How can I pronounce this word?

Salam everyone, 

                                                          (Salam: Peace in arabic, used for greetings)

Has any of your students ever asked you  "how can I pronounce this word ?" the only right answer for this question is "DUH!", 

We both know that we are not a walking dictionary that knows how to pronounce every word, so how can we help our students learn how to pronounce a certain word? 

       Youglish, is here for the rescue 😁💪

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What is Youglish ?

Youglish is an online tool that can assist you in pronouncing words different languages*

        * I'll be only reviewing English because this is my area of interest.

Why Youglish ?

1. You have plenty of English dialects to choose from 

                            

2. There a section that offers tips to enhance your pronunciation 

                                

3) it's mostly free

4) You get to use and engage your listening and visual skills using the videos and transcriptions.

5) You can find your word in different sentences/usages.

                                            

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Relevance to teaching and learning English 

1) Why would this be relevant to your teaching or learning English? because our main purpose of learning & teaching is to communicate our needs better whatever they may be. Knowing the right way to pronounce a word will assist that. 

2) Students can use the phonetics section to learn more about their words which helps them say them better.

3) Youglish encourages active learning because you have to find everything on your own.

4) Students can use it to learn about the usual context of a word.

5) Students can learn about different topics and cultures and can discuss them eventually.

6) Using videos in teaching speaking helps students develop fluency levels, according to this article

    - I would use this in my classroom to show my students a source that they can go to, to check their pronunciation. 

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Using Youglish 

Try Youglish with this link  using my steps :)

- Go to the home page, then type whatever word or phrase you'd like to learn how to pronounce in the "search for" section, then choose what dialect you want.

                                    

                This is what you'll get once you press "say it", here I typed the word "happy"

        

- The search will give you all the YouTube videos that have the word happy in them (128664 videos in this case) & will take you immediately to the where the word is exactly mentioned in.

- Starting from the left, you can go back, go back 5 seconds, replay, play, move to the next video as shown below 

                           

- You can change the speed of the video, increase or decrease the size of the video screen, choose a light or dark screen as shown below 

                                            

- You will have a transcription of the video under it like this

                                    

           
- If you press the blue box on the right side of your transcription, you'll see that you can search for  whatever part you want from the video and you can replay it: 

                                        

- If you press on any word from the transcription, it will turn red and will give you tons of info about your word: (translation, synonym, usages, and definitions)

                                  

- Under your transcription, you'll see options to share the video, save it, record yourself talking or go straight to the original video on YouTube.

                                            

 - Under the video,  there's a phonetics section, which teaches you about the phonetics of your word.

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Limitations 

👎 The "record" option is not really user friendly, I think a whole section for recording would make it more practical.

👎 Students will not get a feedback about their pronunciation, so they'll self assist. 

👎 Teachers can't control the content that shows up to their students.

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So, will you add this to your resources section for your class ?, let me know in the comments 😇💕