Marlene Dietrich: Falling in Love again – Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss
Marlene in English and German and then again in English, great German accent; followed by Caroline Nin singing franco-anglo-tinged German. ICH BIN VON KOPF BIS FUSS AUF LIEBE EINGESTELLT (Friedrich Holländer) Marlene Dietrich Ein rätselhafter Schimmer, Ein “je ne sais-pas-quoi” Liegt in den Augen immer Bei einer schönen Frau. Doch wenn sich meine Augen Bei […]
Samuel L. Jackson reads “Go the F*ck to Sleep”
Samuel L. Jackson reads the book “Go the F*ck to Sleep” by Adam Mansbach. Not in my parents’ generation, and not among some of my brothers’ families, but I do think “what the f*ck” and other similar phrases using “the fuck” as an intensifier are very prevalent indeed even in everyday family talk. I had […]
Pronunciation of words
Part 1: Individual words In English, words are rarely pronounced the way they are spelled. Here, an online teacher, Melanie (American), provides short video lessons, between 4 and 10 minutes each, contrasting and comparing words that many speakers of other languages find difficult in English. Video 1: said, suit, clothes, recipe, mountain, famous, virus Video […]
Stress and Intonation
These are the videos I posted on the Moodle site for students, for self-study in intonation. All are by the same online teacher, who does a really fabulous job, taking learners into the world of stress patterns with practice sentences like this: Clients get haircuts. Clients will get haircuts. His clients will get haircuts. His […]
Teaching pronunciation using jazz chants
Carol Graham trains teachers how to use jazz chants to teach pronunciation. They’re great energizers and get learners speaking faster than they can think – one of the elements of fluency. I’ll be doing some jazz chants in the telephoning part of a compact course next week, first giving them some jazz chant minis (see […]
Midnight in Paris: Discourse markers
Today my main task was to find examples of discourse markers in context in a movie trailer, explaining their functions in a given utterance. I chose Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen and, because it caught my imagination, transcribed and thought through more than necessary. It’s fun to examine a dialogue and make what is […]
Sound wave: Owa Tana Siam
This brilliant sketch by the late Ronnie Barker is an eye-opener – or an ear-opener! – to how we preempt meaning when we listen. I found it on Abiloon’s lovely blog – full transcript there. I would use this video to raise student awareness for the way we anticipate what the speaker will say next. […]
