PRAAT is a well develope software tool for pronunciation analysis and practice.  While it was designed for use by linguists specializing in pronunciation analysis, PRAAT works very well as a software for pronunciation practice.

PRAAT can be used to work on discreet sounds/phonemes/morphemes as well as suprasegmental pronunciation and sentence level prosodics.  Your students will also be able to see visual representations of pitch, stress, vocal intensity, sound pulses and other elements that comprise a spoken sound.  When compared with native speaker samples, students can get a very clear visualization of where their pronunciation differs from a sample.

At a very basic level here are a few things you can do with PRAAT:

• record sounds of any length (from single phonemes/morphemes to pages worth of spoken text)
• edit sounds to remove silence (or any other part of a recording)
• see graphic visualizations of the audio including voice waves, pitch, intensity and other key elements
• select any portion of a sound and listen to only that portion
• view multiple recordings on the screen at the same time for comparision (e.g. teacher sample vs. student attempt)
• save single audio samples, or groups of related audio samples
• read in saved audio samples (although they must have been created by PRAAT)
• work on an Apple computer or a PC (and switch back and forth)

PRAAT itself is free software that can be downloaded and installed on any machine.  It is very simple to install and use (at least at a basic level) for pronunciation practice.  Here are a few simple ideas of how you could use PRAAT for pronunciation work in your class.

• minimal pairs
• noun/verb word stress (produce vs. produce)
• question intonation (rising intonation vs. rise/fall intonation)
• short sentence rythm (e.g. "The boy walked down the road")
• problem sounds (e.g. R/L for Japanese speakers, F/V/B for Koreans, Th/D for French speakers etc.)

As a teacher, all you will need to do is make some relevant sample recordings for your students to work with (which can be reused with future pronunciation classes), and then let them work on the samples.

I'm not going to get into the inner workings of PRAAT in this post, that would consume too much space.  Don't worry though, I will go over it in an post in the not too distant future (which I will then link to from here). 

Until then, you can

• DOWNLOAD PRAAT
• Watch this PRAAT video tutorial I've made.  As you watch it keep in mind that it was developed for our lab and so locations of files will be slighly different than how you've installed your version of PRAAT.  The actual working/use of PRAAT will be the same.  Also, the videos are based on a Windows PC, howevver the software works in exactly the same way on a Mac (just how you start it differs slightly).

Then, just play around with it on your own to see how PRAAT pronunciation software can help you and your students improve their pronunciation.  It is a really simple program, but may be confusing to start out with.  Don't let that hold you back, there are some real pronunciation benefits to be had from using this software, and students really enjoy working with it.

Questions?  Comments?  Add them below.

Cheers,

Eric

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