English pronounciation

[igor]

Being a native speaker does not make person a pronunciation teacher. I seriously doubt that you can find a professional here who can be really helpful.
Otherwise, if your friend needs to listen to some good english, a recording of CNN news broadcast has incomparably more patience than any human being.

Podcasts do not work either. Podcasters in general talk too fast and trying to be entertaining. So, there are interruptions, music clips, sound effects etc etc
and he needs to concentrate on melodics of the language itself.

Audiobooks, however, do work. Not radio plays, but long audiobooks read by a single person, so that he can get used to his voice and establish some base level first.
It is extremely helpful if he can text of the same book printed and can read it along. There is also software to slow down music recording without changing the pitch.
It is used for recording jazz improvisations, for example. Slowing down a voice this way and trying to imitate the narrator sentence by sentence, this would be the way to go in my opinion.

Having a native speaker, who can explain you where you make mistakes is also helpful. But it is listening to audiobooks that does the trick.

 

[xibeca]

Podcasts is a waste of time IMHO. What works is what Igor pointed out; Listening to the language. Watch movies without subtitles. Listen (and sign along) to music, etc.

There are no magical shortcuts. It takes time and effort.

 

[starlucia]

Being a native speaker does not make person a pronunciation teacher. I seriously doubt that you can find a professional here who can be really helpful

You don't "teach" pronunciation; you model it and point out rules wherever you can. It's one of the few areas of language learning that doesn't need a trained teacher, just an intuitive ear. I do agree that comprehensible input is necessary to the language acquisition process, but a CNN broadcast might not do squat -- depends on whether the student is at a level able to comprehend that vocabulary and pace of speaking (if he's not, than CNN would be a waste of time, and he'd benefit from listening to children's TV.) Listening to authentic materials will be a huge help, but interaction -- the opportunity to practice the actual phonemes and be corrected when you make a mistake -- makes all the difference in the world. It's the old Krashen vs. Long debate, and I'm 100% a Long girl. If you're not a native Spanish speaker, just think about when you were learning to roll your rr's. Which was more helpful, listening to native speakers say "berro" and "parrilla," or trying to produce those sounds yourself? Or think about babies, and how they universally babble, in order to practice pronouncing their first-language phonemes? It's all about output, my friend

 

[Roxana]

Thank you very much, specially Igor. As a matter of fact my friend is a musician so it bothers me his not so good pronunciation... yet. I had never realized up to now that he can slow down what he is listening to work on the details. I appreciate your opinions very much.

 

[jayjane]

Podcasts are great and they are free!! @Xibeca podcasts qualify as listening to the language in the same way you would listen to music. However, at times podcasts on a focused topic are better than listening to music because you will learn vocabulary in a useful context. At times music can string together words more poetically. Pronunciation can also be out of context in music sometimes.
It all depends on finding appropriate material for your level but, much of my improvement in Spanish in the past few months is due to podcasts. There are a lot of great language podcasts out there. They are very easy to incorporate into a learning plan and you can listen to them on the run. I like to listen over and over to the same ones until I make sure I have understood the talking points. Some have pauses for you to repeat phrases if they are geared toward language learning or specifically ask you to answer questions out loud. Then, I speak and repeat to work on intonation. No, one method will do it that is for sure. I think you need to interact with language on several fronts especially to improve a skill like pronunciation.

 

[rihornos]

Conversation classes have helped me a lot and not only in pronunciation, making sentences and made go through all the grammar I had learnt before, a good teacher with a lot of patience is the best. On a conversation exchange is impossible to go through all this.
greetings
Reina

 

[cheshire_cat]

Roseta Stone is an interactive program with a lot of pronunciation practice. I started learning several languages with it.

 

[nlaruccia]

You're friend should take a phonetics class at the one of the universities that has a translation department such as UADE, Universidad de Belgrano, or El Salvador to name a few. They have classes that specialize in perfecting your accent in English. Otherwise the well-known English dictionary "Longman" has a pronunciation dictionary with CD along with the phonetical spelling of all the words. The CD has American and British accents. Hope that helps.

 

[Guillo]

I'm happy with my reading and writting in english, but I really think I could improve my pronounciation quite a bit. I wonder if those clases on phonetics are open to the public or only for people doing their careers there.
I was told by my last english teacher that she had to run drills for hours on end, repeating some weird phrases from a book called "How now brown cow" with some audio hints, until she was ready to take the test with the teacher. I guess you need to workout new muscles in the mouth and create the muscle memory!

 

[Roxana]

I took pronunciation classes while living abroad, which were very useful. I didnt know they are available in Buenos Aires, I might give a look to the Universities mentioned above but I dont think they will offer classes open to the public.

However, I started this thread asking for resources to use from home.