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79 of 81 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing and Efficient!, June 23, 2005
Let me start from one question that puzzled me years ago. We all know that babies are geniuses in terms of learning languages, so everyone is born to master languages. Then, why is that the older we are becoming, the more difficult for us to learn/correct pronunciation? Is that paradoxical?
As youths or adults, we are influenced by the external effect and the internal effect.
1) External effect: wrong or non-native pronunciation we learned for the first time was imprinted.
2) Internal effect: for other rarely used words, we didn't know how to pronounce them; usually we just smartly make up the pronunciation of those words because we don't have the time or too lazy to look up the dictionary. Unfortunately, most of time, we were too smart.
For babies, they just absorb whatever they are taught. As long as they are taught correctly, they are not subject to either the external or internal effects. If we take a closer look at the babies' case, we will find out that imitation is the most important skill for babies to learn pronunciation from their parents. Now I find that Pronunciation Patterns could act as "Pronunciation-Mentor" to us also.
I have been using Pronunciation Patterns for a while. I would like to write several reviews on Pronunciation Patterns.
I want to start with sharing my story - what I did in improving pronunciation before I used Pronunciation Patterns.
Firstly, I watched TV and DVD intently everyday. Several months later, I noticed that, although my listening had greatly improved, my pronunciation was still stagnating.
I was frustrated by my progress on pronunciation. Then, I decided to find something, such as pronunciation books, CDs, or software on Amazon.com, to help me improve my pronunciation. I didn't find any software there. Instead, I found several books with/without CDs on how to improve pronunciation. After reading all those reviews @ Amazon, I realized that the authors emphasized more on rhythm and intonation rather than on pronunciation, but what I really need was a pronunciation solution which can help me correct my pronunciation.
Therefore, I decided to correct my pronunciation one word at a time myself. What I did were:
1) Ordered the CD audio version of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th);
2) Downloaded the list of the most-often used 2000 or 5000 English words online;
3) Listened to the pronunciation of each word played by the CD.
However, the CD audio version of the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary let me down and almost drove me crazy. One of the frustrations was that I couldn't just make a list of the words for me to practice with again and again.
After all the unsuccessful tries, I almost gave up. One day, I happened to find Pronunciation Patterns via google. After studied Xin's story and tried the Demo, I loved Pronunciation Patterns (I would explain why I like Pronunciation Patterns later). However, I didn't believe software designed by a Carnegie Mellon MBA graduate student without teaching English experience could really help me out.
What pushed me forward was one sentence on Xin's website - "If you are determined to improve your pronunciation in 1 year, for less than $0.33 a day, you can take advantage of this new method to help you perfect your pronunciation". Great Deal! That was my last straw.
From now on, I will try to review Pronunciation Patterns objectively. It has some interesting features and I will go through them one by one.
1. Auto-play 4000 words.
I would choose any software should it own this feature. Usually, 3000 words are enough for us to handle routine conversation very well in the United States and 4000 is even better.
Here, I like to share with you how I took advantage of the auto-play option:
1) I have been investing 25 minutes to listen through 500 words every night.
2) Next day, I would go through those words again and chose the words I have trouble with.
3) I just played these words over and over. Sometimes, I just let my PC play the pronunciation while I was doing other house works.
4) Within one month, I have noticed that my pronunciation has improved greatly.
By the way, I was also surprised to find out that I made lots of mistakes before - the right pronunciation of many words is totally different from how I pronounced.
2. Grouping
Grouping is one of the most useful features of Pronunciation Patterns I would like to recommend. Xin believes learning patterns is very helpful in learning/correcting pronunciation. After I tried this software, I agree with him.
Grouping lists words sharing same pronunciation rules together. Obviously, this function can help us out at least in two ways: 1) help us memorize the pronunciation of many words simultaneously; 2) master the pronunciation of tough words easily (as long as you can remember the pronunciation of one of the often-used word in the same group).
3. Rules
There are 57 rules with examples in this software. To be honest, I didn't know most of them before.
With those rules in mind, sometimes I can even correctly pronounce the word which I see for the first time.
4. Mouth Video Clips
This is the best video I have ever seen. Unlike the other videos, this animation video shows me clearly the movement of each organ of mouth/throat when one vowel/diphthong/consonant is pronounced.
One of the most difficult parts in learning/correcting pronunciation is that, even Americans demonstrate how to pronounce a word, it is still kind of difficult for us to mimic. The reason is simple - our mouth isn't used to produce some of English sounds. Phonetic Demonstration isn't enough for us to clear understand; a video demonstration is better. Actually, I have been dreaming of this feature for years.
5. Mouth exercises
The mouth video clips can just show you how to do it. Whether we can do it or not still depends on our efforts. We need to train our mouth consciously first; gradually, mouth movement will be subconscious. For who want to build the strong mouth muscularity to perfect your pronunciation in a short time, I encourage you to try the mouth exercise.
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