Hi again!

In this entry I would like to propose an activity to improve pronunciation skills. For this task you will need headphones and microphone and to download the program Audacity, which is very useful to record yourself, edit audios, etc.

For this activity the students would have to listen to an audio and to imitate what they hear, i.e. sounds, words, phrases, sentences, etc, in order to work on the English pronunciation. They will use the headphones to listen to the English audio, and then they will use the microphone and Audacity to record themselves, so that they can listen to their creations when they finish and contrast their repetitions with the original audio to correct their mistakes and improve their pronunciation.

To start with the activity, the students will have to download Audacity and open it. This is what they will see when it is run:

Now they will play the audio so that they listen to it through their headphones. Then, in Audacity they must click on the red circle to start recording themselves pronouncing the sounds, words and sentences that they listen to in the audio. The screen will have this aspect while they are recording:

When they want to stop recording, they will have to click on "stop", which is the yellow square, or on the pause buttom if they want to stop for a moment before continuing.

It is also possible to go on recording after stopping by clicking again on the recording buttom. The screen will show two different recordings:

Once they have finished recording themselves, they can listen to it by clicking on the play buttom or save it by clicking on "file" and then "export", so that they can keep it in their computers and listen to it when they want.

At the end of the activity, the students must compare their recordings with the original English audios in order to find out the mistakes and differences to correct them and improve their pronunciation skills, as they will be more objective if they listen to their pronunciation after recording themselves than if they only speak without subsequent self-assessment.

I hope you have liked this task.

See you soon!