Monday, December 8, 2014

A Positive Pronunciation Resource: Sounds Perfect



*You'll need to have Flash running on your computer to see the above. iPad users and iPhonistas can download an adapter like this or check it out on a 'proper' computer.  

THE IDEA
I remember one of my favourite co-teachers looking at the phonemic chart in the back of an English File book one day and saying: I don't sound like that. She had a point. The classroom phonemic chart is a description of an accent which isn't used by even a single percentage point of the local population here in Dublin.

Often the pronunciation chart is a drag. It can be a little condescending too. I hope the approach above helps by making it a bit less RP-centric and a bit more grown-up. I made this in Flash and uploading it was done through Google Sites without going to paid server. For you ELT Makers, let it be known: if you want to upload an interactive thingy you can. Follow these handy directions.

I learned Flash on a Technology and Learning course. It was seen as a dying technology but there are converters which change Flash files to HTML5 files which are readable by even those pesky iPhones. That'll be a project for later.

WHY NOW?
Well it would have been earlier but I've been busy. I'll be writing about the IPA chart and the history of our classroom phonemic chart in the upcoming ELT Ireland Bulletin.  Writing got me thinking what a useful chart would do. It would describe the sounds of your own accent as a teacher, or that of your students- but at least someone in the room should be represented. It should be useful for other things too. I should have made this years ago. When talking to other teachers in Ireland, I've said on at least one occasion: I could do better than Adrian Underhill's Interactive Phonemic Chart (Macmillan). We'll see about that.

Adrian Underhill has often said that the symbol set he decided to adopt is a kind of 'one size fits all symbol set'. I've tried to follow this and choose phrases that allow me to fit inside this view while maintaining my own voice. We'll see about that too.

USING PHRASES NOT WORDS
There are a million ways you could lay out a chart and just as many reasons to use it. I always wanted to turn away from a 'one symbol, one word' chart. Taking a little inspiration from the Michael Lewis' lexical approach I set my samples as phrases you could use at your job or in your school, even on the street.

If you have a better idea, bring it the comment carpet below. Most of these phrases are responses to seeing or hearing about a good idea. We come across good ideas all the time.

Enjoy it /ɔɪ/

*Special thanks to John C. Wells and his work on getting the IPA symbols working. The choice of Lucida Sans Unicode for the font was due to his work.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

An ELT Thinglink for Christmas, or Rudolph gets a ELT Nosejob.

Again it's Christmas, the most consumer loving time of the year. Make it a goal to make- not purchase- a gift for at least one person this year. If you are a good maker, make it for someone you like.

Again it's Christmas and it was Monday so ELT Ireland were doing their #ELTChinwag. (not chat). Last night on Twitter, Peter Lahiff mentioned he was trying to use a new app for word clouds. I think word clouds should be used only rarely and mostly after you've just discovered Wordle.

But it's the holidays.

He sent me a sample of what he wanted to make.

I complained that it had no red nose.

He made some crack about my design sensibilities. He forgot I have this blog.
Note: No nose.

Let's review: If the words in the visual refer back to 'the red-nosed reindeer' it should- you know- have the red nose.

It's not like Rudolph is ashamed of this feature. Would Frosty be happy if you photoshopped his button nose?

So, Photoshop: I put the nose back on.






Note: Nose. Mine is blue because I used a screen shot of Peter's instead of downloading.
And it needs the song. The teacher will be looking for it anyway. So can we stick a song in the picture?  Is féidir linn, baby.


Again I go back to Paul Driver. He introduced us to Thinglink in one of his talks at the Digital ELT Ireland conference. It lets you add little hotspot links to an image you upload.  So I uploaded my Rudolph to Thinklink.

So I placed a hotspot link on the nose and changed the icon to a circle with a red border. I set the link to a YouTube version of the Rudolph with lyrics.

But the song is really just a souvenir of the 1964 stop-motion animation tv special* for me.

So also I gave RTRNR (completely unnecessary acronym) an eye which is a link to a full version of RTRNR (I love this silly acronym as much as I like the film) on DailyMotion so that learners can go enjoy it at home. The videolink is in an eye because... you... watch... stuff... with... your eyes.

 The finished Thinglink lives in my pitifully shoddy Thinglink page. But here's a link so you can put this RTRNR thinglink in your class blog for your learners or those teachers you share stuff with.

EMBED Link

<img style="max-width:100%" src="//cdn.thinglink.me/api/image/596269464324931584/1024/10/scaletowidth#tl-596269464324931584;1043138249'" class="alwaysThinglink"/><script async charset="utf-8" src="//cdn.thinglink.me/jse/embed.js"></script>

Note: Nose

If you'd prefer the iframe embedded version try the codey goop below. Just copy and paste. The iframe code is what I used to get the actual interactive version below. The only advantage seems to be you can see and play with the interactive hotspots in the blogger interface as you are writing, whereas the embed link above seems like a static image.

Switch your blog view from 'Compose' to 'HTML,' copy the code and paste it in your blog post's code. That allows the codey magic to to shine... just like noble Rudolph's light guiding us on to a brighter felizier navidad.

IFRAME Link

<iframe width="313" height="398" src="//www.thinglink.com/card/596269464324931584" type="text/html" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen scrolling="no"></iframe>

IFRAME Link added in HTML



*This little retro jewel and maker's inspiration was made by a company called Rankin/Bass which even in the 60s and 70s was outsourcing their work to Japanese animators some of which went on to work for the mighty Miyazaki, a total legebag as young D4 Dubliners might say.