IEOP Listening/Speaking 4B, Spring 2009

 

1/20/09 Links to Obama's Inauguration Address
ABC News
CNN
Listen to the speech once and write down three main ideas you understood from it.

1/23/09 First Pronunciation Session

  1. On your computer open Audacity (or any other voice recording software)
  2. Try to record a sample of your voice and listen to it to make sure everything is working
  3. Now open a new file in Audacity and read thse activities (click here to read)
  4. When you are finished reading, stop the recording and go to File - export as mp3 and save the file to the desktop
  5. go to your email account and send me the file as an attachment

 

Listening Activities

1- Dictation exercise
2- Listen and choose the right asnwer activity

 

TOEFL Practice

Listening Test tips

Practice Test

 

Listening to a Conversation

Following are two links to a listening activitites. In each of them work on the pre-listening exercises, then listen to the conversation (Play - Windows Media), then do the vocabulary activities and finally discuss the post-listening exercies with the person next to you. When you are done with the first page of activities, open a Word document and write the transcript of the conversation. Try not to stop the audio at all when you are writing. However, you can listen to it as many times as you want. Email me the transcript when you are done.

College Major
Driver License
College textbooks

 

News stories
Choose one story for this website and do the accompanying activities (the list is on the left).
Click here to go to the news website

 

Text Terminator Game
Click here and choose a short story to listen to and fill in the gaps with the words of the story

 

Connected Speech
To enhance your pronunciation, go to this website: Train your accent. Listen to the audio alone. Then listen while reading the transcript with the red-highlighted words. These words contain sounds that are reduced in speaking, i.e. pronounced in a weak way. Now try to read the highlighted text paying attention to the reduced sounds. Record yourself on audcity and compare it to the original audio.

 

Movie Trailers

Today we will do something fun since it is spring break time! Go to this website: Movie Trailers. It has many movie advertisements (trailers) together with activities about them. On the first page, click next and read the instructions on every page to learn how to use this website. When you finish the instructions, you can start watching trailers. The general warm-up activity helps you learn about the background of the movie. You must work on the 'cloze' activity. Play the trailers several times to understand what is being said.

 

Sound Practice
Today's focus is on how to pronounce individual sounds. This sometimes depends on your native language. Many of today's exercises use minimal pairs, which are words very similar in pronunciation except for one sound (for example, sheep-ship). Working on sounds needs a long time of practice. You need to listen and repeat every exercise several times, and go back to it after a while to practice again. You will work on the following units: unit 3, unit 4, unit 10, and unit 9. Record yourself and compare your recording with the website. Click here to start.
For Anna, work on unit 4, unit 9, unit 1, and unit 10.