About ESL Newsletter: Listening Practice

Good morning (or whatever time of day it is wherever you are). Here's the current About Education ESL Newsletter. This one features listening.  The internet is full of places to practice listening: movies, learning videos, audio books, online radio stations and podcasts. Here are just a few: 

• VOA Learning English (free)

• Charles Kelly's Many Things site (free, many interesting things for English learners, not just listening)

• Listening Skills practice (free) from British Council

• English Listening ($3/month subscription) I just found this so don't know enough about the site to recommend it. If interested, please check out the site thoroughly first. Let us know what you think about this resource.

What are your favorite listening sites? Please share them with us.

This week's newsletter features two listening quizzes, as well as some suggestions on improving English fluency by learning from your mistakes. There's also a pointer to 18 stories that contain idioms and expressions in context with each idiom defined. 

About ESL Listening Practice Quizzes

English: Learn Languages for Free | Open Culture

Learn English for free online. Download free audio lessons to your computer or mp3 player ~ and start learning English instantly

• 6 Minute English iTunes Free Downloads Web Site
  • Learn and practice useful English with the BBC.
• Better @ English iTunes Free – Feed – Web Site
  • Focuses on conversational English, with an emphasis on idioms and slang.
• Business English iTunes Free Web Site
  • Learn the English you will need to function effectively in an American business environment.

Online listening in various accents

From the Webheads group (part of my "Personal Learning Network") Listening material online for ESL/EFL learners, in English but in different accents, and not just native speakers. Each link comes from an experienced ESL teacher. I have not checked out every link on the list, although I am already familiar with some of the sites.

• The International Dialects of English Archive: http://web.ku.edu/~idea/index.htm
• Sounds Familiar? Accents and Dialects of the UK: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/
• One in eight million project: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/
• "Project We Say Tomato," http://duber.com/wesaytomato/2005/tomatoes.html, offers samples of lots of various accents (both L1 and L2) reading the same text.
• Mike Marzio's Real English features native speakers from several different English-speaking countries in addition to some non-native speakers with a variety of accents. http://www.real-english.com/
• English Central, http://www.englishcentral.com
• Buying or Leasing a Car (the two persons talking in this activity are an American friend from Boston and a Kuwaiti: http://alothman-b.tripod.com/cars_listening_chatting.htm
• Two different American Dialects: http://alothman-b.tripod.com/culture_vinny.htm
• British Council Elementary podcasts, which come with transcripts, exercises, etc. There is also more listening material on the site too, aimed at different levels:  http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/elementary-podcasts
• Elllo, http://www.elllo.org
• ESL-Lab (http://www.esl-lab.com) - you can choose the level of the activity (easy/medium/ difficult) 
• NPR, http://www.npr.org
• Woices, http://woices.com
  
• CBC (Canadian) podcasts: http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/pastpodcasts. html.  They are available on a wide variety of topics--science (quirks and quarks/nature of things), business, medical, arts, etc., as well as news and current events. It's not unusual to hear interviews with people with a variety of accents.

Audio Archive & Speaking Practice

First... listen...

The Audio Archive via Omniglot blog by Simon on 2/10/10

I came across the Audio Archive yesterday while searching for information about the pronunciation of English dialects.

The archive is part of an newsgroup about English and contains recordings by English speakers from around the world of a number of different texts.
Other collections of English dialect recordings including the British Library's Sounds Familiar? and Archival Sound Recordings, the BBC Voices project, Sound Comparisons, the American English Dialect Recordings at the Library of Congress, and the International Dialects of English Archive.

and then speak...

10 goofy ways to practise speaking skills from Rliberni's Blog by rliberni

I’ve been thinking about some quick ways in which you can practise English as you go about your daily life. I realise that not everybody is in a position where they are surrounded by English every day. For others they have very limited time to practise and need ‘quick fixes’ to keep their language skills moving. One area which poses a particular problem here is speaking.

I thought back to my early days of learning French, I was in a similar position with no French around me and without things like internet access that are available today!  I invented little tricks and tasks to do in French to keep the momentum going. I’ll share these with you here and I’ve added a few more that I have observed from other people.

So, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing you can do a little effective practice!

These will work with any language you are learning.

Warning – you might want to do some of these behind closed doors!
All the activities require a little imagination, do them when you are performing routine tasks.

Singing:
I love to sing and do these quite often. Great for in the shower, washing the dishes, cleaning or driving.
         1.  Choose a song you like and make up English lyrics – anything will do, wild and wacky or sad and sentimental.
         2.  Invent a ‘jingle’ to advertise your favourite chocolate bar, car, band etc.. let your imagination go wild!
         3.  Make up a rap about what you are doing.

OK, so how do these help anything, you may be asking. There’s spontaneity, which is something you also need when speaking – you don’t know what’s coming next. You can be totally uninhibited and try anything – true freedom of expression! It will help you drag out vocabulary from your boots, you’ll be surprised at what you know. You’ll also find out what you don’t know – no worries – look these words up in your dictionary later on.

Present a TV show!
          4.  Cooking is GREAT for this! As you prepare your dish/meal imagine you are on TV and show your audience how to make it.
        5.  Choose another task you are doing and imagine you are making a video to show others how to do it.

This is great practice for giving instructions and describing a process. Conjure up a team to help you and soon you’ll have your own TV studio!! Get into the part. You could even invite your friends to join in too!

Recite a poem:
         6. Learn a poem or verse by heart and then practise it while you go about your daily tasks. You can, alternatively, base it on a poem in your own language or even make one up.
When I was learning French at school we used to memorise poems and ‘perform’ them in class – great for pronunciation!!

Conversing with pets!
          7. Converse with your dog or cat! You have a real live partner for your conversation even if you get very quizzical looks! (I always did). It adds a dimension to your creativity and great for pronunciation.

Making speeches.
         8. OK, you need a microphone for this, so grab that washing-up brush, wooden spoon or shower gel bottle and make that speech to your invisible audience!!

Become a tour guide!
          9. Grab your  ’microphone’ again and pretend you are a tour guide and give a guided tour of your city, town or village!

        10. Get Gapfillers word of the day on your mobile phone. An effortless way to improve your vocabulary!

and keep practicing...

Make your language practice a part of your life!! Check out these posts to help you with your English practice.

• 10 ways to increase your vocabulary
• 7 virtues to help you write well in English
• 7  deadly sins to avoid in your writing
• Warning – mistakes cost marks!
• An A to Z of effective language practice
• Some tips for improving listening skills

Neat sites

Something free to listen to ~ and another link for watching online movies: Neat sites from Interesting Pile, 12/29/09

• LoudLit.org lets you listen to and download audiobooks of public domain literature (via Free Technology for Teachers)
• Find over 150,000 movies to watch online at Movie Monitor (via Research Buzz)

Obama's first speech as the US President

Hi All

How was your New Years Day? First of all, I'm sorry for my absence from this blog. I was so busy on my business that I missed to post to this for many months.

I was very interested in the US President election last year and I guessed that Clinton would win in it. So, I was surprised to hear Obama's victory. Then I wanted to hear his inaugural address. I had waited for it, but I missed it. Because he spoke at 2 am in our time and I was beaten by my sleepiness. As a result, I could listen to it on VOA web.

I thought that he spoke to all American, so it would be very understandable. However I couldn't understand most of them at first time. He spoke very clearly and modulated his voice for effect. I listed to it three time by today. Yet I don't think that I understand his speech.

I found that his speech appeared in our news papers in English with its translation. I got a copy of it yesterday. I'm going to study his speech as teaching materials. Because I was impressed by it and I could have its audio, its prints and its translation.

Regards,
Sadamu

Listen and Read: Free Audiobooks

Audiobooks, audiofiles and podcasts are good listening practice. They are also ideal for "multi-tasking." You can listen to them when you are doing something else and your hands aren't free to to hold a book. But you can also use them to improve your reading skills. Find or print out a copy of the book or article to read along while you listen.

Free Audio Books

LibriVox is the king of free audio books. You can use the catalog to search through their library of nearly 1000 works, all part of the public domain. If you’re feeling generous, you can even contribute wiki-style by recording audio of your own.

AudioBooksForFree also has a big catalog to sort through, with an emphasis on classic works, but a decent amount of mystery, sci-fi, and thriller as well. The only catch here is that you’ll have to pay for quality: the lowest quality downloads are free but anything better than 8 Kbps costs $5-8.

Daily English Activities

Daily English Activities is a site is for EFL | ESL students. Each day you can find a new simple online activity to help you improve your English.

For example, you can "Exercise Your Ears With Authentic Film Clips" (Saturday September 6). Watching and understanding films in English can be very difficult, but Yolango is a website that makes it much easier. The site has a huge collection of clips from films and has subtitles or the script to help you understand them.

Movies are a great way to practice understanding, especially if you are a movie buff (fan). If you watch on video or CD, you can pause when you don't understand a passage. Here's another, older site on using movies to study English: The English Learner Movie Guide.

Read The Words

How would you use this application to improve your English skills? Would you use it only for listening? How could you use it to improve reading and writing? Post your ideas and thought as comments to this post.

How Read the Words Works

First, You must create an account. Accounts are completely free and ready to go in less than 1 minute. Your information will never be shared with 3rd parties. Once you create an account, you will be taken to the “My Readings Page”. You can manage your current Readings and create new ones by Clicking the button, Create New Reading.

Step 1 - Select what you want read

• Upload Adobe PDF
• Upload MS Word
• Upload HTML File
• Write Text Content
• Cut and Past Text
• Input Website Address
• Input RSS Feeds URL

Step 2 - Select a Reader

• Listen to Reader’s samples
• Choose 1 of 14 Different Readers
• Each Reader has a Unique Voice and Some Have Accents
• Control your Reader’s Speed
• Play with your Reader’s Pitch
• It takes our readers approx 1 minute to generate a 1 hr long recording

Step 3 - Sit Back and Listen

• Listen to your reading online
• Download your reading to your ipod or other mp3 player
• Broadcast your reading as a podcast and share it
• Post your reading in your Website or Blog
• Save yourself Time
• Turn the readers of your blog into listeners
• Allow your readers to listen while they multi-task and download your blog

Top 100 American Speeches of the 20th Century

An early assignment in the online college English course I just started teaching asked them to select a speech to listen to and write about.

Doesn't  that sound like a good assignment for you as well? Listening, reading and writing.
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/007256296x/77464/top100_only.html

Also updated - ESL Podcasts

I forgot to mention other updates in the previous message:

English as a Second Language (ESL) Podcasts. These are the 30 newest podcasts for ESL learners.   

This page also now has the Flash MP3 player for each podcast. 

It includes most, if not all, of the MP3 podcasts listed on the Internet TESL 

Journal's ESL links page.      

VOA Special English Features - Read and Listen Daily, All on one page

Charles Kelly, who has the "many things" ESL page, just announced an update.  "VOA Special English Features - Read and Listen Daily" now includes the text and MP3 player for VOA's 2 daily "features."

If you subscribe the the RSS feed in iTunes, you also get the complete "text" in  the description tag.  This means you can also read the text on your iPod as well, if you access the "description" on your iPod.

I hope you will find this useful.

Pronunciation Practice

More resources to help you with your DAILY LISTENING PRONUNCIATION STUDY and PRACTICE. The rest is up to you.

Online Pronunciation Guides

Ship or Sheep: Minimal Pairs Pronunciation Practice

English Pronouncing Dictionary with instant sound - enter a word to hear how it sounds

Graded English Dictations

Learn to read, write, spell & speak English with phonics & Instant Sound

Study Spoken English Grammar for ESL Learners

Sounds of English

American English Pronunciation Practice

English Pronunciation, Speaking and Conversation Skills

English Pronunciation Practice

English Pronunciation/Listening

listening downloads

Downloads for listening and reading: Develop your English listening and reading skills using MP3 audio files and audio scripts. You can listen to the files online, or download them onto your PC and put them on your MP3 player, then see if you've understood by reading the scripts. You can also read the stories online as you listen, and then do language activities, or print out the audio scripts and read the stories on paper as you listen.

Readings in Contemporary Poetry: Audio Archives

Listening and reading practice for National Poetry Month. Poetry usually has stronger and more distinguishable rhythm than prose. Reading and listening to its poetry is an excellent way to absorb the rhythm of another language.

Readings in Contemporary Poetry: Audio Archives
http://www.diacenter.org/prg/poetry/audio.html

Review of study on poetry and 2nd language learning
http://www.eral.ucsb.edu/master_list/index.php?review=66

Writing poety (for esl learners): PIZZAZ! Creative Writing and Storytelling Ideas (check out the five line poem and try writing your own!) http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~leslieob/pizzaz.html

Input - listening practice

Remember our discussion about learning and the importance of "input" (taking in language by reading and listening) for acquiring vocabulary and basic structures (grammar)? I am working up a long post explaining Krashen's theories about language learning.

In the meantime, someone at the EFI instructors' discussion group recommended Chinswing.com for leaving and listening to voice messages - a voice discussion forum that you can listen to.

First steps in using Chinswing
About Chinswing

If you check it out, please tell us know what you think - good or bad. It's new, so there are bound to be at a few bugs to cope with.

PS - don't forget to post your introductions and respond to other introductions if you have not yet done so:

If you have just reading (and commenting) privileges, you can post your introduction as a comment to "Getting to know one another." Read the other introductions and comment on some.

If you are listed as a "Contributor," you can introduce your self in either a new post or as a comment to "Getting to know one another."

Here are Nandita's and Sadamu's introductions.