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Language Learning Resources
Language Teaching Resources

Listening

The program iTunes has a number of academic-focused resources for both language learning and educational purposes in their online store. Ifyou have a copy of iTunes, browse through the podcasts to see what you might find personally interesting. Most of the educational podcasts (including lectures at many well-known American and British universities) are free. Here are some that I have found and enjoy tuning into:

• The Princeton Review Vocabulary Minute
• Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
• Merriam Webster's Word of the Day

• The News Hour with Jim Lehrer
• NPR Talk of the Nation

• 60-second science by the Scientific American
• Stanford Technology Ventures Program
• Harvard Business School's HBR Idea Cast
• Dr. Bonner: Anatomy and Physiology
• American Public Media: Garison Keiller's Writer's Almanac

Other websites for listening practice

• BBC Radio
  • BBC Learning English
  • BBC Radio Scotland
• National Public Radio
• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
• The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
• Voice of America has its regular listening section, but there is also a special section for English language learners. You can listen to the feed while looking at a transcript.
• Jen MacArthur's list of Internet Audio Resources contains links to authentic, adapted, and didactic audio materials for use in the English Language classroom, including news, culture, sports, and entertainment online radio programming, recorded dictionary pronunciations, historical speeches, poetry, and more. Many of these resources, particularly the EFL podcasts, will be useful for ESOL teachers and students for self-study, as well. The hotlist also includes links to recording software, pod-catchers, and RSS aggregators.
• Activating Authentic Audio contains activities and materials for getting to know some more places to listen on the Internet.
• Randall’s ESL Listening Lab has multilevel listening exercises and quizzes (some with video). Authentic audio is clearly marked according to learner ability and include pre-listening questions, activities, and multiple choice questions. You can choose from a variety of topics from Saturday chores to talking about taxi rides.
• Internet TESL Journal’s Listening Page has a variety of listening materials, including downloadable mp3 files of stories, books, and other authentic materials for practice.
• Real English is an online ESL site that utilizes authentic and unique ESL videos of people speaking real English on streets across the globe. Designed for individuals learning English, ESL teachers and institutions, Real English offers unique ESL educational services, including a FREE subscriptions.
• American Rhetoric has an online archive of many famous American speeches.
• International listening Association is a site dedicated to providing information about the importance of listening as a process and how to improve listening skills.
• The Language Guide has sound files for a number of common vocabulary sets in English, including colors, numbers, places in the home, and more.

Academic Listening Practice

• Gresham College gives free public lectures that include video, audio, and lecture summaries. There are a variety of academic disciplines covered.
• University of Sydney has podcasts of lectures in its international series.
• Princeton University has an archive of lectures from a diverse number of fields.
• Columbia Interactive has e-seminars in many subject areas.
• University of Berkley Online Audio and Video Recordings contains media for many different lectures and areas of study.
• The Graduate Engineering Education School at Columbia University in New York has free previews of lectures.
• Columbia School of the Arts has video lectures relating to art and design.
• The University of Pittsburgh Law School has webcasts of major law school lectures, conferences, panels, debates and special events.
• Yorktown University Graduate School of Government offers recent faculty lectures for viewing and downloading.
• The Counterbalance Interactive Library offers new views on complex issues from science, ethics, philosophy, and religion.

Pronunciation

• For a fabulous review of the sounds of English, including animated demonstrations of the organs of speech as well as sound files of the phonetic alphabet for English, visit The University of Iowa's Phonetics Page.
• British Council has a fun and interactive pronunciation chart for listening to and practicing the sounds of English.
• An interactive IPA (International Pronunciation Association) chart from Paul Meier Dialect Services
• Speech Accent Archives is a project collecting speech samples from people around the world. The archive is used by people who wish to compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers.
• Ship or Sheep offers practice with tricky minimal pairs
• About.com has a collection of useful websites
• Some good tips for accent reduction from Accurate English
• A guide with sound bites of the sounds of English (British and American pronunciation included) at Anti-Moon
• A fun English "pronunciation test" that includes all of the sounds of English and some of their opaque spellings can be found in this poem called English is Tough and diagnostic passages using many common combinations of sounds in English can be found here from the University of Tampere, Finland.
• Here is a hotlist of Pronunciation Resources on the Web that is very comprehensive.
• Okanagan College Pronunciation/Listening Webpage
• Phonological Atlas of North America
• International Dialects of English Archive
• International Phonetics Association (IPA)
• The official site of the TESOL Speech, Pronunciation, & Listening Interest Section
• Teaching English Intonation by Mehmet Celik from Hacettepe University in Turkey proposes a workable, teachable, generalizable as well as communicatively efficient framework for the teaching of the intonation of English to non-native speakers of English.
• Pronunciation animations from Cambridge ELT Resources
• Teaching English Sounds from Ted Powers includes specific information about features of pronunciation of different first language speakers (Finnish, Spanish, Turkish, etc.)

Books
Wells, J. (1990). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. New York: Longman.

Hahn, L. D., and Dickerson, W. (1998). Speechcraft: Discourse Pronunciation for Advanced Learners. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Gilbert, J. (2001). Clear speech from the start: Basic pronunciation and listening comprehension in North American English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Speaking

• Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken Language is a great resource for investigating patterns of usage in academic settings. The website works with an enormous corpus of English as it is used in the university setting — both inside lectures and outside. You can search for phrases, browse for common words, or look for collocations.

Varieties of English

• Understanding American English

Public Speaking and Presentation Skills