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Please cite as: Krajka, J. (2006). Web-based pronunciation teaching. The Teacher 6(40) 2006,
7-14.
WEB-BASED PRONUNCIATION TEACHING
Dr Jarosław Krajka
Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, Lublin
Szkoła Wyższa Psychologii Społecznej, Warszawa
Introduction
The development of pronunciation skills is a prerequisite for appropriate oral
production and interaction, with the comprehensibility of the learner’s speech being of utmost
importance for effective communication. As Godwin-Jones (2000) puts it, thanks to the
replacement of analog audio by digital audio for classroom pronunciation practice, random
access, variable playback speeds, and incorporation into interactive language learning
applications are all enabled.
The focus of the present paper will be to explore the possibilities opened by Web-
based instruction as far as pronunciation work is concerned. The use of Internet sites, online
audio materials, Web Text-to-Speech synthesis services (TTS) and software, ready-made or
teacher-prepared audio quizzes, may all contribute to the development of pronunciation
knowledge and skills. Here, we will adopt a bottom-up approach, starting with the articulation
of individual sounds (segments), through practice leading to language production in discourse,
communicative exercises or dialogues. This assumption has been justified by most usual
teaching procedure in mainstream language education, though one might reflect on the
opposite, top-down view, as well.
Phases of pronunciation teaching in the Web-enhanced classroom
1. Discrimination
Exposing students to the sounds of the target language, in isolation and in context, in
various positions of the word, is essential in developing discrimination skills. The new sounds
in the target language, as well as sounds that are substantially different in quality and/or
quantity, need to be exposed to students in the exercises that aim at improving noticing of the
new sounds, growing in complexity from sounds in isolation to more complicated words and
phrases.
The use of online audio resources to help in preparing materials for the discrimination
of sounds is not to be underestimated. Free availability of a variety of audio files, both
downloadable as .mp3 or .wav (podcasts) and streaming (playing “live” from the websites),
create favourable conditions for exposing students to the target language speech in its natural
form. However, before exposing students to the authentic flow of connected speech, usually at
fast tempo and often accompanied by background noises (e.g., in the news bulletins), it might
be useful to collect audio resources where particular sounds might be prominently featured.
The creation of a sort of “sound library”, with a great amount of recordings of words with the
key sound in various positions (front, mid and back), all in convenient digital format, should
be the first step in preparing discrimination activities for students.
In the case of materials available online, they need to be either downloaded (right-
clicking on an item and selecting “Save Target As”) or recorded with audio recorders/editors
such as Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net). A ready-made collection of words
especially selected and recorded for pronunciation practice, most convenient for such a
teacher-made sound library, might be Sobkowiak’s Fonetyka angielska w pigułce
(http://elex.amu.edu.pl/ifa/pigulka/start.htm). Apart from being an extremely comprehensive
source of theoretical knowledge on how to articulate the sounds of the English language, the
site features downloadable recordings of exemplary words, all in .wav format. Due to that, the
teacher can either guide all the students to the site and have them click on the links to relevant
words to play them online, or can right-click the hyperlinked words and choose “Save Target
As” to retrieve the recordings of individual words for later offline use.
A similar operation can be performed with online dictionaries featuring audio
recordings of words, such as Merriam-Webster (http://www.m-w.com) or collections of
recordings of individual words (Words aloud, http://kweto.com/etjaichi/nicolascueto/). As the
pronunciation of specific words in online dictionaries is usually in the streaming format
(playing “live” from the website), one needs to record it with an audio recorder such as
Audacity (see Figure 1 below for the demonstration). Thanks to the use of Audacity, the
teacher can record the word multiple times, with gaps in between for students to repeat it, as
can be demonstrated by the soundwave form in the Audacity window below.
Figure 1. A pronunciation recording of an online dictionary entry with Audacity.
Alternatively, teachers might make their own recordings of selected words using
Audacity, so that the audio files are made using the teacher’s specific accent that students
might be most familiar with. Teacher-made recordings might be most useful for creating
minimal pairs, especially the longer strings in which words are repeated a number of times in
order to train the students’ ears.
Finally, some of the Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesis tools listed below can be used to
automatically generate individual words or phrases with particular sounds (see Godwin-Jones,
2000, for a discussion of the technical aspects involved in speech synthesis technologies on
the Web). It needs to be kept in mind, however, that TTS readers, though quick and
convenient to use, will produce synthesized speech that may not fully portray the target
language, and it might not be fully beneficial to follow only these for sound discrimination:
• Nuance RealSpeak (http://www.nuance.com/realspeak/demo/);
• Acapela Group (http://www.acapela-group.com/index.asp, http://demo.acapela-
group.com/);
• AT&T Labs Research (http://public.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/, with one demo at
http://public.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php and the other at
http://elvis.naturalvoices.com/demos/);
• VLC’s Text-to-Speech Test Page
(http://www.edict.com.hk/texttospeech/TTStest.htm);
• Bell Labs Text-to-Speech (http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/voices-java.html);
• TextVoice Generator (http://guoshesen.51.net/download.html) - a fully functional TTS
reader generating sound files with the text/words input.
The selection of words for pronunciation work, both as far as discrimination and
practice is concerned, is the issue that teachers should approach with necessary caution.
Ideally, the words that students work with should be suited to their language level, both the
ones that they have already been exposed to receptively and the ones that are a part of the
productive lexicon, with no room for random selection. Similarly, the selection of words and
phrases needs to focus on the sounds in question in various positions of the words, both
monosyllabic and multisyllabic. To this end, it is advisable to use various rhyming services
(Rhymezone, http://www.rhymezone.com or Rhymer, http://www.rhymer.com, to quote just
two), which will provide the teacher with a number of words that rhyme with the words input.
In this way, while introducing a word with a given sound in front, mid and back positions, the
teacher will be provided with a large number of rhyming words, with a various number of
syllables, which they can choose from for pronunciation practice. It is also interesting to note
that Rhymezone (http://www.rhymezone.com) allows searching for homophones and similar
sounding words, which are additional opportunities for collecting materials for pronunciation
work, while Rhymer (http://www.rhymer.com) gives the chance to find various types of
rhymes (end, beginning, first/last syllable or double rhymes).
Thus, some of the above methods can serve to facilitate the compilation or creation of
audio materials for some of the techniques for improving discrimination as listed by Ur
(1996), Komorowska (2002) and Harmer (2002):
• minimal pairs: Ss distinguish the same/different words;
• give the number: with sounds from a minimal pair coded with numbers, Ss give the
number;
• repeated word: with a minimal pair with three words, where one sound is repeated to
make it more difficult, Ss distinguish sounds;
• counting repetitions: with some of the words from a minimal pair repeated, Ss are to
count repetitions;
• odd word out: Ss find the word with a different sound;
• label the word: Ss match the sounds with the words;
• matching the heard with the seen;
• matching the picture with the word heard;
• playing noughts and crosses (with words or sounds).
A variety of online audio resources as listed below can be used for collecting audio
materials especially to teach connected speech and suprasegmental features such as intonation
and sentence stress. It might be especially useful to collect radio broadcasts from different
English-speaking countries, as in this way students would be exposed to different varieties of
the language, which is crucial in the light of the New Matura requirements:1
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation (http://www.abc.net.au/);
• BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk);
• BBC World Service (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/);
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (http://www.cbc.ca/);
• National Public Radio (http://www.npr.org/);
• Shoutcast (http://www.shoutcast.com);
• Voice of America (http://www.voanews.com/english/portal.cfm);
• World Radio Network (http://www.wrn.org/audio.html).
The issue of exposing students to a variety of accents and pronunciation patterns, not
only following the geographical divisions but also taking into account such criteria as the
social class, the profession or the age, can be accomplished with some of the audio/video
archives available on the Internet. It is especially BBC’s Video Nation
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/) that might be a perfect example here, as the archive
enables materials search by geographical location, in this way accessing samples of specific
accents with a wealth of additional information about speakers. Other sources of varied audio
materials, containing samples of different accents though perhaps less flexible as far as
seeking specific speakers, can be found in the following audio/video directories:
1 According to the information provided by the Regional Examination Board (Czarnecka-Cicha, 2003, personal communication), the New Matura listening comprehension tasks are to be distinguished by standard British English pronunciation on the basic level (poziom podstawowy) and other geographical varieties of the language on the advanced level (poziom rozszerzony).
• Recordings of English sounds: New Zealand Pronunciation
(http://www.ualberta.ca/~johnnewm/NZEnglish/sounds.html), Evaluating English
Accents WorldWide
(http://www.otago.ac.nz/anthropology/Linguistic/Sounds/Sounds.html), The Speech
Accent Archive (http://accent.gmu.edu/browse.php).
• Audio and video resource centres: Archive.org (http://www.archive.org),
Creativecommons.org (http://www.creativecommons.org);
• Podcast directories: Podomatic (http://www.podomatic.com), Jellycast
(http://www.jellycast.com), Podcasts for educators, schools and colleges
(http://recap.ltd.uk/podcasting/), Odeo.com (http://odeo.com/listen), Archive.org
(http://www.archive.org/);
• Historical speeches and recordings: American Rhetoric
(http://www.americanrhetoric.com/), Library of Congress American Memory Project
(http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/ListSome.php?format=Sound+Recording),
The History Channel
(http://www.historychannel.com/broadband/searchbrowse/index.jsp?searchtype=searc
h&searchterm=*&mediatype=Audio), Vincent Voice Library
(http://www.lib.msu.edu/vincent/);
• The military: Pentagon Channel (http://www.pentagonchannel.mil), DefenseLink
(http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/);
• Television: ITN (http://www.itn.co.uk), ITV (http://www.itv.com), CentralTV
(http://www.centraltv.co.uk), Channel 4 (http://www.channel4.co.uk).
2. Presentation
The teacher’s initial responsibility is to have as good a pronunciation as possible,
being an adequate model to be followed. For that, knowing the sounds, producing them in
daily speech, having the theoretical knowledge of how to produce them and consciously
applying this knowledge in one’s production, even to the point of overpronuncing, are
necessary for proper teaching. Expanding significantly on this knowledge, with the help of
such online resources as Fonetyka angielska w pigułce,
http://elex.amu.edu.pl/ifa/pigulka/start.htm, Sharon Widmayer's Sounds of English,
http://www.soundsofenglish.org/pronunciation/index.htm or John Maidment's Tip of the Day,
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/johnm/eptotd/tiphome.htm, should lead the teachers to
greater awareness of articulation of sounds.
Verbal presentation of new sounds, even enhanced by the use of articulation
descriptions and audio recordings of specific sounds in isolation, needs to be supplemented
with the skilful use of properly selected visuals. It is not only the question of knowing the
place and manner of articulation, but, ideally, seeing these in practice, for better visualization
of the abstract concepts. To this end, using visual aids such as vowel charts (see
http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipachart.html) or mouth diagrams
(http://www.stuff.co.uk/media/calcul.html,
http://www.soundsofenglish.org/pronunciation/sounds.htm) is to increase the impact of the
presentation. An extraordinary tool for presenting pronunciation of the sounds of English in a
visual way is Phonetics: The Sounds of American English
(http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html), which uses JavaScript
animation to expose the articulation of the sounds in a mouth diagram, with video alongside
recordings of sample words.
Figure 2. Visual presentation of articulation at Phonetics: The Sounds of American English
(http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html).
Similar opportunities for effective presentation of the sounds of English are opened by
Tutorpal IPA Java-script animated slideshows (http://www.tutorpal.com/slideshow/). Each
sound is provided with the animated articulation sequence, both in the lip view and the mouth
diagram, in the context of selected words. There is also the breath indicator and vocal cords
movement (for voiced/voiceless) information. As each sound can be pronounced by the male
and the female voice, one can get a greater range of articulation models. Extremely interesting
options are muting the voice, so that one can only see the articulation animated and pronounce
the sound themselves, changing the speed of articulation on the screen, and varying the words
to be pronounced.
Associating sounds with the graphic representation is obviously the key element of
pronunciation teaching, however, one must also make every effort possible to develop the
associations between the object designated and its phonetic representation. In this respect, it is
Ship or Sheep: minimal pair ESL pronunciation practice
(http://www.fonetiks.org/shiporsheep/) which comes highly useful, as the minimal pairs are
all illustrated with pictures of objects, and moving the mouse over the words has them
instantly pronounced.
Visual TTS, or synchronization of a facial image (a talking head) with synthesized
speech, provides realistic mouth movements matching the speech sounds to increase the
intelligibility of the speech, not only to hear the differences in e.g. English vowels, but also
enhance understanding by seeing the sounds being pronounced (Sobkowiak, 2003). CSLU
Speech Toolkit (http://www.cslu.ogi.edu/toolkit/), is a combination of speaker- and
vocabulary-independent recognition technology, Text-to-Speech synthesis and facial
animation software within an authoring environment for building spoken language systems.
The toolkit contains the feature of facial animation, with an animated 3D talking head called
Baldi, producing sounds automatically synchronizing natural or synthetic speech with realistic
lip, tongue, mouth and facial movements. Especially by making the talking head transparent,
the teacher can display the organs of speech from different perspectives to fully grasp the
production of sounds. Depending on the technological considerations, the teacher might either
install the Speech Toolkit on individual computers, use the teacher computer with the LCD
projector to give a whole-class presentation, or make screenshots of the sounds and put them
up on the class website/class Moodle or embed in Microsoft Word documents.
Figure 3. Baldi made transparent (after Sobkowiak, 2003).
The indispensable element of the presentation of new sounds is contrasting them with
the first language sounds. For that aim, a useful technique can be exposing students to
“foreign-sounding” speech, produced by people speaking with strong interference of the first
language on their L2. While searching for such speakers using some of the online audio
directories provided above may be successful, a much simpler (though inauthentic and
limited) way of generating such foreign-sounding speech might be to use free online TTS
demos, selecting a different speaker than the language input. In this way, the synthesized
speaker voice is used to pronounce foreign vowels, consonants and clusters, which, in many
cases, can provide interesting material for further pronunciation study.
English speaker-Polish text TTS Polish speaker-English text TTS
Nuance RealSpeak
(http://www.nuance.com/realspeak/demo/)
Nuance RealSpeak
(http://www.nuance.com/realspeak/demo/)
Acapela Group (http://demo.acapela-group.com/) Acapela Group (http://demo.acapela-
group.com/)
AT&T Labs Research
(http://public.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php)
AT&T Labs Research
(http://elvis.naturalvoices.com/demos/)
VLC’s Text-to-Speech Test Page
(http://www.edict.com.hk/texttospeech/TTStest.htm)
Bell Labs Text-to-Speech (http://www.bell-
labs.com/project/tts/voices-java.html)
Figure 4. Free online Text-to-Speech synthesis tools.
The presentation phase of pronunciation work needs to introduce students to the
phonetic script, in the receptive mode at least, so that they develop not only the grapho-
phonemic associations, but also learn to decode the phonetic alphabet symbols to denote
particular sounds of English. To this end, it might be necessary for the teacher to expose
students to the phonetic script in online dictionaries in the decoding process. However, it
needs to be pointed out that due to coding problems many of the online reference tools fail to
properly reproduce the phonetic alphabet, and lack of this knowledge can lead to
misunderstandings and misconceptions about the phonetic representation of words. Thus, it is
advisable for teachers to incorporate online dictionary consultation activities, where
specifically such tools as Cambridge Dictionaries Online (http://dictionary.cambridge.org)
will be used due to their perfect rendering of the phonetic script, while the use of other
dictionaries will be discouraged for the same reason.
3. Practice
The practice phase of pronunciation instruction takes learners from discrimination and
presentation to the production of new sounds. At the beginning, this should rely on imitation
in various modes of work: chorally, in smaller groups, finally individually to be corrected by
the teacher. The imitation of teacher speech or recorded models of sounds, words, sentences,
should be collected in digital form as explained above, so that students can work on repeating
and imitating individual sounds and words also on their own out of class, in extensive
pronunciation practice. For that purpose, it might be ideal to create pronunciation practice
webpages on the class website or the class Moodle, where for particular sounds students
would be provided with articulation explanations (or links to their visualizations at
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html or
http://www.tutorpal.com/slideshow/) and recordings of examples (teacher-made or linked to
relevant sections of Fonetyka angielska w pigułce,
http://elex.amu.edu.pl/ifa/pigulka/start.htm).
Providing that copyright restrictions are adhered to, the teachers might reflect on
manipulating recordings of sounds, words or sentences as for changing pitch, tempo, adding
silence, fading in or out, in order to suit the level of materials to the needs of the class. Such
operations are fairly easy to execute with most contemporary audio editors, and especially
Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) recommended here for ease of use and widespread
availability.
An alternative mode of work might be providing students with tasks in which they are
given the phonetic transcription of words to pronounce and confront with the online
dictionary recording. To this end, the teacher-made pronunciation worksheets should link to
relevant word entries with pronunciation transcripts at Cambridge Dictionaries Online,
http://dictionary.cambridge.org, while Merriam-Webster, http://www.m-w.com, for
recordings.
As the next step in the development of learners’ pronunciation skills, the teacher might
implement in-class learner speech recording with Audacity, for learners to listen to online
clips (e.g., pronunciation recordings of key words at Merriam-Webster dictionary), record
their own pronunciation, then play both and compare. This particular procedure might be
facilitated to the greatest extent if the teacher instructs students on how to mix tracks in
Audacity, so that individual learners could mix the original recording (with gaps) with their
own version of the pronunciation. In this way, learners might be encouraged to develop their
“inner criteria for correctness” (see Caleb Gattegno’s The Silent Way, Gattegno, 1972).
Dictations might be another interesting possibility to develop learners’ pronunciation
skills, and specifically the sound-spelling correspondence. An example of the procedure is
provided at Graded Dictations (http://www.fonetiks.org/dictations/), where English passages
are played four times: first, the whole passage is read at normal speed to listen for gist;
second, each phrase is read slowly twice, with punctuation, as students write; then the whole
passage is read again for work to be checked; and finally, the written text is shown for
students to compare and count their mistakes. While the use of ready-made dictations as the
ones provided at http://www.fonetiks.org/dictations/ or http://www.d-
oliver.net/pronunciation/dictations/menu.htm will surely be of significant help to many
teachers, it might be worth reflecting on preparing such materials on one’s own, following the
procedure below:
• Prepare a text in a word-processor;
• Record it with Audacity or use TextVoice Generator to create a synthesized
version;
• Save the sound file with a distinct name;
• Open HotPotatoes JCloze exercise module (http://hotpot.uvic.ca) and paste the
text;
• Gap the text for the words that are to be focused on in the dictation;
• Make a link to the sound file;
• Save the exercise and export it as HTML for viewing.
In this case, it needs to be made sure that both the sound file and the exercise file are in the
same folder, either of the class website or the Moodle. The use of an interactive authoring tool
such as HotPotatoes makes it possible for the dictation activity to be done in the self-study
mode, thus extending the impact of pronunciation instruction beyond the confines of the
classroom.
Some other ready-made pronunciation activities can be found at the sites given below.
While teachers might direct students to these in order to develop their knowledge and skills, it
must be remembered that the contents of the tasks do not always have to be suitable for
particular learners, especially as for the selection of words. Thus, teachers are advised to
reflect on creating similar activities using the toolkit containing an authoring tool
(HotPotatoes, http://hotpot.uvic.ca), an audio recorder (Audacity,
http://audacity.sourceforge.net), a TTS reader (TextVoice Generator,
http://guoshesen.51.net/download.html):
• Practice of individual sounds or combinations of them: Steve Chadwick's Diphthong
Calculator (http://www.stuff.co.uk/media/calcul.html), John Maidment's The Vowel
Machine (http://www.btinternet.com/~eptotd/vm/soundmachines.htm), Vowels and
Diphthongs of American and British English
(http://faculty.washington.edu/dillon/PhonResources/newstart.html);
• Practice of word-sound-transcription correspondence: John Maidment’s Transcriber
(http://www.btinternet.com/~eptotd/vm/transcriber/transcri.htm);
• Minimal pair work: Jim Duber's Minimal Pairs (http://www-
writing.berkeley.edu/chorus/call/cuttingedge.html), Minimal Pairs for English RP
(http://pages.britishlibrary.net/marlodge/wordlist/), Adam Rado's English Learning
Fun Center (http://www.elfs.com and
http://www.elfs.com/SAY%20WHAT/Say%20Whatx.html), American English
Pronunciation Practice (http://www.manythings.org/pp/), ESL Gold’s Sounds and
Distinctions (http://www.eslgold.net/pronunciation/sounds_distinctions.html);
• Interactive listen-and-type exercises: Takako's Great Adventures
(http://www.faceweb.okanagan.bc.ca/tga/), Sounds of English
(http://www.soundsofenglish.org/activities/ex1.htm);
• Homophones/homographs/similar sounding words: John Higgins’ Homepage
(http://pages.britishlibrary.net/marlodge/), English Pronunciation
(http://international.ouc.bc.ca/pronunciation/), Dennis Online Learning Page
(http://www.d-oliver.net/pronunciation/dictations/menu.htm), Fonetiks.org
(http://fonetiks.org/difficult.html);
• Pronunciation practice of most common words: ESLgame.com Quizzes and Tests
(http://www.eslgame.com/eslgame/study/words/words.asp).
4. Production
The final phase of pronunciation work, production, can be distinguished from practice
by its much greater focus on meaning and content, being less characterized by discrete
emphasis on particular sounds. Producing sounds in various types of communicative activities
that will naturally involve the use of certain words and sounds should ensure smooth
integration of more explicit knowledge about the articulation of sounds into the learner’s
language inventory. Once a lot of input for reception has been given to students, mainly
focused on isolating and discriminating sounds, more favourable conditions for the use of
particular sounds in meaningful production and interaction will be created.
The activities for this phase might involve the use of pictures, such as associating
pictures with sounds, talking about pictures using words with a given sound, question-answer
about the things in the pictures using a given sound. Such collections of pictures can be found
in Microsoft Office ClipArt resources, as well as through online graphics search engines, both
copyrighted (http://www.google.com/images; http://www.altavista.com/image;
http://www.ditto.com/; http://www.picsearch.com/; http://multimedia.lycos.com/;
http://www.webplaces.com/search/; http://www.search-engine-index.co.uk/Images_Search/)
and free-domain ones (http://www.zettweb.com/grab-a-picture/;
http://www.deleage.com/en/5000_photos.htm; http://www.pdimages.com/;
http://pics.tech4learning.com/; http://www.peacegallery.wyenet.co.uk/; http://gimp-
savvy.com/PHOTO-ARCHIVE/).
Various teacher-made materials that aim at enriching the classroom with words
containing particular sounds might involve tongue-twisters (Adam Rado's Mouth Manglers,
http://www.elfs.com/MMz.html, Pizzaz! Tongue Twisters,
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~leslieob/twisters.html, 1st International Collection of Tongue
Twisters, http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/en.htm, The Tongue Twister Database,
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8136/tonguetwisters.html, Thinks.com Tongue Twisters,
http://thinks.com/words/tonguetwisters.htm), limericks, teacher- or student-made poems,
rhymes and chants (facilitated by such rhyming sites as Rhymezone,
http://www.rhymezone.com or Rhymer, http://www.rhymer.com). Such materials can be
geared specifically at certain sounds (as exemplified at
http://international.ouc.bc.ca/pronunciation/twisters02.htm), yet at the same time can be
skillfully interwoven thematically, structurally and lexically with the curriculum.
The integration of Text-to-Speech synthesis tools into the learner’s toolkit in the
receptive phase can enable pronunciation practice while reading online materials of various
kinds. Such an example of receptive work enhanced with pronunciation practice is displayed
in song lyrics hyperlinked to sound files (http://fonetiks.org/mom/), where “mousing over”
pop lyrics will have them performed. Ideally, however, it should be up to the learner to decide
which contents will be read and pronounced alongside reading. To this end, it might be
interesting to enrich the learning environment by equipping the Internet lab browsers with
VLC Text-to-speech Web Narrator (http://www.edict.com.hk/texttospeech/ttsBrowser.htm).
This particular program has the functionality of a Web browser but is enhanced with the
following TTS options: synthesizing the highlighted piece of text, reading the whole website
text aloud and displaying it in a "speech balloon", looking up any word on a webpage directly
in the VLC Net Dictionary together with its TTS sound file to play its pronunciation, finally
recording one's own pronunciation of a sound, word or sentence and playing it back to
compare with the original. This enhanced Web browser may become a highly useful tool for
learners using the Web and needing to get instant help of dictionary lookup and pronunciation
practice.
Figure 5. VLC Text-to-Speech Web Narrator
(http://www.edict.com.hk/texttospeech/ttsBrowser.htm).
Creating and performing dialogues which by their topic will involve the production of
specified sounds, intonation patterns or word/sentence stress can be triggered by listening and
imitating models provided in the receptive phase, based on some of the sources for online
audio as enumerated above. In the beginning stages of learning, students might use TTS to
fully generate dialogs, which can be later imitated. Such a service, provided by Text-to-
Speech Dialog Wizard and Text-to-Speech Interactive Dialog Wizard
(http://www.edict.com.hk/texttospeech/ttswizard.htm and
http://www.edict.com.hk/texttospeech/ttswizard2.htm respectively), will enable creating a
conversation dialog with up to 10 conversational moves with different voices, and the HTML
file generated can be saved and used on one’s PC or website. The resulting dialogue is sent to
the speech engine, utterances are recorded as separate .wav files, and the whole is returned as
an HTML page with all the audio files embedded.
The role of the development of pronunciation in authentic language interaction is not
to be underestimated, as the teacher needs to observe and diagnose problems which might
occur in meaning-focused exercises. The reflection on the quality of speech produced by
students, especially during the online exchanges using various conferencing tools is of prime
importance for the effective consolidation of theoretical knowledge with communicative
skills. Thus, it is advisable for teachers to use audio recorders such as Audacity to record
computer conferences for later analysis and remedial teaching.
Pronunciation-oriented online teaching
Taking into account a much bigger role of pronunciation than grammatical correctness
in communication, both direct and indirect instruction can be implemented in the Web-based
environment, working along the directions outlined above. When dealing with the role of
online pronunciation training in Web-based instruction, the following types of paradigms can
be followed:
• integrated: when pronunciation is blended with grammar and lexis;
• remedial: when a given phonetic issue is revised;
• practice: when solely pronunciation is practised (Kelly, 2000: 14);
• whole lesson: especially useful when teaching connected speech and intonation
patterns;
• discrete slots: when pronunciation is practised in limited amounts throughout the
lesson;
• integrated phases;
• opportunistic teaching: teacher's remarks about a problematic issue made when a
need arises (Harmer, 2002).
Thus, depending on the specific needs of the class and the curricular requirements, the teacher
might plan and execute Web-based pronunciation activities in one of the modes above, either
as a follow-up activity of other skills (especially in the post-listening and reading phases) or
as preparation for speaking activities.
The application of TTS technology as outlined above can be seen in the integrative
lesson outline as described by Shesen (2002). In the task focusing on reading and listening
comprehension the teacher first plays the text without students looking at it, to understand and
answer general comprehension questions. When playing the text once more, the teacher
manipulates with the reading speed, to make sure that students get the detailed information
needed, until they are able to follow every single word. In the next phase the teacher shows
the contents (with the "Hide/Show" button) and students analyze the text with new or key
words highlighted and explained. Students practise the pronunciation of these by listening to a
relevant sentence, repeating one's own pronunciation and comparing with a model sentence.
Finally, the teacher makes students read the whole text, increasing their reading speed until
they achieve fluency.
Conclusion
Computer-Assisted Pronunciation Teaching (CAPT) is a huge area of research and
practice, with a great number of extremely sophisticated commercial products and more and
more advanced solutions in the sphere of speech recognition and synthesis. However, the
discussion in the present work focused on the ways of enhancing pronunciation teaching in
the Web-based environment, both in-class and self-study, with the tools and techniques that
could be readily implemented by every single language teacher with no additional expenses or
extra technical expertise. It is to be hoped that soon teachers will become confident in the use
of simple TTS and audio editing tools such as the ones outlined above, and the
implementation of more sophisticated programs, with Visual TTS and talking heads, will help
raise the quality of EFL pronunciation teaching.
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