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All Blog Posts (147)

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

Last night in our pronunciation session we first had a spontaneous discussion on learner accents, their needs and learning aims. Some students said that without a native-like accent it might be hard to communicate in a foreign language; some others said that as long as the communication can be carried out, the accent does not matter so much. These two positions have been hotly debated by language teaching theorists and practitioners, with opinions divided and more research produced in this area… Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on November 12, 2009 at 12:06am — No Comments

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

Dear pronunciation students, Kip has laid out some drop boxes, as promised, to help him cover some of the costs of running Virtlantis. Everybody can drop as much as they choose to, of course, and there's no limit of donations :-). This scheme is completely independent of our Wednesday sessions of pronunciation, however. As I've declared a number of times, these will remain free forever. I've also promised to pass on to Kip (via the drop box method) any funds you may choose to pay me (by paying… Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on November 11, 2009 at 8:10am — 1 Comment

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

Last Wednesday (4th Nov) we did two activities, both notecard-based: 1. 30 non-compound heteroaccentual homographs: a list of thirty words of two syllables each. They can all be stressed on the first or second syllable, with the accompanying difference in grammatical category, meaning and pronunciation. Sometimes the difference is simple to grasp: ['accent] is a noun, while [ac'cent] is a verb, but they mean the same thing: "to place stress on something". Sometimes the difference is more subtle… Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on November 8, 2009 at 8:58am — No Comments

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

Last Wednesday (28th Oct) we continued with English lexacal stress: first we did the homework notecard with 5-syllable word stress patterns, then we had a rather complex activity involving the finder and some PAVed objects. Briefly: the task was to #find objects around by typing their name followed by their stress pattern, like this: #find Table & Chairs OooO. The finder then directed the student to the object, which had some additional information in its [description] field. Students collec… Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on October 29, 2009 at 1:00pm — No Comments

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa...

Hello Pronunciation Students! I've updated the walk-through grid in my launchroom. You walk on stones as before, but this time try to navigate the [Ooo] path: only step on stones with three-syllable words in them, stressed on the first syllable. The last -- seventh -- stone in the [Ooo] sequence is marked "End here". The remaining 9 stones have other stress patterns. Have fun! Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on October 24, 2009 at 1:21pm — No Comments

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

Tonight we did one more activity, a match'm'all, with 4-syllable words (see below for player 1 notecard) and the finder game with 5-syllable words. The former turned out to be quite difficult and took quite some time. The latter was rather easy, even for newcomers, although some words present difficulties in terms of stress placement, for example "laboratory", oOooo in British English, but OooOo in American English :-(. Anyways, the finder game is there, if you want to try it. I will also shortl… Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on October 21, 2009 at 2:09pm — 1 Comment

My wine links-why I don't have time for much else!

wine club wine gift wine clubs Continue

Added by Mark Aselstine on October 21, 2009 at 1:16pm — No Comments

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

On the question of money... Our pronunciations sessions will remain free of charge. Some students have recently given me some lindens to help defray the cost of Virtlantis upkeep... Thank you very much! Let me declare that these lindens will go entirely to cover the mentioned costs, and I will not keep any to myself. The situation is certainly new, and we'll all have to adjuct to it somehow, but, as far as I'm concerned, your decision to give me lindens or not (to pass over to Kip for Virtlanti… Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on October 19, 2009 at 5:22am — No Comments

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

Tonight we practiced stress patterns of 4-syllable words: first with the homework notecard (40 most common 4-syllable words in English), then with an activity (Get'm'all - collecting words with given stress patterns from other players - see player one notecard below), finally with the finder game (the finder will locate a wooden cone if a word is typed with the proper stress pattern - go to my launchroom to try this one). The 4-syllable level turned out to be a good choice. Three syllables would… Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on October 14, 2009 at 2:08pm — No Comments

Just For Fun

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Added by Abraxas on October 14, 2009 at 2:01pm — 2 Comments

OpenSIM As A Holodeck

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Added by KipYellowjacket on October 14, 2009 at 9:47am — 2 Comments

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

A new version of the walk-through grid is available in my launchroom: the 16 Am-Br words and phrases are now built into the 16 stones of the grid. The task is to walk through the grid on British-speaking stones only. You start with "4 bottles of beer" :-), and then it gets better!. On popular demand I've also widened the gaps between stones somewhat to make it easier to navigate the grid. Enjoy!

… Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on October 10, 2009 at 5:20am — 1 Comment

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

Last Wednesday we had the last British/American differences session. We talked some more about the 16 recordings used before (8 British and 8 American). Yoghurt drew student's attention as the case where the /r/ sound was rather weak, so it was not immediately clear if the pronunciation is American or British... Then, we tried another activity: to make full sentences with… Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on October 9, 2009 at 7:52am — No Comments

Visits To SLE Community Website Since February 2009 - Indexed By Country

United States (US) 512 Germany (DE) 400 United Kingdom (GB) 248 Poland (PL) 181 Italy (IT) 144 Spain (ES) 136 Japan (JP) 95 Mexico (MX) 62 France (FR) 56 Israel (IL) 55 Finland (FI) 49 Netherlands (NL) 48 Canada (CA) 46 Turkey (TR) 44 Korea, Republic of (KR) 41 Australia (AU) 41 Brazil (BR) 37 Taiwan (TW) 32 Hong Kong (HK) 31 Russian Federation (RU) 30 India (IN) 28 Philippines (PH) 25 China (CN) 23 Saudi Arabia (SA) 21 Argentina (AR) 21 Egypt (EG) 17 Venezuela (VE) 15 Pakistan (PK) 15 Thailand… Continue

Added by KipYellowjacket on October 6, 2009 at 5:00pm — 1 Comment

Pronunciation with Wlodek Barbosa

Tonight we looked again at the last Wed's notecard with 60 words and 10 sentences containing phonetically contrasting Br/Am vocabulary. We identified the main areas of difference: pronunciation (or not) of /r/ and vowel differences, for example in words like "body", with /o/ in British and /a/ in American English. Pawlus Twine helped us with American English, which happens to be his accent in EFL... Thank you, Pawlus! Then we started the surprise activity of "Get them all" (see one of four play… Continue

Added by Włodzimierz Sobkowiak on September 30, 2009 at 2:21pm — 3 Comments