English Speeches YouTube Channel for Pronunciation Practice

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Activity Description

Use the English Speeches YouTube channel for student pronunciation practice. There are several speeches by famous people from around the world. Each video has large subtitles so that students can see the words and develop their vocabulary at the same time as practicing pronunciation and oral presentations.

Preparation

1.   Practice with the channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLyr-hfWVCKHcZjV5fg3jbw and its accompanying Web site at  https://www.englishspeecheschannel.com

2.   Make sure that the site (YouTube) is not blocked at your school if you will have students use the site at school. Otherwise, you could assign students to use the channel outside of class time.

How-To

1.     Demonstrate for students how to navigate to English Speeches YouTube Channel at  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLyr-hfWVCKHcZjV5fg3jbw.  Select "Videos" to see all the videos.

2.     Students select a person they know about and watch his/her speech (with the big subtitles). 

3.     Watch the speech with the subtitles. Then select just a portion of the speech you want to practice.

4.     Navigate to English Speech Channel and find your selected video at https://www.englishspeecheschannel.com to see the full transcript. Copy and paste the information about the speaker and the portion of the speech you want to use and copy and paste it into a word-processing file. Print the file. In the coming weeks, watch the video and note the speaker's use of intonation, word stress, volume, pitch, and other speech features as well as nonverbal communication (hand movements, facial expressions, use of eyes, mouth, and gestures). Practice the part of the speech you have selected and use the same speech features to try to sound as much like the speaker as possible.

5.     On (date) students provide some information about the speaker and the speech and then deliver your part of the speech. The teacher can use a rubric to give students feedback on their speech – body language, volume, stress and intonation, etc.

Teacher Tips

This activity is inspired by a tweet by Hillary Clinton: These California ESL students are using Hillary's 1995 speech in Beijing to learn English: https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton/status/739487489635667968?lang=en.  On the channel’s accompanying website at https://www.englishspeecheschannel.com/, there is brief information about each speaker, a famous quote, and the written transcript for each video. You could have students select a video at the beginning of a class, practice their speech throughout the term, and deliver the speech at the end of the class. You could have students share their presentation information on a shared Google slideshow like this: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRL0e5yrviWTdrOHFf2h0QOu3FTpmnS7RFkPjdhhip-ct10s_a44eZIY7D17imAPV1Zf7JREJQP9pd6/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

More Ways

Teachers can also use the site to find inspirational videos and create listening comprehension exercises.

Program Areas

• ESL: English as a Second Language

Levels

• Intermediate Low
• Intermediate High
• Advanced

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