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How to improve your English speaking

Are you looking for ways to develop your English speaking skills? Here are four tips to improve your fluency, pronunciation, accuracy and conversation skills.

If you're looking for ways to improve your spoken communication in English, you're not alone. 

'How can I improve my English speaking skills?' is one of the most popular questions we get asked. 

So here's what everyone wants to know. Read on for four tips to improve your fluency, pronunciation, accuracy and conversation skills in English.

Speak English to practise and improve

Speaking a language is a skill, like driving a car, playing a musical instrument or learning to swim. 

To be a good driver, you need to practise driving. You can read a book about car mechanics. You can study the rules of the road. But nothing is as good for your driving as spending time behind the wheel of a car, actually driving.

It's the same with speaking English. No matter how much you study grammar and vocabulary, if you don't practise spoken communication, it's very difficult to get good at it. 

So maybe you talk to yourself in English as you go about your day. Or maybe you look for opportunities to chat in English with people you meet. But however you do it, the most powerful way to improve your English speaking skills is to use them. 

Find people to talk to

OK, so you want to practise, but who can you speak English with? 

Do you know anybody in your network who speaks English? Maybe you have friends or colleagues at work that you can speak English with. 

If not, look for 'meetups', social events for people interested in practising languages. Or what about a language exchange? You find someone who is learning your language, and in exchange they speak to you in English. A language exchange app can also be a great way to find a conversation partner. (Remember to stay safe when connecting with new people in person or online.)

Practising English socially is fun! You get to know new people. You use your English for real communication. You adapt to each other's level and direct your own learning.

All this means you learn the skills and language you need fast. And you don't forget them.

Record yourself speaking

Listening to a recording of your own voice can feel strange. Especially talking in English.

But, once you get used to it, recording yourself speaking can be a powerful tool for improvement.

The big thing it helps is confidence. I bet you, the first thing you notice when you listen back is that you speak English better than you thought!

Another thing is pronunciation, or just feeling the words in your mouth. Speaking a foreign language is a physical workout for your mouth, and you want to get in the gym!

You're also practising fluency. Next time you have to talk about that same topic, the ideas and words will flow more easily.

By training yourself to notice and correct mistakes, you'll improve your accuracy too.

Work on your listening skills

Watching series and films in English, or listening to audio designed for your level, is great for your pronunciation and intonation. 

Listening to English is also a good way to notice how grammar is used or to pick up new words and phrases.

But not only all of that! 

Here's the big one. 

Being a good listener is a really important part of a good conversation. We often forget this when we're concentrating on what we're going to say.

You don't even need to be that good at speaking English. If you can listen, understand and show interest, people will absolutely love talking to you.

And that means more English speaking practice, more opportunities to improve your speaking and more of that lovely, warm feeling that happens when you use your English to connect with someone.

Enjoy improving your spoken communication in English! Choose one tip from this article and start improving your English speaking skills right away.

How confident do you feel about speaking English?

My speech is a work in progress, and I'm eager to enhance my English . I aspire to speak fluently without self-doubt in front of others. Any guidance or learning resources would be greatly appreciated. I believe that having a supportive friend to practice with will be incredibly beneficial in my quest to speak English fluently without doubting myself.

• Log in or register to post comments

Hi FayAriff,

The best way to practise speaking is, of course, to speak with others so see if there is a group you can participate in where you live. Simply meeting up socially and making English the language of the evening is a good way to develop fluency and confidence.

Listening is also a good way to improve speaking. Hearing natural speech will help you to develop a sense of English's rhythm and cadence, as well as its sounds. As you listen to recordings, you can try to speak along with them if you have a transcript. This will help to to learn the speed and rhythm of natural speech, where to pause and where to speed up, where to place stress and how to modulate your voice in terms of intonation. The recordings on our video and audio pages have transcripts which you can use for this:

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/general-english/video-zone

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/general-english/audio-zone

Finally, a good way to develop confidence and fluency by yourself is to reply to what you hear when listening to the radio or TV, or what you see or hear online. As you listen to a radio show or a news broadcast, for example, try commenting in English in real time, even if the original show is in your own language. It's a great way to develop speed and confidence. I used to direct my comments at my cat when I was learning a language. I'd listen to the radio and comment to the cat (who was very patient), and in this way I could practise the language for hours alone at home. It didn't teach me any new grammar or vocabulary but I because very fluent and very confident in speaking - so much so that people assumed I was much better than I was when they heard me speak.

I hope those tips are useful.

The LearnEnglish Team

The information on how you can develop the ability to speak is very interesting and I totally agree that the most important thing is to practice it and that it is better with a native speaker, so you can tell if you have assertive communication. . It's a bit difficult for me to understand the jokes, some phrases like in Spanish have different connotations like "spill the beans" which you actually use when you want someone to tell you everything they gossip about. I think the idioms are infinite to memorize them all but as I already mentioned it is very important to practice it as long as possible, in my opinion the best way is to speak it to survive.

Yes I am interested

am here to learn fluent in English

Hey i wanna connect to someone who would love to learn speaking english

Hi bhuvangour,

Just a reminder that sharing personal contact details is not allowed in our  House rules (linked) . However, you are very welcome to interact with other people by posting messages and replying to comments here on this site. Thanks!

LearnEnglish team

Hy please connect with me.

Hi women45,

Yes when you read any topic then improve our readings skills

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• 5 Famous Speeches To Help you Learn English

• Posted on 16/06/2021
• Categories: Blog
• Tags: Famous Speeches , Listening , Listening Comprehension , Resources to learn English , Speaking

Everyone likes listening to inspiring speeches. Gifted speakers have a way of making people want to listen and take action to change their lives.

But speeches aren’t just interesting because of their content. They are also great tools to help you improve your English.

Listening to a speech and taking notes can help you develop your comprehension skills. Repeating the words of the speaker allows you to improve your pronunciation. And writing a summary can help you practise your spelling and grammar.

To help you get started, we’ve found 5 famous speeches to help you learn English.

1. Steve Jobs: Stanford Commencement Speech

Steve Jobs was no doubt a great speaker. Millions around the globe were enchanted by the presentations that he gave for Apple as the company’s CEO.

However, he wasn’t just known for speeches related to product launches , like the iconic 2007 speech where he introduced the iPhone . He’s also known for inspirational speeches, like the one he gave in 2005 at a Stanford Commencement ceremony.

In this speech, he addresses the graduating students of Stanford University. He starts by saying that he never actually graduated from college. This makes for an honest and heart-warming speech . For nearly 15 minutes, he talks about his life, telling stories that are funny, relatable, and emotional. He also offers tips for students to apply to their own lives.

Why is it good for learning English?

Jobs uses simple language and speaks in short sentences. He clearly pronounces every word so it’s easy to understand and mimic. Also, this video comes with big subtitles that make the speech even easier to follow.

2. Greta Thunberg: 2019 UN Climate Action Summit Speech

At just 18 years old, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is one of the most well-known speakers of our time. Some of her speeches have even gone viral on social media. And her powerful words have been repeated thousands of times on climate strike placards around the world.

In one of her most moving speeches, Greta Thunberg addresses world leaders at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in New York. She challenges them for not taking action to fight global warming and ensure a future for the younger generations.

“How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” she says.

Greta’s speech is a lesson in how to express yourself on a variety of environmental issues like climate change. It’s full of lots of useful vocabulary. Plus, the subtitles will help you to understand any complicated language!

3. Will Smith: Speech About Self Discipline

You probably know Will Smith as an actor. He’s played a wide variety of characters – from a police officer in Men in Black to a single father in The Pursuit of Happyness . But did you know that he’s also a great motivational speaker?

A few years ago, a video featuring Will Smith talking about the secret to success went viral on YouTube. In it, he talks about mastering self-discipline as a way to achieve your dreams.

“You cannot win the war against the world if you can’t win the war against your own mind,” he says.

As an actor, Will Smith has a clear and compelling voice, which is easy to follow. Some parts of this talk also sound improvised so it’s great for practising natural speech. It’s also excellent listening practice for understanding an American accent. And there’s lots of slang which you’ll have to guess from the context.

4. Emma Watson: Gender Equality Speech

You may associate Emma Watson’s name with Hermione Granger, the quirky and smart witch from the Harry Potter movies. When she’s not chasing evil wizards, Emma Watson campaigns for real-world issues such as gender equality.

In one of her most famous speeches, which she gave at a special event for the UN’s HeForShe campaign, Emma Watson talks about feminism and fighting for women’s rights. In particular, she explains why neither of these should be confused with ‘man-hating’.

While the actress’s voice is pleasant and calming, the issues she talks about are thought-provoking and will leave you thinking long after this short, 4-minute speech.

This talk is great for helping you get used to a southern English accent. It can also give you some essential vocabulary about a relevant topic. Look out for uses of the passive voice in her speech, and write down those sentences to practise this grammar structure.

5. Benjamin Zander: The Transformative Power of Classical Music

Benjamin Zander is the musical director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. He is also a well-known motivational speaker who loves to share his love for music.

In his 2008 TED talk, he found an engaging way to talk about classical music to people who know nothing about it. As you can see in the video below, he switches between speaking and playing the piano. And, he isn’t afraid to tell a joke or two.

This speech is a bit more of a challenge than the ones described above. Benjamin Zander speaks fast and in a conversational style, using many examples and short stories to tell his tale .

However, the pauses he takes to play the piano give you time to take some notes. Write down any unfamiliar words you heard him say so you can look them up later. If you’re having trouble understanding him, you can always turn on the subtitles.

Glossary for Language Learners

Find the following words in the article and then write down any new ones you didn’t know.

Gifted (adj): talented.

To enchant (v): to captivate.

Launch (n): a product release.

Heart-warming (adj): emotional.

To go viral (v): something spreads quickly on the internet.

Placards (n): cardboard signs.

Moving (adj): emotional.

Compelling (adj): captivating.

Quirky (adj): interesting and different.

Thought-provoking (adj): something interesting that makes you think a lot about the topic.

To switch (v): to change.

Tale (n): story.

To look something up (v): to search for a piece of information in a dictionary or online.

adj = adjective

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How To Write A B2 First Formal Email/Letter

• By: oxfordadmin
• Posted on 01/06/2021

8 Resources To Help Beginner English Learners

• Posted on 23/06/2021

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How to learn to speak English at home, online & for free: Improve your spoken English today!

Are you eager to improve your spoken English and communicate fluently?

Many English learners understand a lot of vocabulary and have good reading comprehension but don’t know how to start speaking english in the real world.

If this sounds like you, we’re here to help with some fantastic resources and tips to help you learn to speak English at home , without needing to attend lessons in a classroom. Even better: many of them are completely free!

So, whether you’re a beginner or an advanced learner, get ready to unlock your full potential and see real progress in your language abilities.

And if you just want to know the best platforms to improve your English speaking , here’s a quick summary of the ones we recommend:

• Short, interactive lessons
• Focus on everyday topics
• Speech recognition technology
• Receive immediate feedback on pronunciation
• Get started for free
• Upgrade to Premium from $4/month

• Live lessons (private or group)
• Choose from thousands of English tutors
• Available 24/7
• Different specialties and accents
• From $5/hour
• 50% off your first lesson

• Combine private and group lessons
• Excellent online materials
• Choose topics to suit you
• Intensive courses available
• Classes run 24/7
• Free 7-day trial

How to learn English speaking at home

Let’s begin with some tips for learning to speak English that you can do from home.

Create opportunities to practice daily

The best way to become more confident speaking English is to start doing it, even if it’s just talking out loud to yourself at first. Get used to the sound and flow of different words.

You can watch videos or movies or listen to podcasts – anything where you can hear native English speakers – and try to copy what they say.

Next, you want to receive some feedback on how you sound. You could find a language partner to practice with, or use a language app with voice recognition technology and daily lessons (more on these in a moment).

Then, start to practice speaking English in meaningful ways. Whether it’s chatting with friends and family or taking lessons with a tutor to work towards your goals for learning English , the more you practice, the more confident you’ll become.

Immerse yourself in the language

Immersion is one of the most effective ways to improve your English skills without feeling like you’re studying all the time.

Things you can do at home to create an immersive English environment include:

• Listening to English music or radio stations
• Watching English TV shows, movies, or YouTube channels
• Writing a daily journal
• Reading English books, newspapers, or magazines
• Labeling household items with English words
• Setting your phone or computer language to English
• Playing games in English
• Cooking recipes in English
• Leaving sticky notes around the house with new words or phrases you want to learn

Even things that don’t directly contribute to your listening skills will help you broaden your knowledge of the language and begin to think in English.

We have a separate guide on how to learn English through immersion , so check that out for full details of what it involves and how to do it at home.

And of course, if you already live in a country where English is the native language, you’re naturally immersed in it in many other ways each day.

Use online tools to develop your English speaking skills

This is an amazing time to be learning a language! In the last few years there have been huge advancements in technology which make it easier than ever to learn to speak English online.

There are two main categories of online platforms for speaking English: language apps and online classes .

Online classes with a live tutor offer the obvious benefit of receiving immediate feedback from a real person on your pronunciation. The downside is that a course of lessons is usually more expensive than an app-based course.

However, some apps for learning English have speech recognition technology that lets you repeat words and phrases until you get them just right.

Most people would benefit from combining both approaches to learning spoken English, but we understand that not everyone has the budget for this.

Here are some platforms you can try, either for free or with a special trial price, to see which ones you prefer:

• Preply: Live language classes with a personal tutor of your choice. Select from thousands of tutors with different accents, specialties, and pricing. Get 50% off your first lesson .
• British Council: English courses and excellent online resources from the company behind IELTS. Mix and match private and group classes. 7 day free trial .
• Mondly: With a focus on teaching you the kinds of words and phrases you’ll use in everyday life, this app has speech recognition technology to assess your pronunciation of new vocabulary. Access teaching in over 40 languages. Get started for free .
• Busuu: 10-minute lessons supported by voice recognition technology to give immediate feedback on your pronunciation. Try it for free .
• Rocket Languages: Interactive materials and a flexible learning schedule, with exercises that let you repeat the phrases you hear and give feedback on your speaking. Try for free .

Learn in a way that suits you

Different people have different learning styles, and you’ll learn to speak English most effectively if you match your study methods to your learning style .

For example, a visual learner may enjoy making flashcards with vocabulary and pronunciation to repeat to themselves. An auditory learner may learn best by listening to audio and repeating it back. And a kinesthetic learner might enjoy acting out role plays as they practice speaking English.

Incorporating your learning style into your study plan will get you closer to speaking English fluently, faster.

Where to learn to speak English free

Many of the tools we mentioned above are available for free, or with a free trial. Here are some additional free resources for learning English speaking:

• A free lesson on Small Talk and Conversational Vocabulary on Coursera
• Speak English with Tiffani on YouTube
• BBC Learning English on YouTube
• Free language exchange apps

You may also want to see if there are any free English courses near you . These are sometimes provided by libraries or community centers in English-speaking countries so that English learners in the community can improve their English skills.

Resources to learn to speak English for beginners

Beginner English speakers often feel overwhelmed with the amount of information available. The key is to start with the basics and gradually move to more complex concepts.

Here are some resources that can help beginners get started speaking English:

• Mondly: This language-learning app is great for beginners. It starts with basic vocabulary and simple sentences, and gradually introduces more complex concepts. The app also provides instant feedback on your answers and rewards you for consistency. Get started with Mondly for free .
• Udemy: This Intensive Spoken English Course for Beginners is amazing value with over 75 hours of lectures to work through, taking you from complete beginner to intermediate level.
• BBC Learning English: This website offers a wide range of resources for English learners, including grammar lessons, vocabulary exercises, and listening activities. It also features a section specifically designed for beginners .
• Voice of America: Over 50 free English lessons for Beginning Level 1, plus other helpful resources for those just starting out with learning English.

Remember, the key to learning English is consistency. Make sure to practice a little bit every day. Over time, you will see significant improvements in your English speaking skills.

How to master English pronunciation

Good pronunciation is crucial for speaking English well and communicating clearly. Mispronounced words are a common cause of misunderstanding in conversations.

To improve your pronunciation, learn how words flow together rather than pronouncing each word individually. This approach will make your speech sound more natural and help you become more familiar with English language patterns.

FluentU is a good platform to use if you want to learn from real-life video clips and observe how people speak naturally.

Tongue twisters are also a fun form of English speaking practice that can improve your diction, pronunciation, and speaking speed.

How to learn to speak American English

Many people learning spoken English naturally pick up a slightly American accent because it’s so prevalent in the movies and TV shows you watch.

However, if you want to deliberately learn American English speaking and get your accent as natural as possible, here are some things you can do:

• Take this free American English pronunciation course
• Take classes with an American tutor on Preply
• Familiarize yourself with some American idioms
• Take this American English accent reduction course from a voice coach
• Watch any movies or TV shows with American actors!

How to learn to speak British English

What if you’d rather learn how to speak English with a British accent? Here are some ways to sound more like a British native speaker:

• Watch some classic British TV shows
• Take this course to learn to speak English with a clear British accent
• Take classes with a British tutor on Preply
• Brush up on some British idioms
• Take a British Council English course

Learning to speak English fluently

It takes a lot of dedication and practice to speak English fluently , but here are some tips for how to approach it:

Don’t forget about vocabulary and grammar

We have been focusing on how to learn spoken English, but don’t neglect learning English words and practicing grammar .

A native English speaker knows 20,000 to 35,000 words on average , and that does not include phrases and idiomatic expressions. So, as an English learner, you have a lot of ground to cover!

An important aspect of communicating fluently is being able to select the right words to precisely convey the intended meaning. The same goes for using the correct tense and structuring sentences coherently.

But don’t get caught up on speaking perfect English

If your goal is to speak perfect English, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Although grammar, syntax, and word choice are important, they should not be your primary focus when improving your spoken English.

Fluency is not the same as perfection; you don’t need to be perfect to achieve effective communication, convey your message clearly, and connect with others successfully.

Many people struggle to learn spoken English because they are afraid of making mistakes and so they hold back.

Here are some ways you can overcome that fear and anxiety and speak confidently:

• Start small with short conversations about topics you are familiar with (here are some small talk tips and conversation starters to help)
• Have a safe person to practice speaking English with; someone who knows you are learning and won’t criticize your mistakes
• Prepare what you want to say ahead of time, when possible
• Practice active listening , so you can respond appropriately and build connections with others
• Embrace mistakes and see them as opportunities to learn more, not signs of failure
• Take group classes on a platform like Preply or British Council so you get used to talking with other students and understanding different accents

Learn to think in English

Training your brain to think in English is a powerful technique that can improve your fluency and make speaking English feel natural to you.

By internalizing the language and becoming more familiar with its patterns and structures, you can process information and formulate thoughts directly in English without having to mentally translate from your native language.

Engage in real-life conversations

Chances are you are learning English for use in your own life, whether it’s for a job, travel, or further education.

Therefore, at some point you need to graduate from English learning apps and online lessons to having real-world conversations . This approach allows you to experience English as it is truly spoken and helps you refine your language abilities in a more practical setting.

Here are some places you can find opportunities to converse with others in English :

• Language exchanges
• Social media groups
• Local meetups
• Trips to English-speaking countries (or any other countries where English is commonly spoken)

Enjoy talking to different people, whether they are native speakers of English or other languages. Not only will it build your confidence and fluency, but you’ll probably learn interesting things about their lives – and perhaps make good friends!

Learning to speak English opens up countless opportunities to talk to other people all over the world, whether online or in your daily life.

Although it may feel daunting to have a conversation with limited language skills, you will learn faster if you embrace every opportunity you get to practice speaking English.

Taking private or group lessons with an English teacher is one of the most effective ways to improve your English speaking. However, there are plenty of free tools and resources also available for those with a limited budget.

We hope you have found this guide useful, and it motivates you to take some fresh steps toward being able to communicate in English with confidence.

How can I teach myself to speak English?

You can teach yourself to speak English by imitating others and practicing speaking English every day. Listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos, talk to real people and ask questions, and even consider going abroad to practice.

What are the benefits of immersing myself in English every day?

Immersing yourself in English every day is essential to building fluency and strengthening your knowledge of the language. It lets you soak in new information without it feeling like studying.

How can taking English lessons help improve my speaking skills?

Taking English lessons with a tutor can help you to learn faster, receive real-time feedback, and accelerate your improvement in speaking English.

What should be the goal when speaking English?

The goal when speaking English should be to effectively communicate your message, not to strive for perfect grammar or sentence structure.

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How to Greatly Improve Your English Pronunciation in 15 Steps

Learning to pronounce English words correctly can be one of the hardest parts of learning English , especially if there are sounds that your native language doesn’t have or you tend to get tripped up by tricky vowel pronunciation.

See how “way,” “weigh” and “whey”   are all said the same, while “comb,” “bomb” and “tomb” are all pronounced differently?

That’s why I have 15 tips for you, to help you pronounce even the trickiest English words correctly.

1. Learn to listen.

2. learn with the best english pronunciation dictionaries online., 3. notice how your mouth and lips move., 4. pay attention to your tongue., 5. break words down into sounds., 6. add stress to sounds and words., 7. ask yourself which dialect of english you want to learn., 8. exaggerate certain sounds (make them bigger)., 9. write out difficult words by their sounds., 10. write down what you hear., 11. practice with tongue twisters., 12. use pronunciation podcasts and videos., 13. record yourself., 14. practice with a buddy., 15. speak as much as you can..

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Before you learn how to speak, you’ll need to learn how to listen. Some sounds can be hard to tell apart when you’re listening. Did the speaker sleep or slip ? Did he hurt his chin or his shin ? If you can hear the difference, it will be easier to speak the difference.

There are many guides to get you started in learning to listen. We have some great articles here about learning to listen from movies , songs and music  and podcasts . You can also find listening exercises online, like this one from Rong-chang .

The pronunciation practice at Many Things  is really slick, especially its huge selection of lessons on  minimal pairs . Minimal pairs are pairs of words like sleep  and  slip, that are only different by one sound. You can click on each word to hear a complete sentence with each, then quiz yourself in the second box and click the correct answer.

You probably already use a dictionary to translate English words, but online or digital dictionaries can offer many additional benefits, including pronunciation guides . These kinds of dictionaries are some of the most useful tools you can have for practicing English pronunciation. Best of all, they’re available online for free!

Here are some of the best pronunciation dictionaries you can find and use online.

Google Translate

Website | iOS | Android

You may have already used Google Translate during your English studies. Google Translate is an easy-to-use translator that also provides pronunciation guides for single words and whole sentences. As soon as you get to Google Translate’s interface, you can look up any word and it will give you a number of definitions and an audio pronunciation.

If you’re just looking for pronunciation help, type in Google search “how to say (insert word).” You will get both an audio pronunciation guide (which you can slow down) and a visual guide that shows how your mouth should move when saying the word.

Forvo is a user-generated pronunciation guide in which native speakers submit audio clips of themselves saying certain words or phrases. You can look up a word, learn its definition and listen to how different people from different places say it. There are also pronunciations for whole sentences and phrases as well!

Forvo is well-liked because real people are the ones speaking the words. You can also see how certain speakers are ranked in their pronunciations; the pronunciations with the most likes may be the ones you should focus on.

Because the audio submissions can come from all over the world, you can listen to how the same word is said in different regional accents; the importance of this will be discussed in more detail later on.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Merriam-Webster is also known as “America’s most useful and well-known dictionary.” It’s no surprise then that it’s here on this list! The dictionary offers detailed definitions and information about the words you look up, as well as clear, good-quality audio pronunciations.

You can also download the free app version of this dictionary, which comes with some special features. With the app, you can search for words by speaking them out loud into your device’s microphone—this is great for when you don’t know how to spell a word, but it’s also good speaking practice. If there are any words that interest you, you can save them into your own “favorites” list.

WordReference

WordReference is a helpful multilingual dictionary. It supports translations for a lot of languages, so if your native language is included, you can find a word in English by writing it out in your language, or search for English words and get translations in your language. This is very helpful when you want to make sure you’re getting the right translations.

WordReference also lets you listen to audio pronunciations in different English accents, more than many other dictionaries. Most online dictionaries may just offer one British pronunciation and one American pronunciation, but WordReference also specifies other specific accents such as Irish, Scottish, American Southern and even Jamaican. After you look up a word, you can click on the “Listen” button to pick the accent you want to hear and change the speed of the audio.

Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries

Oxford’s online dictionary, provided by the well-respected Oxford University Press, is a great resource for beginner learners. Sometimes, dictionaries can offer a lot of information that can make things confusing—Oxford’s dictionary takes out a lot of the confusion and gives you the main things you need. The definitions are written in an easy-to-understand manner and you get plenty of example sentences that show you how the word is used.

The dictionary has two pronunciation options: you can listen to the word spoken in British English or in American English. The pronunciations are done by different male and female humans (not robots!), which can be great for your listening practice.

Collins Online Dictionary

This dictionary offers most of what the other listed dictionaries have, but with some extra audio features. Once you look up a word, Collins dictionary also provides audio pronunciation of the word in its different forms (such as in past tense or participle form). There are even audio pronunciations for the example sentences that show the word in use, which can be very useful when you want to practice speaking in whole phrases.

Collins dictionary provides slightly different definitions: the first “Collins” definition, the second “British English” definition and the third “American English” definition. With each definition section, you can hear either the British or American pronunciation of the word. In some cases, there may even be a video clip of a real person saying the word!

One thing to note is that the example sentence pronunciations are done by a text-to-speech robot instead of a human. However, the voice doesn’t sound too unnatural or strange, so you can still find these pronunciations helpful!

A dictionary is a study tool that you’ll always want to have around when you’re studying and practicing English. If you ever learn a new word and aren’t sure how to pronounce it, then a dictionary with audio functions can give you immediate help.

When you speak, you move your mouth. How you move your mouth affects how you pronounce a word.

The first step to correcting your mouth shape is to notice it and pay attention. There are a few ways you can check that your mouth and lips are making the correct shape:

• Use a mirror.  This is by far the simplest way to tell what your mouth is doing while you talk.
• Put a finger in front of your lips (like you’re saying “shh”). As you speak, don’t move your finger. You should feel your lips moving away from or pushing against your finger.

Watch other people and notice the shape their mouth and lips make when they talk. Try following along with your favorite TV show or movie. Can you repeat the faces and sounds that the actors are making ?

There are guides and pictures online that will help you learn how to move your mouth. Sounds of English has some good explanations for pronouncing specific words. This guide is for people making 3D animations, but the pictures are a great start to understanding how your mouth should look when you speak.

You can also find great videos showing how to properly form the mouth and lip shapes when you’re speaking, like this one from Georgie Harding :

Feeling stiff? Loosen up your mouth and tongue and get ready to practice your speech with this fun warm-up exercise from Howcast !

The main difference between rice and lice is in your tongue. When you speak, you move your tongue to make sounds. You probably didn’t even notice that, since you do it without thinking. To improve your English pronunciation, it’s a good idea to check what your tongue is doing.

Some difficult sounds for non-native speakers to make are the letters “L” and “R,” and the sound “TH.” Pronouncing them correctly is all in the tongue!

Image Source

• To make the “L” sound , your tongue should touch the back of your front teeth and the top of your mouth, just behind your teeth. Try it now: Say the word “light.” Say it a few times. Feel where your tongue is in your mouth. Make sure it touches the top of your mouth. 
• To make the “R” sound , your tongue should not  touch the top of your mouth. Pull your tongue back to the middle of your mouth, near where it naturally rests if you weren’t saying anything. As you say the sound, your lips should be a little rounded. Try it now: Say the word “right” a few times. You should feel air blowing between your tongue and the top of your mouth as you speak. You should also feel your lips get a little rounder when you make the sound.

Check out this video about to learn how to pronounce 20 of the most commonly used words in English:

There are many other pronunciation guides on YouTube, so look around for one that helps you master the sounds of the language!

If you can’t figure out what to do with your tongue to make the right sound, try asking someone. Ask them to say a word with that sound, then tell you where they put their tongue. They’ve probably never thought about it before, either!

Words are made up of syllables, or parts. The word “syllable,” for example, has three syllables: syl-la-ble. Turning words into parts can make them easier to pronounce.

To check how many syllables a word has, place your hand flat just under your chin. Say the word slowly. Each time your chin touches your hand, that’s a syllable.

You can even write the word down in parts. Leave a space or draw a line between each syllable (every syllable should have at least one vowel: a, e, i, o, u, y). Now try saying the word. Say it slowly and pause after each syllable. Isn’t that easier?

If you’re having trouble with syllables, you can check out  How Many Syllables . This website shows you the syllables in any word you look up, and even shows you how to pronounce it.

English is a stressed language. That means some words and sounds are more important than others. You can hear this when you say a word out loud. For example, the word “introduce” is pronounced with a stress at the end, so it sounds like this: “in-tro-DUCE.”

Sometimes, where you put the stress in a word can change the word’s meaning. Say this word out loud: “present.” If you said “PREsent,” you are talking about a noun that means either “right this moment” or “a gift.” If you said “preSENT,” you are talking about a verb that means “to give or show.”

You need to remember that most two-syllable nouns are stressed on the first syllable, and most two-syllable verbs are stressed on the second syllable (like “present”).

If this all sounds too complicated, don’t worry about memorizing all these rules—the best way to learn is by listening and practicing. Remember that most native English speakers don’t know the rules, either—they just say what “sounds right.” With enough practice, you can get what sounds right, too.

This video about six common English mistakes goes over word stress in detail in the first point:

Keep watching the rest of the video for other useful tips for avoiding some of the most common English learner mistakes.

Watch this video from mmmEnglish for more information about syllable stress in English:

Sentences have stresses too; some words are more important, and are said with more clarity and strength than the rest of the sentence. Try reading this sentence aloud: “I ate some toast with butter in the morning.”

The sentence should have sounded like this (the bold words are the stressed ones): “I ate some toast with butter in the morning .” Notice how you slow down every time you get to an important word, and quickly pass over the less important ones?

Keep practicing by reading out loud, having conversations and listening well to where others place stress when they speak.

When you speak English, do you want to sound like you’re from America or England ? Australia or New Zealand ? Maybe Canada or South Africa .

Choosing your dialect of English is one of the first decisions to make on your English-learning journey. Not only it will determine much of the vocabulary you learn but will also drastically affect your pronunciation.

The two most common types of English for ESL students are probably American English and British English .

Choosing which type will affect how you pronounce sounds. For example, in America, the “r” sound at the end of a word is much harsher.

And when a “t” appears in the middle of a word, Americans often pronounce it as a “d,” while the British pronounce it as a hard “t.” Think of words like “water,” “whatever” or “lighter.”

Once you’ve chosen which dialect of English you want to take on, base your studying methods and tools on that decision.

Watching movies and TV shows are fantastic ways to learn English and pick up accents. I particularly love watching TV series, because you have hours of content, and you learn to understand characters’ accents over time.

If you’re looking for a British TV show, I recommend “The Crown,” a drama about Queen Elizabeth II. I also love “The Great British Baking Show.” This reality show is lighthearted and fun to watch, and you’ll pick up modern slang.

How about English shows? “Friends” is a classic option for learning English, and many Americans will love to talk about it with you. “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” is a sitcom that’s currently on the air that centers around cops (policemen and women) in New York City.

Check out this video breaking down a scene from “Friends” where Monica and Chandler discuss what to do with their extra bedroom to learn how to pronounce commonly used words in American English:

If you want to learn British English, LearnEnglish Sounds Right will provide an English pronunciation guide for people wanting to attain a British accent, and you can download it for your iOS or Android device .

As you can see, your choice of dialect will affect every other decision you make regarding English pronunciation!

Depending on your native language and which dialect of English you’re studying, you may find certain sounds to be difficult. Actually, I think every ESL student I’ve met who is learning American English struggles with the American “r” sound!

So how do you master a tricky sound like this?

Believe it or not, exaggerating these sounds will likely make it easier for native speakers to understand you. You may think you sound corny because you aren’t used to making these sounds. But for a native speaker, you’ll sound way more authentic than a foreigner who is shy about these sounds.

Exaggerate. Exaggerate the sound until you feel ridiculous. Exaggerate until you’re sure it’s so over the top that people are going to make fun of you.

What’s the goal? Eventually, you will be so used to the shape your mouth makes that you won’t be conscious of exaggerating, and you won’t be thinking of English pronunciation rules as you speak. And that’s when you know you’re on the path to fluency.

Having trouble with certain words? Try writing them out.

No, not just the word. Try writing it out phonetically (by its sounds instead of its spelling) .

Let’s say you’re struggling with the word pizza. Write it out phonetically: piːtsə.

When you look at the phonics, you can see that the double-z is pronounced like a “ts.”

Try making flashcards. Write the word on one side, then spell it out phonetically on the other side. If it helps, you can highlight the letters on each side that you’re testing yourself on. (This can be especially useful for visual learners!)

Writing things out phonetically can be difficult, especially if it’s in your second language. If you need help, visit EasyPronunciation.com . Type in the word or sentence you need help with, and the website will transcribe it phonetically for you. (Bonus—it lets you choose between American and British English!)

Want to master English pronunciation? Sit down and listen. Listen to someone speak and write down what they are saying.

You might be thinking, “Hey, I’m here to practice English speaking , not listening!”

However, listening is an excellent way to improve English pronunciation.

In my high school French classes, we had to take dictation (write what the teacher said) every week. The teacher spoke for 20 minutes, and we had to write down exactly what she said. Trying to decipher her accent and write down what we heard made me understand French spelling and pronunciation better.

Don’t have an English teacher who wants to talk aloud for 20 minutes at your disposal? There are plenty of ways to find a resource !

EnglishClub is a great dictation website, regardless of your learning level. Choose from elementary, intermediate or advanced dictation.

You’ll listen to the dictation once at normal speed. Then a second time at a slowed-down speed so you can write it down. Listen for a third time at a normal speed. Then check your answer.

YouTube also has many options to practice your listening and writing skills. Get started with Speak English with Vanessa’s Dr. Seuss dictation video :

You can also watch a scene from a TV show or movie and write down what you hear. If you’re watching on a service that provides subtitles, play the scene again with subtitles to check your work.

If you recognize difficult sounds when you hear them, it’s likely that you’ll learn how to say them.

When speaking English, do you sometimes struggle with similar sounds (like “sh” and “ch,” “t” and “th” or the short and long “e” sounds)? Don’t worry—you’re not the only one.

Tongue twisters can be a fun (but tricky!) way to practice differentiating between two sounds. They’re  poems that can be hard to recite because a lot of the sounds are similar.

In English-speaking countries, people say them just because it’s funny when you mess up and sound silly. And it’s satisfying when you finally master the poem!

Here are a few examples of popular, effective English tongue twisters—this one’s great for practicing the “s” and “sh” sounds:

She sells seashells by the seashore.

That’s a very famous tongue twister. But once you’ve got that down, try adding on a few less well-known lines:

The shells she sells are sea-shells, I’m sure. For if she sells sea-shells on the sea-shore Then I’m sure she sells sea-shore shells.

Alright, now let’s try one to practice the “cl” and “cr” sounds:

How can a clam cram in a clean cream can?

And now one for the “sh” and “ch” sounds:

If a dog chews shoes, whose shoes does he choose?

Want to practice different sounds with tongue twisters? Take a look at this list .

You can also hear some tongue twisters spoken by a native English speaker on Rachel’s English (and see that even native speakers can have trouble mastering these tricky twisters!):

There are some excellent video and audio guides on English pronunciations that you can use to improve. The English Language Club has videos that show how to make different sounds in English. Rachel’s English has friendly videos on how to speak and pronounce American English in everyday conversations.

If you like podcasts better, Pronuncian has over 200 audio files that help with everything from pronunciation to stress and pitch (how you raise and lower your voice while you speak).

If none of these are what you’re looking for, there are many more to choose from. Find the one that’s right for you.

One way to tell if all your practice is working is to record yourself with a camera. Use a camera and don’t just a sound recorder because it’s important to see how you speak, not only hear it.

You don’t need to download any special software to record yourself; most computers and mobile devices have built-in video recorders. You can use PhotoBooth on a Mac or  Movie Moments on a Windows computer. The specific programs change with time (the Movie Moments program, for instance, might not be available anymore by the time you read this) but as long as a computer has a camera, you should be able to record videos with it . Your phone or mobile device also has a video capturing app, usually as part of the camera app.

Compare your recording to someone else saying the same words or sounds. Find a video of your favorite part from a movie. Choose one or two sentences and record yourself trying to match the stress, tone and pronunciation of the video. Then you can compare the two, see what you did differently and try again.

Ask a friend or watch a video to check. If your pronunciation doesn’t sound the same, ask yourself some questions: Are you moving your mouth the right way? Is your tongue in the right place? Are you stressing the right part of the word? Use everything you’ve learned in this article so far!

As always, “Practice makes perfect!” And it’s easier to practice with a friend. Find someone to practice pronunciation with, either  in person  or through online communities like Language Exchange  or InterPals .

Practicing with a buddy (friend) will give you a chance to try everything you learned, and learn new things from each other. Plus, it’s fun!

If you don’t speak often, you can become nervous when it’s finally time to open your mouth and say something in English.

It’s like playing basketball. You might be good at running, dribbling and passing, but never shoot the ball.

When it’s time to play and you get a chance to shoot, it would be hard. You could even become so nervous by doing something new in front of other people that your nerves paralyze you.

It’s the same with speaking English. Not only do you need English pronunciation practice, but you need to get over your nerves so that you feel comfortable speaking in front of others. Nerves can lead to a lot of mistakes, especially regarding pronunciation.

Try making a rule for yourself: You must speak English to yourself at home. To start, try just narrating what you’re doing when you’re cooking dinner or getting ready for bed.

Promise yourself that you’re going to speak aloud for at least a few minutes per day.

Pronunciation is as important to learning English as vocabulary and grammar. Thanks to these 15 tips, you’ll soon be on your way to pronouncing English like a native.

And remember: practice makes perfect!

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NEW words and meanings added: March 2024

Game on or game over ?

With the Summer Olympics coming up, the main focus for our latest release is on the world of sport.

Worrying about your team’s back four in the relegation six-pointer ? Did one of your team’s blueliners just score an empty-netter ? Or maybe you prefer T20™ , with the drama of one-dayers and super overs , or just like to pay your green fee and get started on the front nine ?

We’ve added over 170 new words and meanings from sport and other topics.

Our word lists are designed to help learners at any level focus on the most important words to learn.

Explore our general English and academic English lists.

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A recent addition to our online dictionary is the term culture war , which is used to describe the conflict between groups of people with different ideals and beliefs.

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Our Topic Dictionaries are lists of topic-related words, like Animals and Health , that can help you expand your vocabulary. Each topic is divided into smaller subtopics and every word has a CEFR level.

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You're probably not as good of a listener as you think you are.

Statistically, it's true for most people. Many professionals believe that they're highly attentive, but 70% of them actually exhibit poor listening habits in the workplace, according to a 2020 University of Southern California report . So you've got to be clever if you want to grasp someone's attention, says Matt Abrahams, a communication consultant and organizational behavior lecturer at Stanford University.

It's a lesson that Abrahams learned, in part, while lecturing. Polite requests for his students' attention fell on deaf ears, drowned out by their "chit-chatting," he tells CNBC Make It.

Here are the two ways he recommends commanding a room instead.

Don't say anything at all

You're in a meeting room, chatting with co-workers. One of your company's executives walks up to the front of the room, stands behind a podium and gazes out at the group. Odds are good that you'll stop talking.

"One of the best things to do to command attention and get people to be quiet is to actually just stand in front of them and not say anything," Abrahams says. "Just to physically stand up in a position where everybody can see you."

It only takes four seconds for silence to become awkward, according to a Dutch psychology study published in 2011. It might feel uncomfortable for you too, but the awkwardness alone "will typically draw people in," says Abrahams.

While you're waiting, you can try to control your breathing or clear your mind. "It's very hard to stand in silence, but that can be very helpful," he adds.

Make a declarative statement, repeat it if necessary

Saying something impactful or thought-provoking with no warning can have a similar effect, says Abrahams.

"Just this past Monday, we were talking [in class] about nonverbal presence. They're all talking and I just stood there for a moment. And then I said, 'How you say something is often as important or more important than what you say,'" Abrahams says. "And then I paused, and they're still shuffling on, and then I repeated it. And then everybody was quiet."

Put simply, don't ask for control — just demonstrate it. You can also try other tactics like starting a big presentation with a question, or playing music before an event starts, which signals that something else is about to happen, says Abrahams.

"Just exerting that control, either by asking a question, standing in silence or making some kind of declarative sentence that's provocative will help people [listen]," he says. "You might have to repeat yourself once or twice, but that's what I do."

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How to learn English with text to speech

Table of contents.

When it comes to how to learn English with text to speech, you can start by exploring its pronunciation and literacy-boosting benefits. Read on for more details.

Text to speech , or TTS, is a powerful artificial intelligence tool that can help with many aspects of learning, including foreign language acquisition. If you’re learning English, you’ll be interested to learn how this method can help you speed up the process Here, we’re sharing everything you need to know.

How text to speech helps you learn English

The process and pace of learning a foreign language—in this case, English—is different for everyone. While getting acquainted with the language basics can be achieved with only a little effort, reaching intermediate and advanced levels requires much more dedication.

However, if you’re not using the right approach, you can spend hours not focusing on what you really need to learn or studying in ways that don’t match your learning style. This can stall your progress and cause feelings of frustration.

Here’s how text to speech apps can help you learn English, or any language, with ease.

Pronunciation guide

Text to speech is excellent for practicing and mastering your pronunciation. While Google Translate can get the job done in a pinch, the levels of customization and the variety of voices and reading speeds available with text to speech software make this tool all the more valuable.

You can choose between UK, US, Australian, or Canadian accents if you want to learn a particular English accent.

This assistive technology tool allows natural-sounding English texts to be read aloud along with a highlighting feature so you can focus on the given words and their pronunciation. You’ll feel like you’re listening to a real person, not a robotic voice.

Improve literacy skills

Boosting your literacy skills is essential to learning a language, and speech synthesis software (another term for text to speech) can help you with that. You can use OCR (optical character recognition) technology to scan difficult texts and have the software read them aloud.

When you practice reading texts you find challenging every day, your skills will improve drastically in just a few weeks.

Proofreading

Professionals and native language speakers use text to speech technology to help them spot errors in their writing or spelling. So, naturally, it’s also useful for foreign language learners.

Similarly to learning how to pronounce new words, you can use TTS to fix common pronunciation mistakes you make with the words you already know. You can even have your practice essays read aloud to you so that you can catch problems with syntax or word choice. Hearing the words you wrote offers a new perspective.

Motivation and self-esteem boost

TTS software is fun and interactive and does miracles for self-esteem and motivation-boosting effects. Software like Natural Reader , Speechify , and even Google Translate make the language you’re learning more lifelike.

When you don’t live in a country where your target language is spoken, it can be difficult to remain motivated to keep learning. But with TTS, you can hear the language anytime you want. Best of all, you can listen to any content you like, something like listening to  audiobooks .

Presentation help

You can use text to speech apps to time your presentations or check how your presentation would sound. Just copy the Microsoft or any other document where the presentation is, and listen to a TTS software read it aloud.

With this technique, you can ensure you read all the words correctly and calculate how much time you’ll use to go over all the slides when the day comes for your presentation.

Maybe you’ll be limited to 10 or 15 minutes, but the presentation lasts for 20. You can tweak the speed rate to fit the length into the required time frame.

Speechify—The best TTS service for learning English

Text to speech technology is on the rise, and there are many high-quality apps on the market. Whether you’re learning English, Spanish, or any other language, you can use text to speech tools to boost your reading comprehension, literacy skills, and the language learning process.

One of the best text to speech software for English language learners is Speechify. This e-learning tool can read any text or English words with male or female voices .

Take any written text, paste it into the software, and have it read in natural-sounding voices in different accents straight from your Google Chrome extension.

A big difference compared to Google Translate is that you can choose different human voices and get downloadable audio files of the recording for listening on the go. Best of all, Speechify can read any file format, including PDF , Google Docs , Drive, DOCX, HTML, you name it.

Speechify is available as an iOS and Android app and a Chrome extension , so you can use it whenever and wherever you want.

Here’s an overview of the app and how it can help with second language acquisition:

Hundreds of natural-sounding voices

Works with dozens of languages

Free version available

Highlighting tool to help master pronunciation

Why is text to speech good for learners?

The learning landscape has rapidly changed ever since the rise of education technology, and TTS plays an important part in it. Audio output is an essential aspect of language. Hearing makes it possible to understand messages for people who are autistic or have trouble reading.

For a long time, TTS was mainly reserved for students with learning disabilities like dyslexia . However, there’s much more to it. TTS is a great learning tool, and it’s considered UDL (Universal Design for Learning). Teachers can use it to help students advance in their English learning studies.

Most TTS software today operates on the cloud, meaning it is easily accessible on multiple devices. This way, the learning process isn’t jeopardized in terms of accessibility.

Also, TTS can create audio files in numerous formats including MP3, WAV, and others. This feature further eases access to the features of the software.

Try Speechify for free today

Speechify  is very simple to use across platforms. There is a free version , but you can also try the premium with a free trial to access even more helpful features. And if you ever get stuck (highly unlikely), you can always check the tutorials on the website.

There are numerous built-in features like text highlighting, adjustable reading speed, and the choice of many different accents.

Whenever you’re ready, you can try Speechify for free by visiting the  official website. 

Does text to speech help ELL students?

Yes, text to speech technology helps ELL students in numerous ways. It boosts their pronunciation and literacy skills and makes reading difficult texts easier, to name a few benefits.

What disabilities does text to speech help with?

TTS helps with several disabilities, including blindness, learning disabilities , dyslexia, autism , and all visual and physical conditions that impede a person’s reading ability.

What are some differences between text to speech and audio recordings?

An audio recording refers to any recording made by a device, including, but not limited to, digital audio files. Text to speech, on the other hand, is a type of audio recording produced by software.

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Cliff Weitzman

Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.

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• Assignments

Spring 2024

Time and Location

Mon. & Wed. 12:30 PM - 1:20 PM Pacific Time Jordan Hall room 040 (420-040)

Week 1: Introduction and Acoustic Phonetics

Deliverables

• Assignment 1 released on Mon 4.1.24.

Lecture 1 (Mon 4.1.24)

Course introduction.

lecture slides

Lecture 2 (Wed 4.3.24)

Phonetics: Articulatory phonetics. Acoustics. ARPAbet transcription. Readings:

• J+M Draft Edition Appendix H: Phonetics, online pdf
• Fun read (optional). The Art of Language Invention . David J Peterson. 2015.

Week 2: Speech Synthesis / Text to Speech (TTS)

Course Project Overview released on Mon 4.8.24.

Lecture 3 (Mon 4.8.24)

Some history of ASR, TTS, and dialog. TTS Overview. Text normalization. Letter-to-sound. Prosody. Readings:

• J+M Draft Edition Chapter 16.6: TTS online pdf

Lecture 4 (Wed 4.10.24)

Foundations of TTS: Data collection. Evaluation. Signal processing. Concatenative and parametric approaches. Readings:

• J+M Draft Edition Chapter 16.6: TTS (cont’d) online pdf

Week 3: Course project + TTS with deep learning

• Assignment 1 due by Monday 4.15.24 11:59PM Pacific.
• Assignment 2 released on Monday 4.15.24.

Lecture 5 (Mon 4.15.24)

Course project overview and Q&A. Social meaning extraction as supervised machine learning. Readings:

• Rajesh Ranganath, Dan Jurafsky, and Daniel A. McFarland. . Detecting friendly, flirtatious, awkward, and assertive speech in speed-dates . Computer Speech and Language. 2013.

Lecture 6 (Wed 4.17.24)

Deep learning for TTS. Readings:

• Wang, Y., Skerry-Ryan, R.J., Stanton, D., Wu, Y., Weiss, R.J., Jaitly, N., Yang, Z., Xiao, Y., Chen, Z., Bengio, S. and Le, Q., Tacotron: Towards end-to-end speech synthesis . arXiv. 2017.
• Oord, A.V.D., Dieleman, S., Zen, H., Simonyan, K., Vinyals, O., Graves, A., Kalchbrenner, N., Senior, A. and Kavukcuoglu, K. Wavenet: A generative model for raw audio . arXiv. 2016.
• Ren, Y., Ruan, Y., Tan, X., Qin, T., Zhao, S., Zhao, Z., and Liu, T. Y. Fastspeech: Fast, robust and controllable text to speech . Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 32. 2019.

Deep Learning Preliminaries. Review on your own as needed depending on your experience so far with deep learning models:

• J+M Draft Edition Chapter 7: Neural Networks and Neural Language Models. pdf
• J+M Draft Edition Chapter 9: RNNs and LSTMs. pdf
• J+M Draft Edition Chapter 10: Transformers and Large Language Models. pdf
• The Illustrated Transformer – Jay Alammar – Visualizing machine learning one concept at a time

Week 4: Speech to Text / Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)

• Course Project Proposal due by Wednesday 4.24.24 11:59PM Pacific.

Lecture 7 (Mon 4.22.24)

Speech recognition overview: Noisy channel model. Word error rate metrics. Hidden Markov models (HMMs). Readings:

• J+M Draft Edition Chapter 16.1, 16.2, 16.3, 16.5: Automatic Speech Recognition online pdf
• J+M Draft Edition. Appendix A pdf
• J+M Draft Edition. Appendix B pdf
• Koenecke, A., Nam, A., Lake, E., Nudell, J., Quartey, M., Mengesha, Z., Toups, C., Rickford, J.R., Jurafsky, D. and Goel, S. Racial disparities in automated speech recognition . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2020.
• J+M Draft Edition Chapter 3: N-gram Language Models. pdf
• Lecture videos on introductory NLP including language modeling youtube

Lecture 8 (Wed 4.24.24)

Speech recognition: HMM-DNN systems. Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC). End-to-end neural ASR. Readings:

• Hinton, Geoffrey, et al. Deep neural networks for acoustic modeling in speech recognition: The shared views of four research groups. IEEE Signal processing magazine. 2012.
• J+M Draft Edition Chapter 16.4: CTC online pdf
• Graves, A., and Jaitly, N. Towards end-to-end speech recognition with recurrent neural networks. ICML . 2014.
• Maas, A. , Xie, Z. , Jurafsky, D., & Ng, A. Lexicon-free conversational speech recognition with neural networks. ACL-HLT . 2015. (* indicates equal contribution)
• Chan, W., Jaitly, N., Le, Q.V. and Vinyals, O. Listen, attend and spell: A neural network for large vocabulary conversational speech recognition ICASSP. 2016. arXiv preprint.
• Prabhavalkar, R., Hori, T., Sainath, T. N., Schlüter, R., and Watanabe, S. End-to-end speech recognition: A survey . IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing. 2023.

Week 5: State-of-the-art ASR and customizing ASR for products

• Assignment 2 due by Wednesday 5.1.24 11:59PM Pacific.

Lecture 9 (Mon 4.29.24)

State-of-the-art deep learning approaches for speech recognition. Conformer. Whisper. Fine tuning base models. Readings:

• Gulati, A., Qin, J., Chiu, C.C., Parmar, N., Zhang, Y., Yu, J., Han, W., Wang, S., Zhang, Z., Wu, Y. and Pang, R. Conformer: Convolution-augmented transformer for speech recognition . arXiv. 2020. 2.TBD

Lecture 10 (Wed 5.1.24)

Guest Lecture: Ello : A case study in building spoken language products. Readings:

• T. Bluche, M. Primet, & T. Gisselbrecht. Small-Footprint Open-Vocabulary Keyword Spotting with Quantized LSTM Networks .ArXiv. 2020.
• K. Audhkhasi, A. Rosenberg, A. Sethy, B. Ramabhadran, & B. Kingsbury. End-to-End ASR-free Keyword Search from Speech . IEEE J. Signal Processing 2017.
• N. Sacchi, A. Nanchen, M. Jaggi, & M. Cerňak. Open-Vocabulary Keyword Spotting with Audio and Text Embeddings . Interspeech 2019.

Week 6: Foundation models and non-English languages

• Assignment 3 released on Mon 5.6.24.

Lecture 11 (Mon 5.6.24)

Guest Lecture: Foundation models for spoken language. Dr. Karen Livescu Readings

• Baevski, A., Zhou, Y., Mohamed, A., & Auli, M. Wav2vec 2.0: A framework for self-supervised learning of speech representations . Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 33. 2020.

Lecture 12 (Wed 5.8.24)

Week 7: non-english spoken language understanding cont’d + project check-ins, lecture 13 (mon 5.13.24), lecture 14 (wed 5.15.24).

Project check-ins during class. Each group will speak for ~2 minutes about progress and planned work

Week 8: Introduction to spoken dialog + project check-ins

• Assignment 3 due by Monday 5.20.24 11:59PM Pacific.

Lecture 15 (Mon 5.20.24)

Lecture 16 (wed 5.22.24).

Overview of dialog: Human conversation. Task-oriented dialog. Dialog system design. GUS and frame-based dialog systems. Readings:

• J+M Draft Edition Chapter 15: Dialogue Systems and Chatbots, online pdf

Week 9: Spoken dialog with LLMs

• Course Project Milestone due by Monday 5.27.24 11:59PM Pacific.

Memorial Day. NO CLASS (Mon 5.27.24)

Lecture 17 (wed 5.29.24).

Guest lecture: Developing spoken dialog systems with LLMs. Gridspace .

Week 10 : Spoken dialog development & final poster session

Lecture 18 (mon 6.3.24).

Case study: Alexa Skills Kit in the era of LLMs. Readings:

• Understand Custom Skills . You do not need to cover adding visual components to skills.
• Interaction Model Design

Final project poster session (Wed 6.5.24)

Present posters at in-person session during lecture time. Location TBD

Course Project Report due by Saturday 6.8.24 by 11:59 PM Pacific. No late days allowed