutting Edge CALL Demos at http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/chorus/call/cuttingedge.html has some listening exercises that let you try to hear the difference between sounds that are similar in English. It requires Shockwave, so it takes a lot of memory and processing power.

Okay for most people - medium computer and modem are okay

SpeechCom at http://www.speechcom.com supports their software and offers help online for language learners. Some help is free, but more detailed advice is available for a fee. Check the Accent Tutor Online for free activities.

Adam Rado's English Learning Fun Center is a commercial site, but you can try some sound files with tongue twisters at http://www.elfs.com/MM5%20menu.html for free. To get more, you need to subscribe.

Geoff Taylor's Animated Alphabet at http://www.paddocks64.freeserve.co.uk/Pages/se-av-letter-y.html uses QuickTime, but it doesn't take very long to load because the files are very small. The animation is cute.

You can sing along with Online Karaoke at http://www.theonlinekaraokemachine.i12.com/. This requires QuickTime.

Geoff Taylor also offers Karaoke Jukebox at http://www.paddocks64.freeserve.co.uk/Pages/se-kar-qt-songs-jbox.html. It requires QuickTime. Many songs good for language learners are available. You can also download Mac software from Geoff's site.

Charles Kelly has a number of minimal pairs and other practice lessons at http://www.manythings.org/pp/. They require Flash v4 or higher to run. Students will need to select the appropriate lesson from the list.

EL Easton offers a number of interesting pronunciation exercises at http://eleaston.com/pr/home.html. They require the RealAudio player. Try these to start:

Consonants
Vowels
Greetings - reduction
Linking
Reduction
Stress patterns

Okay for anyone - text files

English Club at http://pronunciation.englishclub.com/ has explanations in simple language for many pronunciation issues.

Tongue Twisters

Both of these give you lots of phrases to try to say. Work with a friend or a pronunciation assistant! Try the 1st International Collection of Tongue Twisters by Michael Reck at http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/en.htm for more tongue twisters than you ever wanted. See if there are some twisters in your own language, too, at http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/index.htm

The Tongue Twister Database by C.T.Staley is at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8136/tonguetwisters.html. A nice collection, too.

The English Pronunciation Test at http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english-pronunciation.html will drive you crazy if you work on it too long. Use it little by little, and try to see the joke!

For Teachers:
A Professor Goes Online to Teach English Pronunciation, an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education about techniques used by Steven Donahue at Broward Community College.

David Dalton's ITESL-J article, Some Techniques for Teaching Pronunciation, offers classroom activities for teaching pronunciation.

See the syllabus

Course description