Pronunciation Blog Post I

Hello again.

Due to the fact that you’re able to read my blog posts, I infer that you are either a native speaker of English or an English learner. If you’re still in the process of learning the language, let me ask you a question: How confident are you when it comes to pronouncing English words correctly?

I have to admit that I am often not that sure whether I pronounce words in the correct way or completely wrong. And this has to change. That’s why I decided to improve my pronunciation step by step.

The first one is to decide on the English accent I favor. In the pronunciation diary I keep, I answered this question at length, by listing different aspects of the accents that appealed to me. I think I will make it public when it’s finished, so you can have a look at that. My final answer to the accent question is, that I want to learn how to speak proper American English. 

Right. Now I know what I want to do, but without any help, I won’t be able to improve much. At this point I looked at the website of Antimoon because it was created by two Polish guys who mastered speaking American English nearly perfectly in only three years time. Seems like a good starting point.

I began by taking the pronunciation test provided and scored 10/10. Yay! :) I obviously know the basics but I am aware of the necessity to improve further. Without a proper English pronunciation, people might not understand you, even though you talk to them without making any grammar or vocab mistakes. It would be depressing to not be understood after several years of studying English.

The next step provided on antimoon.com, is the phonetic alphabet. It is useful when you want to find out how exactly a word is pronounced, telling you also where the stress is. 

On antimoon, there is a chart that shows you how the various vowels and consonants are pronounced. I listened to the American pronunciation and came to the following conclusion: I didn’t know that there is a voiced sh in words such as pleasure, occasion and vision. That’s something I will have to be aware of the next time I look up a word with an s. Also, I have difficulties in pronouncing the v sound in the middle of a sentence. I have to practice that as well as the u in put and could because it doesn’t sound like the German u but lower, more like an a. Additionally, the sound æ in words such as cat and black has to significantly differ from the e in met and bed. The last aspect of American pronunciation I wasn’t actively aware of, is the ʊəʳ pronunciation of, for instance, pure and tourist. 

VOWELS !

The chart on the right side helped me to understand where the different vowels are produced. There is a short description of the image on antimoon. I simply imagine a head looking to the left onto this chart and then I can see that the i in see, for example is produced in the uppermost part of the mouth, near to the teeth, and that the a in arm is produced deep down in the throat. 

Now from the theory to my plan: I will, as recommended by the guys that set up antimoon, practice the sounds I find difficult every day, just a few minutes, and eventually, hopefully improve.

Apart from the vowel and consonant pronunciation, I think the hardest thing about speaking English is the correct stress of a word. It’s something that you simply have to learn and so that is what I am going to do. We were assigned about 700 words to learn until January and in order to remember them longer than just for the exam, I will start studying them early. While learning them, it is essential to take a very close look at the pronunciation and the stress of every single word, no matter how familiar it might seem.

Last but not least, besides studying vocab by heart all the time I sometimes need some spoken input that I will get by watching English TV, movies, by listening to English audiobooks and radio. With this exercise it is important to not just sit there, indulge myself and try to make out the main points. I have to pay attention to the pronunciation of various words and look up some of them if I am not sure what they mean.

That’s it, actually – for now. I believe I'll have enough to do for some time but I am looking forward to my next blog post related to pronunciation, which is probably going to be about intonation of American English. It’s gonna be a lot of fun! ;)

Source: http://antimoon.com/ 

Vocab Learning Strategies

As a student of languages, I am confronted with dozens of new words every week. My choices are: a. not study them, b. use my photographic memory or c. simply learn them. The first one doesn’t make sense because I would like to keep studying and eventually get a job as an interpreter or translator. The second one is impossible because I wasn’t born with such a memory. So, I’m left with only one option: I have to learn them.

uvocab

To be honest, I am a rather old-fashioned person when it comes to memorizing words. This is why I really like vocabulary books. I can fill in the blanks and thanks to different types of exercises, studying isn’t that monotonous.

The words that don’t stick in my head I write on flashcards, so that it’s easier for me to repeat them. However, we do live in the 21st century and as it is indeed much faster to use electronic devices, I am gradually adapting to my environment.

Describing exactly how I turn my flashcards may be a bit boring for you, so I decided to experiment with modern technology and tested a few, free of charge vocab-learning apps for Android. I actually found some good ones that I’d like to use in my future attempts to memorize huge amounts of vocabulary.

1.) uvocab: This one is my favorite because it provides so much information about every word in an extensive SAT list. As shown in the screenshot, you find its meaning, synonyms, antonyms, example sentences and even the etymology. You can listen to the pronunciation and there is a link that leads you to the monolingual learner’s dictionary of your choice. This app contains an extensive range of words that you can easily browse. Unfortunately, you can’t create your own list. After learning the given set of words, you can test yourself with multiple choice questions or word match exercises. Every word you fail to remember is automatically recorded and so you can review them again and again. Finally, yet importantly, it is also possible to create electronic flashcards.

ankidroid

2.) AnkiDroid is an app that allows the user to create their own flashcards. In contrast to the previous app, however, you have to write the flashcards without additional information. When testing yourself you see a screen that looks like the screenshot I provided. You have to type in your answer and can then check it. Simple to use, yet effective.

SuperCard

3.) SuperCard: With this one, you again have to write every flashcard yourself. There are four different ways to do that: 1) Typing the word in, 2) taking or 3) importing a photo and 4) writing it on the screen with either your finger or a stylus. Additionally, you can test yourself in three different ways. I recommend using this app as it is easy to use and very fast.

4.) Flashcards: This app lets you create your own flashcards or browse through all the flashcard sets that have been created by other users. You can either learn your cards by flipping through them or test yourself with multiple-choice questions. The definitions are provided by dictionary.com, which is, in my opinion, a disadvantage because this dictionary is not appropriate for English learners. There are only a few definition per word and dictionary.com, so it lacks exactness and that is what an English learner actually needs: Collocations, example sentences, all the different meanings of a word and the prepositions that go with them.

flashcards

I found many more apps for memorizing vocabulary, but these four are my favorites, as they are easy to use and actually help to remember new words. They are not filled with advertisements and have an appealing layout.


I hope I was able to give you a useful insight into the vocab app world and that you maybe consider using one of them.