MY PODCAST:10 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH USING ICTs (just in case...)

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MY PODCAST

A poem for you to practice your pronunciation (Good Luck!): ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Author Unknown

http://www.2flashgames.com/learning_english_games.htm

http://www.vocabulary.co.il/

http://www.manythings.org/

iPod in Education:The Potential for Language Acquisition

Reading about the use of technology in SLA, I found this interesting paper that describes how you can take advantage of the “Acquisition-Friendly” features of the iPod and includes a description of several different teaching strategies and how iPod can be used with each. ( clue: click on the title of the post to read the article)

CALL Implementation and Its Implications on Teacher Training

CALL is an acronym for Computer Assisted Language Learning and is a growing field in ILT (Information and Learning Technology) with a wide selection of applications; reference works, study and research tools available as well as plenty of applications targeted at specific English language exams. (http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/call.html)
Althought CALL offers many advantages for teachers to facilitate their student's learning process, it is important to be aware of its implementation and its implications on Teacher Training; that's why I recommend you to read this article https://www.calico.org/a-538-Issues%20in%20CALL%20Implementation%20and%20Its%20Implications%20on%20Teacher%20Training.html by Nuraihan Mat Daud in which you realized the role of teachers in the success of using CALL; if your are a teacher or you are about to, this article shows you how challenging could be to implement CALL if you are not well prepared and if you are not familiar with it. Technology offers us a whole world of possibilities to do the learning process an active, interesting, easy and varied path, but take your time: be prepared yourself, know and take advantage of the software and hardware available, and then give your students the sense of confidence they need to integrate CALL to their lives.

Interesting facts related to SLA

-An adult amnesiac who could not learn new information was perfectly able to learn a second language, French, including vocabulary.

-English primary school children who are taught Italian for one hour a week learn to read better in English.

-People who speak a second language are more creative and flexible at problem-solving than monolinguals, e.g. Einstein, Nabakov …

-Ten days after a road accident, a bilingual Moroccan could speak French but not Arabic; the next day Arabic but not French; the next day she went back to fluent French and poor Arabic; three months later she could speak both.

-The Voice Onset Time (VOT) of French people who speak English is different in French from those who don't.

-L2 learners rapidly learn the appropriate pronunciations for their own gender, for instance that men tend to pronounce the “-ing” ending of the English continuous form going as “-in’ ” but women tend to use “-ing”.

-After seeing an American flag, Chinese/English bilinguals are more likely to say interpret behaviour of fish as driven by internal forces; after a Chinese dragon as driven by external forces.