Hello everyone!
This week, I am talking about a tool that can help your English language learners improve their pronunciation to develop the language fluency. According to Ron (2015), oral fluency is defined as the ability to plan and produce spoken language and the extent to which this is automatic or controlled. Studies have shown that, pronunciation plays an imprtant role in achieving oral fluency. In other words, it is very important to be able to produce accurate speech sounds to be mutually intelligible. How can ICT support this?
There is a wide range of tools that can help your learners improve their pronunciation. One of these tools is YouGlish. This is an online youtube-based tool that helps its users to learn the pronunciation of words in different languages including English. The tool can be accessed from any device such as a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone.
Image from youglish.com
As in the above image, all you need to use YouGlish is to type the word or phrase for which you want learn the pronunciation, then click 'say it'. You will be given plenty of videos in which the word or phrase is used in authentic contexts. This tool has interesting features that make it user-friendly. For example, it provides users with a transcript that allows them to read the words and phrases as they are spoken. This feature can help learners understand how words are used in sentences. What is more, they can control the speed of the videos to listen to them at their pace. It is also interesting that YouGlish gives an option to choose the English accent you want to hear (e.g. Amrican, British, Australian etc.). This gives an the language users an opportunity to experience various varieties of English.
Teachers can use YouGlish to help learners get familiar with the words or phrases that are hard for them to pronounce. For example, EFL learners can easily confuse the pronunciation of 'dearth' and 'death', therefore playing videos in which these words are used in context can help learners get used to their pronunciation. To foster self-directed learning, teachers can also encourage learners to use YougGlish to practice the pronunciation of the words they encounter outside the class which seem unfamiliar to them.
One of the limitations of YouGlish is that if young learners use it independently, they may encounter inappropriate content because the platform may not necessarily filter the content available to the public.
I hope you enjoy to explore YouGlish. Please, leave a comment to say what you think about the tool.
Hi Jean! Glad to read your post about YouGlish as I've reviewed the same tool :) It's is enjoyable, right? I agree with your point that teachers may use YouGlish to help learners get familiar with the words or phrases with authentic and fruitful data. Another point I personally liked about the tool was students could practice collocations too :) I agree with your point on limitations that it would not be suitable though, for young learners, as they still need some supports and guides from teachers. Thanks!
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