Pronounciation Improving Programs

Followings are several types of programs that can help you to improve your pronounciation:

1. Phonetics Flash Animation Project (done by the University of Iowa.)
This website provides not only an introduction to the American sounds, but also an introduction to German sounds as well as Spanish sounds. Its information is very useful for people who's second or third language is English, German or Spanish. When I was using this website to search the exact pronunciations of few German consonants, I found out that the examples of the consonants and the animation of the changes in oral cavity are amazingly clear and easy for learners to imitate. Moreover, I think the linguistic learners and professors may also use this website as their E-learning materials.

2. Practice on minimal pairs
Minimal pairs play an important role in English learning. Without the ability of identify the minimal pairs, the learners might misunderstand the details of a sentence. This website gives the English learners many chances to practices how to distinguish the minimal pairs by providing lots of exercises and practices. This website is very useful and helpful for the beginners and people who have difficulty to identify minimal pairs in English.

3. PBS Kids (Public Broadcasting Service).
This website is extremely suitable for children, because it is formed by lots of pictures and animation and other elements that children will crazy about. After visiting this website, I think I like its “Video” part the most. The videos there contains several English grammatical rules such as rules of placing vowels and consonants in words, plus vivid animation and wonderful music, it makes boring grammar rules into active and easy-to-catch English songs. Unfortunately, this website also has it disadvantages. The biggest of it is that it has too many sound effects and becomes a little bit annoyed.

Using podcasting to teach listening

The word "Podcast" has been declared word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary; moreover, podcasting for teachers means to use a new technology to revolutionize teaching and learning, and I think it is an excellent way for practising listening comprehension. A podcast is like a radio show. However, instead of being broadcast live, a podcast is recorded and then distributed over the internet, so that you can listen to it whenever you please. There are thousands of podcasts available, ranging from general interest entertainment shows to those which focus on specific topics such as computers, music and education.

Why I love podcast is because learners who listening to English generally would like some help whenever they have not understood a particular section or word, and some podcasts come with transcripts, so that listeners can listen and read the transcript.

Following are some useful resources related to "Podcast":

I. An overview of podcasting for English teachers and learners
Introducing the listenging materials for teaching and learning.

II. Useful Podcast providing websites:

1. ESL Pod.com: English as a Second Language Podcast
This podcast is run by a volunteer team of experienced English as a Second Language professors in the States. More information on ESLPod.Com athttp://www.eslpod.com/eslpod_blog/about-us/

2. Randall's Cyber Listening Lab
One of the most comprehensive listening sites on the web. For years, Randall has been adding to this amazing archive of audio activities.

III. Listening: theory and practice in modern foreign language competence

An article focus on listening and second language acquisiton theory, by Prof. Larry Vandergrift.

Making Friends with Foreigners.

How to behave properly when interacting with foreigner or people from different culture background? Do you want to get yourself a e-pal from other culture and countries? The following information, including three websites and three articles, can provide useful, pratical and wonderful resources you will need in order to reach your goal.

I. Website:

1. E-PALWORLD

This website provides FREE service and is designed for people to find email pals, the electronic equivalent of pen pals.

2. Language penpals/General penpals

Language Penpals will enable you to learn languages and make friends at the same time. If you want to make International pen friend, or language learners, students and teachers wanting to exchange ideas or practise their language skills are able to fufill their wishes here.

3. My Language Exchange.Com

This is a language exchange website, which users can practice and learn foreign languages with native speakers via email, text chat or voice chat.

II. Article:

1. Good E-mail Manner
This article teaches its readers how to behave will when writing an e-mail. It will definitely help a lot, especially for the person who has completely no idea about how to write an "right" e-mail.

2. Cross Cultural Communication
Different cultural backgrounds always cause problem when people are interacting with others from different countries. This article will teach you how to react and what do you need to pay extra attention on.

3. Working on CommonCross-cultural Communication Challenges
No matter you are working for a living or still studying at school, you will have change to meet and sometimes even cooperate with people from different culture. It is really challenging, but this article will tell you the Dos and Don'ts.

Listening and second language acquisiton theory --- Assignment

1.Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab
Topic: Easy Pet Care
Level: difficult
Type: conversation
Speakers: two men
Length: 2:28

This website provides variety of listening exercises for EFL learners from beginner to advance. I choose a difficult level conversation. The speakers have a causal talk with normal speed. Unlike the podcast in “ESL Pod. com,” the listening materials in “Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab” provides less information about the content in the podcast itself, which I think may be unsuitable for EFL beginners. Consequently, in order to compromise this weakness, it gives its visitors a number of rich and pedagogically sound collections of audio and video materials, which learners of all levels can use to listen to English, view the script, and answer comprehension questions. These marvelous collections of individual listening exercises and worksheets perfect for individual use or to supplement a class.


2. ESL Pod.com
Topic / Episode number: ESL Podcast 130 - Allergic to Cats
Tags: Relationships , Health/Medicine
Audio Index:
Slow dialog: 0:51
Explanations: 2:48
Fast dialog: 14:01

The speaker speaks clearly without linking and with right and easy-to-catch intonation. On the other hand, the host explains the content with appropriate speed and adding onomatopoeia from time to time. It makes listeners easier to catch the content of the podcast. Moreover, he will spell slowly the vocabularies and phrases he says and make a short explanation about their meaning as well as their grammatical use and the appropriate situation to use them. For example, the host explains the meaning of “give in”, and he also teaches the audiences that “give in” need a preposition “to”. The host will tell the listeners the different forms of a vocabulary, too.

3. CHINA 232 Fun English Lessons
Topic / Episode number: 084 - Queer Eye ESL podcast
Type: conversation
Speakers: two men
Length: 16:55

This site offers a series of news podcasts of interest primarily to Chinese but also other ESL and ELL students. The lessons are not actual news but news summaries called “lessons.” China 232 refers to the fictional radio station offering the podcasts. Though the speed of the conversation is slower than the normal speed, this podcast may still be difficult for the ESL learners below Intermediate level because the podcast lessons use a causal dialog format. The podcast starts with a long introduction between the two male hosts about the topic, later it moves on to the listening content, than the detail explanation about the vocabularies and phrases used in the podcast, finally is the short comment of the two hosts about this podcast. The extra information about one episode contains background introduction, English learning reading script, phrases and vocabulary used in the podcast. In addition to offering the free audio, the study support includes a news summary and a vocabulary list with definitions and explanations and new podcasts appear approximately once a week in this website.

Evaluation of the Web Sources

The following two sites give some suggestions and guidelines on website evaluation. When you surf the internet, keep these guidelines in mind.

A. Evaluating Sources by Deborah Healey
There are too many website and gradable resources insisting in the world wild web. This long article gives specifically directions and suggestion about how to select authenticable resource on the internet. It is really helpful when the students like us need to search for the real academic resources with high credibility for study purposes.

B. Evaluating Internet Research Sources by Robert Harris
This useful article provides various contents from the types of Internet information to the ways of checking the authenticity of Internet information, including the diversity of information, the ways of screening information, the source selection tip, the ways of evaluating information, the CARS checklist for information quality, and the CAFÉ Advice for living with information.

C. Rubrics for Evaluating Websites
a. for early primary grades
b. for 2nd and 3rd graders
c. for intermediate learners
This website provides three kinds of evaluation charts (web / Internet information use only) for different levels of language learners. These three useful evaluation charts can be adopted later when we are going to teach these three grades of students.

The Current Educational System in Taiwan

Global trends in educational reforms and societal changes have affected Taiwan's educational policies. Education is strongly emphasized in Taiwan, especially universal education, for it is vital for a modern society. In the past few decades, the educational system in Taiwan has gone through different phases of development. As a result, educational reform has become a top priority, and its measures have been adopted by the government to solve problems in different areas of the educational system. However, I would like to focus on one serious question which may not be clearly shown now: has the expansion of higher education eased the equity concern for students with disadvantaged backgrounds in Taiwan?

This concern arises because equal educational opportunity is a principal foundation for a democratic and free society in which individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, can fully develop their potential. Without such equal opportunities, unjust social classes will prevail, society is likely to be unstable, and the economy may stagnate. Over the past twenty years, the expansion of the higher education system in Taiwan has been impressive. It has certainly helped to increase educational opportunities for students, particularly those with disadvantaged backgrounds who had been the most likely to be excluded from colleges and universities. However, despite this great achievement, one may still be concerned about whether all students can attain an education of similar quality.

Based on credible data collected from national samples, it was found that while overall access to college education had been greatly improved for students with disadvantaged backgrounds, there were still equity problems in attaining education in universities of higher quality or desirability for those students. The current college education system does not seem to be effective in helping students with disadvantaged backgrounds to move up socially and economically. Therefore, the current education system in Taiwan needs to give the disadvantage students a chance to play a critical role in improving or maintaining a nation’s competitiveness in the modern knowledge-based world economy.

In brief, higher education is important to individuals. Individuals with a higher education degree will generally have greater work-time earnings than their counterparts without a higher education degree. Consequently, in effectively removing barriers for all disadvantage students to attend an institution of higher education, the current educational system in Taiwan has to be equally effective in enabling those disadvantage students to acquire the same quality of education.

The Power of Naming: "I'm Not Your Girl/Lady/Honey/Dear"

All people know the power of naming well since the meaning of words has exsited in the human history. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet meet and fall in love in Shakespeare's lyrical tale of "star-cross'd" lovers. In the play, the most famouse part happened when Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called "Montague", not the Montague name and not the Montague family. Romeo, out of his passion for Juliet, rejects his family name and vows, as Juliet asks, to "deny father" and instead be "new baptized" as Juliet's lover. This one short line encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of the play:

"What's in a name?
That which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet."
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

I've been a Language learner(Chinese, English, German, French) for more than fifteen years. During those years, I alos acquired the culture background behind the four languages. From my past learning experience, I understand the power and importance of naming in each culutre quite well. I discover that women have many names in the four cultures; however, not all the names are appropreiate and polite. For example, once I had met an e-pal on E-PALWORLD. I invited him to be my e-mail pale in my E-pal project; however, after I received his first letter, I gave up the idea of being e-pals with him. In his first letter, the opening began with "hi, dear, ...,"I felt really unconfortable and unrespectable. Consequently, I think it is essential and important for both sexes, especially male, to learn how to dress the other sex properly.

Recently I read a good article in a section titled "Hey Lady: Whose Honey Are You Anyway?", in Language and the Sexes, a book written by Francine Frank and Frank Anshen, they say that when we speak to one another, we reveal the nature of our relationship with and our attitudes towards the person in many ways. One of these ways is in the forms of address we choose.

Here's an example: would you be surprised if your male friend told you about the girl he was going to marry? Not at all. You wouldn't think that your friend is a pedophile because you assume he means a woman. How about if a male friend told you about the girl he met last night at the club? You wouldn't bat an eyelash. That's because in our language grown women are commonly referred to as girls, but the same is not true of grown and young men whom are referred to as guys .

The most of us can easily understand the affront involved in calling a grown man a boy, but it is considered normal and sometimes even a compliment to refer to women of any age as girls. As women have been taught to value youthfulness, they many take the term girl as a compliment. But the price of being eternally youthful is to never grow up, and these women may be acquiescing in their own powerlessness.

The less sexist thing would be to address all females 18 years and older as women, and to refrain all uses of the term "girl". Many women have heard that they must behave like a lady, and as a courtesy a man may call a woman "young lady" or "lady" as a polite gesture. While the term has its good implications, it can be quite restricting for women because a lady we know from Jane Austen novels is polite, gentile, and well-behaved, properly-dressed and coiffed, then the question is: if a woman is not a lady then what is she?

Frank and Anshen say that the term lady can be used a polite way to refer to a woman of high social status or admirable traits, much like the term gentleman , but that unlike the address of gentleman, the uses of the term lady are far more diverse and complicated than those of the term gentleman.

As an example of the complications, they say that we have never dealt with a sales gentleman , neither can we inquire as to the location of the gentleman's room. They also say that the term lady negates the sexual aspects of a woman. "She's a lady," a man may say of a woman of high morals, but then again, haven't we heard the term "lady of the night" ? The best thing to do is to just forfeit the "polite" use of the term lady.

Frank and Anshen say that a woman can also be addressed with an offhand affection which is not allowed in addressing men. How many times have women heard, "be a dear", or "here you go, honey", or something similar from a man? If the woman tries to reciprocate say Frank and Anshen, it will usually be inappropriate and may be misunderstood, especially if she is speaking to man.

In fact a woman runs the risk of the man taking the address as a come-on, or an invitation for sexual advances. Frank and Anshen say that men express their economic power over women by addressing them in sexually aggressive ways. They also say that in the past a woman either put up with the behavior, or quit their jobs. A woman, they say, who wishes to defy the traditional status relationships may choose to react to address practices by forcing reciprocal use. Just be a dear, wont you, honey, and do not address women in sexually aggressive ways.

In brief, just pay attention to maintain the appropriate manner. It is essential for a language leaner to know the right time and right way to address women.