An article in the December issue of TESOL Connections surveyed some online resources for teaching pronunciation, and I thought I would follow up on them. One resource the article mentions is English Accent Coach. This works on listening for particular sounds through games. Some is free; registration is required for all access. Something neat that it does is that it has the option of using colors to represent vowels. This is based on the Color Vowel chart (where a color with the vowel sound in it is used to represent the sound). I found that I did much better on English Accent Coach’s vowel quiz using the colors instead of the phonetic symbols. The article mentions Pronunciator and Mango Languages, which we have access to through Fitchburg Public Library and Leominster or Boston Public Library (use the BPL e-card!). Ask always, ask your local librarian about these and other library resources! A final resource that the article mentions is YouGlish: enter in something that you want to hear pronounced, and it will find real-life examples of it from YouTube videos so that you can hear a wide variety of accents and contexts.
