If you are reading this it means you can read English and understand it as well, and I am sure you can speak very well too! But whenever you speak English or any foreign language, are you confident enough that you are pronouncing the words correctly?

Yes, there are times when we pronounce something incorrect and our senior or teachers correct them. So what happens when you have no one around you to correct your pronunciations? This is where this online resource comes in handy, Forvo — an online, crowd-sourced pronunciation guide that kids can use to learn or confirm word pronunciation.

The content on the site is crowd-sourced, meaning that anyone registered with the site can add their own voice and pronunciation of chosen words. Forvo is fairly easy to use, you can listen to the pronunciation from more than 300 languages in the world but if you sign up, you’ll be able to contribute to the site by adding a language (your regional) and pronounce the words. Kids can review words they think they know in English, or find out how a native speaker pronounces a word in a different language. The audio clips are 2.5 seconds long, while some words also include phonetic spellings to help as you listen.

All the words in the world, pronounced

For a word-pronunciation site, it’s as fun as it can be. Kids can get a kick out of recording their own words and hearing them. There is an FAQ explaining the rules and regulations of the site. A separate help section describes how to use a microphone to record words, which can then be sent directly to the site.

There isn’t a lot of depth on the site. Basically, you click a word, hear the word, and that’s it. But kids will feel empowered by recording their own voices and learning new pronunciations.

The site claims to be the largest pronunciation guide in the world, the place where you’ll find millions of words pronounced in their original languages. Apart from that, it’s an excellent tool for double-checking pronunciation when away from the classroom or adding words from your regional language with pronunciation to the site’s database for the world to know.

Checkout the words and their pronunciation www.forvo.com

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 2nd, 2015