Let's pronounce it right! Try YouGlish.

 

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Are your students struggling with their pronunciation? You have tried everything but they are still stumbling over simple words? Maybe it is time to recommend some funny tools for them to brush up their pronunciation skills. I'll share with you a very interesting online pronunciation tool that I came across this week. Then stick around and I'll tell you more!

YouGlish

YouGlish is a website that works as a type of "pronunciation corpus". It has a collection of videos from YouTube with real speakers using the English language in various ways and in different situations. The purpose of this website is to help users to improve their English pronunciation.

How to use YouGlish?

It is quite easy to use YouGlish. All you need to do is to type the word you need to practice or learn the pronunciation in the search bar and click on Say it! Then the website will automatically select the videos where the word you typed appear. There are hundreds and hundreds of videos for each word you type. This makes it really easy for you to master the pronunciation of a specific word you are looking for. In addition, you can also listen to the pronunciation of the same word in different varieties of English such as Australian English, Irish English and Scottish English, for example. Another plus is that the website offers the subtitles of the videos, and every time the word is spoken in the video they highlight it in yellow, so the users know exactly where and when the word appears.

You can access YouGlish here

Positive aspects 👍

• Students are able to listen to words being pronounced in different varieties of English.

• Words are pronounced by real people and used in real contexts.

One thing to bear in mind 🚨

Although the students can rewind and adjust the speed of the parts of the video where the word is pronounced, I think some begginers might feel challenged by the way the word is delivered by the speakers in the videos. A good alternative to tackle this situation is to recommend other online resources such as online dictionaries as an extra option for students with lower level of English to use. There are many good online dictionaries that offer the pronunciation of the words both in American and British English. Here they are:

• Longman Dictionary of Comtemporary English
• Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
• Cambridge Dictionary
• The Free Dictionary

Let's get down to business!

I recorded a video for my students demonstrating how YouGlish works. You can watch it here: 

That's all for today, guys. See you on the next post! 😁