Using Audacity for Pronunciation/Speech

This Audacity with Lame tool offers the possibility for students and teachers to record themselves. I find it to be a great tool for ESL students because it allows them to hear their own speech and to be able to practice their pronunciation when reading and lecturing in English. English pronunciation is unpredictable. If you don’t put effort into English pronunciation, you will make mistakes, and mistakes can turn into bad habits. The longer pronunciation is not worked on, the more bad habits will be formed! So don’t put it off. Often new language learners find it hard to speak the language due to its challenging oral aspect. The irregularity of the English spelling system has an unfortunate consequence: when a student learns an English word, he/she has to learn not only its spelling, but also its pronunciation. However by practicing those oral skills using Audacity students will be able to hear their own speeches, correct and practice their pronunciation with feedback and resources.
English uses different sounds than native languages. If a student wants to speak English well, he/she will have to teach her/himself to recognize them and pronounce them.
That is why I recommend learners to use a dictionary online to look up pronunciations while reading in English. This should happen very frequently with pronunciation beginners.
Moreover, dictionaries give phonetic transcription which makes the sounds contains in the word clear. If an ESL hears a word, the student may hear it wrong; for example, hearing /æ/ where there is an /e/. To know more about the phonetics of the American English in this link.

As you learn the pronunciations of the most common words (from a dictionary or from spoken input), you will use the dictionary less and less.
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