📍Pronunciation
Hello everyone, it’s great to see you in a new week! Today, I’m going to start my blog with a reflection on teaching pronunciation. Pronunciation was highly valued in ELT during the audiolingual period, but has become less emphasized with the popularity of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Specifically, the teaching of pronunciation has passed its heyday when fluency and meaning are prioritized. In particular, in China, less and less attention is being paid to students' pronunciation skills as they are not tested in the college entrance examination.
However, as teachers, do we want to see our students pronouncing English words in a way that is difficult for others to understand? I think the answer is definitely NO🙅🏼. To improve students’ pronunciation, YouGlish is a worthy tool to try!
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📍What is YouGlish?
YouGlish is an online platform that provides users with tools to improve their language skills, especially pronunciation.
It is easy to use. Basically, type in any words or phrases in the search bar at the top of this site, and click ‘Say it!’, and then this site will show you a number of brief video clips showing how people say it. You can choose the accent that you want to hear, such as American, British and Australian. To better explain how YouGlish works, I searched a useful video for you:
Not only that, but below the video, there are transcripts, word definitions, nearby words and some phonetic information, including how the word is presented using the International Phonetic Alphabet, syllable breakdowns, and tips for improving pronunciation.
If you want to give it a try, you can access it here.
📍Why YouGlish?
- Learn words in context. As it advertises, the database powered by YouTube provides learners with over 100 million tracks on spoken English in real people and contexts. I totally agree that without context, there’s no meaning!
- Useful phonetic information. YouGlish not only introduces students to how others say a particular word or phrase, but also gives them practice on how to improve their own pronunciation of the word or phrase. More powerful than usual online dictionaries, isn’t it?
- Offer slow-motion and looping features. Learners are allowed to listen carefully to individual words and phrases and practice their pronunciation at a slower pace and to repeatedly listen to a specific segment of a video until they feel comfortable with the pronunciation.
- Unbiased pronunciation examples. In my opinion, standard English pronunciation does not exist. YouGlish allows learners to practice their pronunciation with a variety of accents and speech patterns.
- Can be used for free and without registration!
📍How can we use YouGlish?
YouGlish can be used both in class and after class. Here is one way you can use YouGlish in your classroom:
📍Any limitations?
- No individualized feedback. Like other online tools, YouGlish should not be used as a substitute for formal language instruction. Feedback from language teachers or peers is important for students to improve their pronunciation.
- Restricted access in China. Unfortunately, if we want to access this site from China, we need to use other software to get through the firewall.
- It can be distracting. Imagine that your student was supposed to practice the pronunciation of ‘jump’ and ended up going to see Titanic after searching in YouGlish.
📍Conclusion
Although YouGlish has some limitations, it is still a wonderful tool for improving learners’ pronunciation. Give it a try, whether you use it in the classroom or introduce it to your students for after-school study. See you next week 💖!
Hi, Mia.Brilliant analysis. I think you mentioned most of the aspects. Besides, I think its most outstanding feature that is also one of the great advantages---the various pronunciations of different varieties can be chosen to practice, is also a disadvantages. It's good to raise international awareness of English, but I think students practice kinds of accent and use in daily communication is not so good, I mean the intelligibility. This may also confused them, which accent should I use. They may get lost.
ReplyDeleteThank you, mona, for making such a very critical point! I only found that YouGlish could break the stereotype of standard English pronunciation for students, but forgot that students (especially at lower grades or levels) might be confused by it. Perhaps this is the time when help and guidance from the teacher is needed!
ReplyDeleteHi Mia, thank you for providing such a brief but very informative post about YouGlish. I love your title lol, bring my memories immediately. I definitely agree that it is very important to introduce different varieties of English to our students. However, because the videos that YouGlish have are from YouTube, some "grammatical errors" are inevitable. Therefore, the content has to be chosen quite carefully, which could be difficult and time-consuming for teachers. But overall, your blog post is very useful and informative, introducing readers to an innovative pronunciation tool. The post makes it a valuable resource for anyone looking to improve their pronunciation skills.
ReplyDeleteHi Evian, thank you for always give me detailed and useful comments! I have to say that I partially agree with you🧐. I acknowledge that there are inevitably grammatical errors in Youtube and also agree that as teachers we should teach correct grammar to our students.
DeleteHowever, I think that most of the errors in Youtube can be overlooked. This is due to two reasons: firstly, students use YouGlish mainly to learn pronunciation and the context of a particular word. Secondly, it is also difficult to be completely grammatically correct in daily communication. If we pursue the use of grammatically correct videos, their authenticity may be lost.
These are just my personal opinions, and I welcome any further insights you may have!