Pronunciation Diary Part 2

With my second pronunciation diary entry I would like to explain what my strategy was for passing the pronunciation Part1 of the PC2.

First of all I made a list of all the words I mispronounced when I got recorded:

the

a

sizes

aluminum

pleasant

this

How to say prices in English?

Next, I opened the “Pronunciation Practice Page” and opened various links which seemed useful for a couple of my mistakes.

1. Working on the two “th” sounds [θ], [ð]

I opened “Rachel’s English Page” and listend very carefully to her explaining these two sounds in one of her videos. It helped me a lot and now I get the difference and hopefully I will never make this mistake again.

So here’s the link: http://www.rachelsenglish.com/videos/two-th-%CE%B8-%C3%B0-consonants

I really like the fact that there is a close-up of her mouth so you can study the movement of her lips, teeth and tongue. To me that was SO useful.

2. Working on the difference between the “s” and “z” sound

That was probably the hardest sound to learn for me. I struggled a lot with the “z”. So I went to a website called “BBC Learning English”. On a subpage I found very short clips explaining the different sounds. 

Link “z”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/con_voiced_7.shtml

Link “s”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/con_voiceless_7.shtml

Besides repeating the example words of these videos, I focused on my two problem words “sizes” and “pleasant”.

I repeated them like 60 times in order to pronounce them correctly. Well, that’s what it all is about! Practice till you dream of these words (btw that’s what happened to me).But it was well worth it and know I clearly know the difference and the correct pronunciation!

3. Working on “aluminum”.

I just listened to the pronunciation on “howjsay.com” and once again pronounced this word again and again. 

4. Working on the rest

I listened to the record of the text we had to read for Task 1. I checked the pronunciation of “the”, “a” and the correct way of saying numbers. Immediately got that.

5. TED

Actually, a couple of days ago I discovered a pretty amazing website called TED. You can watch stunning videos of people giving presentations on numerous interesting topics. One presentation lasts between 5 to 20 minutes. 

It’s perfect to work on your listening skills because these people are talking in English but with different accents as they come from the USA, Great Britain, Australia, India, Africa etc. I love it because the subjects they talk about are just brilliant.

So the slogan of TED is “Ideas worth spreading” which is just so accurate for the whole website. I am addicted to these presentations and spend hours watching them at night. I benefit of getting familiar with various topics (business, biology, stress management, thinking positive, diseases like turret syndrome and many many more!!) and of practicing my listening and pronunciation skills. It’s perfect!! 

Besides TED for English speaking countries, I found TED Paris which means I can use the same website for French as well. I’m thrilled!! :)

Here are some of my favorite talks on TED so far:

3 things I learned while my plane crashed: http://www.ted.com/talks/ric_elias.html

My name is John and I tried to end my life: http://www.ted.com/talks/jd_schramm.html

I got 99 problems … palsy is just one: http://www.ted.com/talks/maysoon_zayid_i_got_99_problems_palsy_is_just_one.html