MED Magazine – International Dialects of English Archive

MED Magazine - Issue 51 - June 2008

MED Web Watch
by Mairi MacDonald

Next in a series of short articles looking at web resources useful for teachers and learners of English. As a rough guide, each site is marked out of 25 in terms of content, design and ease-of-use.

IDEA – International Dialects of English Archive

http://web.ku.edu/idea/index.htm

Forget the trouble of learning a new language, why not learn a new accent instead? The International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) website is aimed at actors and performers wanting to master a new accent for theatre and film, but there's plenty of valuable material here for learners too.

The site features soundfiles containing regional speech samples from both native English speakers and English spoken in the accents of other languages. Unless you want your students to speak English with a Russian, French or even Peruvian accent, you'll probably want to focus on the former rather than the latter!

To explore the site, first select a region, then a country using the list on the right of the page. If you get lost, click on Dialects & Accents in the menu running left to right along the top of the page.

Each speaker reads one of two passages: ‘Comma Gets a Cure’ or a short text about rainbows. This is often followed by a short extract where the speakers talk freely about their lives. This is the best bit for learners – the speakers talk naturally, dialect creeps in and you can clearly hear the regional differences. It also provides for some human interest and cultural information.

The site is growing and is regularly updated. There is an impressive amount of information – currently there are 70 samples on the England page alone. The soundfiles are downloadable, so you don't need to be online to play them to a class.

For learners the most relevant sections are the pages featuring England, Canada, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, USA, Wales and General American. If your students want to sound like the Queen, or want a 'neutral' accent, you'll need the RP section.

Despite its name, the site doesn't really go into dialect. As every soundfile features identical passages, the emphasis is on accent and any regional lexical variations only appear in the short unscripted speeches that follow the readings. Most of the speakers are students or are from professional backgrounds, so don't expect a full range of accents across social class. For example, there are 17 Scottish accents from a wide geographical spread, but most are quite neutral, even those from remote areas, although the Orkney farmer on Scotland 2 is a good one for scaring students! Luckily most of the excerpts are transcribed so learners will make sense of it in the end.

The archive is an excellent starting point for raising awareness of different English accents. One classroom activity would be to play a selection of recordings to students, e.g. an American, an Australian and an Irish accent and get students to guess which is which. For some intensive listening, get them to try and spot the difference between a Canadian and American accent, or an Australian and New Zealand accent. Students could also listen to the files corresponding to their own country to focus on pronunciation problems specific to their region.

A great site for teaching and learning English - there's plenty of authentic listening material and pronunciation work. The transcripts provide reading practice with scope for discussion. Not bad for a site designed for theatre professionals!

Score
current and archived content
up-to-dateness/topicality
graphic design and navigation
speed and technical performance
features and functionality
overall score	19 out of 25