Speaking voices in English I like

These are some of the speaking voices in English I like the most, and that I somehow consider ‘models’ of good pronunciation, stress, enunciation…At some points in life, when I have had to do public speaking, I have reminded myself of some of them, thinking, for example: ‘you should show the same poise as Audrey Hepburn when you’re speaking’.

To my mind, their voices are a delight to listen to and might prove a model to imitate when speaking English.

Audrey Hepburn:

Sabrina (1954)

Brian May:

Desert Island Discs (BBC Radio 4)

Benedict Cumberbatch:

‘Sherlock’ (BBC 2010-2017)

The Imitation Game (2014):

Martin Freeman:

Jeremy Irons:

‘Brideshead Revisited’ (Granada TV 1981)

Emma Thompson: 

Much Ado About Nothing (1992)

Nicole Kidman:

The Others (2001)

Hugh Grant:

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)

Notting Hill (1999)

Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie: 

‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ (1987-1995)

Kate Winslet:

Downton Abbey cast:

Michael Sheen:

The Queen (2006)

‘Good Omens’ (Amazon Prime 2019)

Jack Davenport:

‘Coupling’ (BBC 2000-2004)

‘Next of Kin’ (ITV 2018)

TV shows and films about politics and the monarchy

The following TV shows and films deal with aspects of British and American politics, as well as general views on political systems. They can help you gain insight into the history and traditions of those countries, as well as increase your vocabulary on the subject.

UK politics: 

Yes, Minister (1980-1984)/Yes, Prime Minister (1986-1988)- (C2)

The Thick of It (2005-2012) [includes lots of profanity and swearwords]

Love Actually (2003)

One of the many subplots the film deals with involves the British Prime Minister:

The Iron Lady (2011):

Would you like to watch the sessions of the British Parliament live? Click here for BBC Parliament.

British Monarchy: 

The Queen (2006) [B2 and upwards, fairly clear British accents]

The King’s Speech (2010) [B2 and upwards, fairly clear British accents]

The Crown (2016-) [B2 and upwards, fairly clear British accents]

A Very English Scandal (2018) [B2 and upwards, fairly clear British accents]

Years and Years (2019) [show set in Manchester, some Northern accents are noticeable]

US politics: 

All the President’s Men (1976)

The West Wing (1999-2006)

(from 1’30”)

House of Cards (2013-2018)

Veep (2012-2019)

General views on politics: 

The Great Dictator (1940):

V for Vendetta (2005) [B2 and upwards- international cast, but most of them use British English RP pronunciations, regardless of their original accents]

The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-)

Words in the news: I’d rather be dead in a ditch

Boris Johnson is known for his shocking, non PC use of language, usually making sensational claims. And yet, it might prove interesting for English learners. For example, as the London mayor back in 2015 he said he would lie in front of the bulldozers to stop a third runway from being built at Heathrow airport.

This is what Boris Johnson said about  the prospect of yet another delay to Brexit in early September 2019, as the Prime Minister (start at 00.45′):

I’d rather be dead in a ditch (than ask for a Brexit extension).

Later in the year, in October, after a defeat in the House of Commons, whereby Johnson was forced to write to the EU asking for an extension, this is what Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader and Johnson’s political opponent, said:

‘The Prime Minister has not deigned to grace us with his presence today, but I’m reassured, Mr. Speaker, that despite his pledge, he is not to be found anywhere in a ditch.’

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0009kz3

Tools to check whether language sounds natural or not, and to improve the level of a production

• Dictionaries: some of the dictionaries I tend to recommend at B2 level and upwards are the Cambridge Dictionary (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/) and the Oxford Thesaurus (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/, choose ‘Thesaurus’ in the dropdown menu). Ideas on how to use a dictionary here to improve writing tasks here: https://natalialzam.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/how-to-improve-your-writing-tasks-b2-c1/  
• Grammarly (https://www.grammarly.com):  Add-on which checks for spelling mistakes, and suggests possible grammar mistakes through Artificial Intelligence. Its suggestions tend to be accurate/useful. 
• Fraze.it (https://fraze.it): A database of online newspapers and magazines which may come in handy when trying to make sure that a given collocation sounds natural. Type your collocation into the search box, and if it can find those words, it will yield real examples where this expression appears. Once there, you can also click for more context. If your collocation exists, you will find a list of examples; if it does not, or is not very frequent, no or very few examples will appear.
• Flax (http://flax.nzdl.org/greenstone3/flax?a=fp&sa=collAbout&c=collocations): enter a word, and how words form into collocational patterns will be revealed by looking across different academic and social corpora.

The following links provide further ideas and resources on how to check whether the language produced sounds natural, or to widen the range of vocabulary used to meet the requirements of B2-C1-C2 levels:

• https://natalialzam.wordpress.com/2019/02/12/online-collocation-dictionaries/
• https://natalialzam.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/how-to-improve-your-writing-tasks-b2-c1/

Queen landmarks in London

You can find below a map with London areas related to the rock band Queen. It includes some of their former homes, as well as landmarks in their career (for example, the venue where they played their first ever gig).

Tools to improve pronunciation and phonological control

• Forvo (https://forvo.com): it’s a ‘living’ pronunciation dictionary: native speakers from all over the world record themselves pronouncing words, names,  place names… It can be useful to show real pronunciations from real speakers, but also to show different geographical varieties. 
• YouGlish (http://youglish.com/): Search engine of keywords inside YouTube videos. It will start playing the videos at the exact point where the keyword is being uttered. The video is played with subtitles. It can also be used to look for videos about a specific topic (by looking for a certain keyword). A similar search engine, but relying on a database made up of TV shows can be found here: http://playphrase.me/#/search
• More ideas and information about these sites can be found here:   https://natalialzam.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/para-profesores-en-apuros/.
• Online dictionaries: The Cambridge dictionary (https://dictionary.cambridge.org) offers both British and American pronunciations in their transcriptions and sound files; the Macmillan dictionary (https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us) can be especially useful for copying and pasting IPA symbols.
• Online Phonetizer (https://www.phonetizer.com/ui): Copy and paste text onto the box, and the website will automatically transcribe it. The text can also be read aloud; at the time of writing, however, the British voice sounds more ‘natural’ than its American counterpart. More information on this blog post:   https://natalialzam.wordpress.com/2019/02/20/phonetizer-automatic-phonemic-transcriptions/.

ICT tools and apps to record/promote spoken production and co-production/interaction

• Seesaw:  Seesaw (https://web.seesaw.me) allows students to create digital portfolios. It also allows both teachers and students to record videos giving explanations, presentations; to give feedback to students or to create tutorials. More information on the tool can be found here. 
• Audio recording apps or Talk and Comment (Chrome add-on) to allow students to record their own voices giving explanations, or simply record their individual productions so that they can listen again to themselves, and think of ways of improving it.
• Jamboard (https://gsuite.google.com/products/jamboard/): A collaborative digital whiteboard on the cloud for students to be able to brainstorm and share ideas and jot them down in real time. Ideas can be recorded by typing or by handwriting, even using digital sticky notes. 
• Flipgrid (https://flipgrid.com/): a video discussion platform, which can be restricted to members of the classroom only. Flipgrid proves to be a more interesting way to promote overall oral communicative competence, which also allows the teacher to create a rubric to assess performance.
• Padlet (http://padlet.com/): collaborative online board which may be useful for example, for both intralinguistic (https://padlet.com/natalialzam/vegans_idioms) and cross-linguistic mediation activities for example, for students to explain the meaning of idioms (https://natalialzam.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/cross-linguistic-mediation-easter-related-idioms-in-spanish-explained-in-english/).
• Green Screen apps and software: Green Screen by Do Ink, TouchCast Studio or ChromaVid: For more information on how to use a green screen in the language classroom, please read https://natalialzam.wordpress.com/2018/03/18/guia-rapida-para-grabar-videos-con-croma-en-clase/