UMEI006 English Pronunciation

因為剛開學的TA英文考試沒過，上了一學期的發音課。整體下來雖然覺得對擔任TA沒有什麼幫助，不過至少學了一些「練習正確發音」的方法，實際成效就......。總歸一句，模仿和練習還是最重要的，邊看電視邊跟著講我覺得很有用，但是常常講一講就專心於劇情，嘴巴忘了動。我自己的發音問題還是在STRESS AND RHYTHM，也就是講話的抑揚頓挫：念一段課文時，腔調能假假地騙人，雖常頓在不該停的地方(PREPOSITION前)，但如果是自主意識講話時就完全回復平平的腔調了，尤其是MICROTEACHING時，一邊思考要講什麼一邊還要注意腔調跟本就不可能嘛。跟電視劇時，思考跟不上聽見的，舌頭跟不上思考，要走的路還長得很。

以下是課程網頁的一些有用資源，趁還能登入的時候COPY下來給需要的人。

Pronunciation Power
http://www.englishlearning.com/choose.html

Free Pronunciation Software
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/
This downloadable computer program enables you to analyze, synthesize, and manipulate speech and pronunciation with visual diagrams representing pitch, rhythm, volume, intonation contours, etc.

Online Dictionary with Transcriptions
http://dictionary.reference.com/
provides sound files as well

An English Pronouncing Dictionary
http://www.howjsay.com/
with instant sound

Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary
http://www.merriam-webster.com/
This dictionary website is free to use, and includes audio clips of everyword in the dictionary. The speakers have United States accents.

Learning English Pronunciation
http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc.htm

English Club English Pronunciation
http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/index.htm

Sounds of English
http://www.soundsofenglish.org/index.html

American English Pronunciation Practice
http://www.manythings.org/pp/
This site provides a series of audio recordings of minimal pair words,followed by quizzes for listening recognition.

Pronunciation Practice Site: Okanagan University
http://international.ouc.bc.ca/pronunciation/
An instructional site that offers free, interactive activities andinstruction on pronunciation of specific sounds, both vowels and consonants,in the English language.

Phonetics Flash Animation
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/
This site contains animated libraries of the phonetic sounds of English.Available for each consonant and vowel is an animated articulatory diagram, astep-by-step description, and video-audio of the sound spoken in context.

English Pronunciation Work Page
http://www.e-pron.com/
Plenty of links to sound files of native speakers, with examples of thepronunciation dynamics we've been studying in class.

Prosody on the Web
http://www.eptotd.btinternet.co.uk/pow/powin.htm
An interactive tutorial site provides both pronunciation and listeninginstruction in three aspects of phrase-level pronunciation: chunking, focusand pitch. British English.

Undergraduate Student Questions Practice
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/studentquestionspractice/home
This site provides very short video clips of the questions that undergraduatestudents commonly ask before & after class and in office hours. TAs canlisten to questions, practice answering, and check transcripts for listeningaccuracy.

Listening Practice
http://eolf.univ-fcomte.fr/index.php?page=tv-commercials
A series of classic advertisements demonstrating stress, intonation, andrhythm.

***[Recommend!] Classic Speeches
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speechbank.htm
Great speeches for better speaking. This site, American Rhetoric, hasspeeches from famous orators (both men and women). Speeches include texttranscripts, and many speeches are available in MP3 format as well. Find aspeaker and speech you like, then use that speech for mirroring practice(speak alongs).

Digital Metronome
http://www.nch.com.au/metronome/index.html
At this web site, you can download a digital metronome to use in rhythmpractice.

Free Audio Editor and Recording Software
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
This link takes you to the Audacity web site, where you can download thisopen-source (free) audio editor and recording software. Audacity is a verynice package, with which you can convert formats and mix files. So you candownload an MP3 formatted speech from American Rhetoric, edit it withAudacity, then upload the result to your MP3 player (or IPOD). Great formirroring work.

Courses of Spring 2009

鑑於這學期慘況，修兩門物理就好，找工作比較要緊啊。

要修：PHYS798N Basic Biophysics for Montion of Cells
Instructor: Michael Fisher！ 還沒有人選這門，不過不管從什麼角度看，我都該修啊。

二選一：
PHYS623 QM2 Approximation Methods和Scattering都不熟，雖然現在正在囫圇吞棗...
PHYS606 EM 想修的理由只有一個：沒被Jackson折磨算念過物理系嗎？

旁聽：PHYS625 Nonrelativistic QM
課名真的叫這個啊...雖然被Tim講了之後覺得沒什麼道理。內容是Manybody。如果要做理論的話，這門課和QFT二選一必修，這學期先旁聽吧，反正人數也爆滿了。