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Posts under ‘Listening Activities’

Improve Your English Pronunciation with Popular Songs

Welcome back! Have you checked out my Accent Reduction classes yet? Using songs is an effective and fun way to improve your spoken English. This is a fun and energizing way to improve both listening and pronunciation.
One thing that I like to do in my American English pronunciation classes is sing popular songs with the [...]

English Audio Lesson: Reduced Speech

Several of my students tell me that they have trouble understanding the spoken English of native speakers. This is not at all unusual.
One reason that native English speakers are difficult to understand is because they often use reduced speech. When native speakers use reduced speech the words seem to run together and this can make [...]

Learn American English Pronunciation with Songs

One fun and effective way to learn the rhythm of spoken English is to sing songs. In my pronunciation classes last year I used this website called KaraokeParty to teach American English songs to the students and they found that this was very helpful way to practice phrasing, linking and vowel lengthening.
To find the free [...]

Accent Reduction Step #1: Noticing American English Sounds & Patterns

Good listening skills are one of the first steps to changing your accent! One key step in improving your accent is learning to notice American English speech sounds and patterns.
For example: I typically find that my accent reduction students are not aware of the schwa vowel sound. This is the reduced vowel sound found [...]

American English Listening Practice

Randall of esl-lab has added some short movie clips to his website. These are called Video Snapshots and they provide video content that relates to the other listening activities available on his site. As always Randall’s new activities are excellent!  If you want practice listening you can check them out here-
American English Listening Practice
Remember that [...]

Free Spoken English Audio Website

I discovered a website with tons of free American English audio. The website is called Englishspeak.com and it has 100 dialogs, 1000 phrases and the 1500 most common English vocabulary words. You can listen to the audio files using slow or normal speed. This is a great resource that everyone should add to their bookmarks!
http://www.englishspeak.com/

Pronunciation Games for Vowels, Consonants & Syllable Stress

Oxford University Press has some online pronunciation games that you may like to try. There are pronunciation games for vowels, consonants and syllable stress. The games have British English audio but the consonants with voiced and voiceless sounds and many of the syllable stress patterns are the same as in American English. I just tried [...]

Free Pronunciation Recording Software (Pratt)

Here is some free downloadable software that you can use to improve your English pronunciation. The software is called Pratt and it is a recording tool that allows you to record your voice and see your speech patterns in a sound wave. The lessons that come with Pratt teach you how to analyze these sound [...]

Medical English Listening & Pronunciation

In my searching for medical English resources, I found a website called Hospital English.com.
This site has free English learning materials for medical professionals and teachers of medical professionals. The lessons contain  audio files that you can use to listen to and practice pronouncing medical English vocabulary. (The audio files should be opened in a [...]

American English Audio for Listening & Speaking

If you are looking for English audio that you can listen to in order to help you learn pronunciation you may want to check out this site called English Language Listening Lab Online.
The site has almost 1000 audio and video files you can use. There are also games and activities. I used to use this [...]