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1. Pronunciation Power 1:
Beginner to Intermediate
2. Pronunciation Power 2: Intermediate to Advanced
Pronunciation
Power has a bright attractive interface with well
thought-out navigation. The principal objective of
the program is to help students master the individual
sounds of English. In this it is extremely comprehensive
in providing practice at the phoneme, word and sentence
level. Pronunciation Power also has some activities
on stress.
Activities in Pronunciation
Power
Briefly, Pronunciation Power includes the following
activities:
Sound menu. Students choose the sounds by clicking
on them with the mouse and then hear them pronounced
by the instructor.
Lessons. Listen to the sound and learn how it
is made through front and side view videos and animation.
Speech analysis. Learners listen to the instructor
pronounce the sound and view the instructor's wave form.
They can then record the sound themselves and compare
their sound and wave form with that of the instructor.
Exercises. Students can choose from a variety
of exercises to help students practise the sounds they
have chosen. Exercises include:
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Sample word
exercises where you compare your pronunciation
to the pronunciation of the instructor. |
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Discrimination
exercises where you have to discriminate between
two similar but different sounds (eg pat and bat). |
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Sentence
exercises where they listen to sentences and then
record them. |
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Exercises
for practicing Stress, Timing, Articulation, Intonation
and Rhythm (S.T.A.I.R.) |
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Interactive
games |
Interface language
Students can work through the program in English,
or, on logging on, can choose from twelve other interface
languages. This is a useful feature for beginner-level
learners. The available languages are: Arabic, Chinese
(traditional and simplified), French, German, Japanese,
Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and
Vietnamese.
How much material is there
in these programs?
One of the strong points of Pronunciation Power is
that it includes so much material. Students can profitably
use the program to practise for hours - the publisher's
claim of 100 hours of practice is realistic.
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Over 7000
practice words and thousands of sentences |
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Over 2000
photos and graphics |
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Animated
lessons |
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1020 listening
exercises |
The 8 in 1 English Dictionary
This program is included with Pronunciation Power
1. It is a standard elementary learner's electronic
dictionary, which contains some useful features for
pronunciation. The most useful of these is a facility
which enables you to select words according to initial,
middle and final sound. Imagine how handy this is
if you want to practice, for example, the final consonant
cluster /ks/. Once the words have appeared students
can listen to them, and can record themselves and
then compare their performance against the model.
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