Presentation skills ...

Mohamed Lamine Debaghine University-Setif 2

First Year Phonetics

Lecturer: Ms Sohila MEKHOUKH   

Course Description

The phonetics course is addressed to first year and second year students. The 1st year syllabus is concerned with segmental aspects of the English phonology. The course takes one hour and a half per week. Students are required to have at least an English-to-English (preferably a hard copy) dictionary that provides phonemic transcription. They should also download the phonemic chart on their smart phones or their PCs for personal practice. There is no lab session, therefore, the teacher should act as a good model to help students practise the sounds, and students on their turn, need to practise further at home on their own. The accent taught to students is RP (Received Pronunciation), which is non-rhotic. As for the assessment policy, there is a quiz to be taken in class and a written common exam administered at the end of the term. The coefficient of the course is 1. All the lessons are linked together; missing one class may cause difficulty of understanding the subsequent lessons.

Course Aims

The course of Phonetics introduces EFL students to phonetic notions and terminology that should help them identify, describe and classify human speech sounds. The course prepares learners to distinguish similar consonants, differentiate between consonants and vowels, learn which sound combinations are possible in English, and relate sound/spelling discrepancies. By the end of the course, students should be able to read phonetic transcription of any word, as well as to transcribe any word phonemically. Students also learn certain phonetic aspects which are peculiar to the English language. The overall aim is to improve the learners' pronunciation skills and to enrich their knowledge about phonetics as they might become future researchers or teachers of the target language. The first year course prepares learners with a sound basis to study the suprasegmental features the next year.

Syllabus Content

First Semester

0. Introduction: What is phonetics and why study phonetics (the 3 branches of phonetics, focus on articulatory phonetics, orthographic inconsistency, introducing IPA and the phonemic symbols of English consonants and vowels)

1. Speech production: Vocal tract anatomy, speech organs (passive and active articulators) and their adjectives, the speech mechanism (mental and physical description) involving four processes: airstream, phonation, oro-nasal, articulatory

2. Description and Classification of Consonants (place of articulation)

3. Position of the velum (nasal/oral sounds)

4. Voicing/state of glottis (voiced/voiceless, sibilants and pronunciation of final -s and pronunciation of verb final -ed)

5. Description and Classification of Vowels: 

   5.1. Pure vowels/monophthongs

Quadrilateral diagram: Jaw opening (close/open), mouth shape (rounded/unrounded), tongue position (front/back and high/low), quality: (lax/tense), glides of diphthongs

   5.2. Diphthongs

Second Semester

6. Consonants (introducing the manners of articulation, level of stricture: Obstruents and sonorants, and difference between consonants and vowels)

1. Plosives (definition, aspiration, devoicing, glottalization, phonotactics)
2. Fricatives and affricates (definition, slit/groove, devoicing, phonotactics)
3. Nasals (definitions, devoicing, pronunciation of final -ng, nasalization, phonotactics)

10. Approximants (liquids/glides, lateral, devoicing, velarization, rhoticity, phonotactics)

11. Force of articulation

11. 1. lenis/fortis consonants

11. 2. Pre-fortis clipping (shortening of vowels before fortis consonants)

12. Phonetics vs phonology

     12. 1. Allophone vs phoneme

     12. 2. The phoneme and minimal pairs

   11. 3. Narrow phonetic transcription Vs broad phonemic transcription

Readings and online resources

• Peter Ladefoged & Keith Johnson. (2001). A Course in Phonetics. Cengage Learning
• Peter Roach. (1991). English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge University Press. http://www.cambridge.org/elt/peterroach/resources.htm (extra resources)
• Gerald Kelly. (2000). How to Teach Pronunciation. Pearson Education Limited
  • Paul Skandera & Peter Burleigh. (2005). A Manual of English Phonetics. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen
  • Mimi Ponsonby. (1982). How Now, Brown Cow? A course in the pronunciation of English. Pergamon Press
  • Richard Ogden. (2009). An Introduction to English Phonetics. Edinburgh University Press
  • Mehmet S., Yavaş. (2011). Applied English Phonology. Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Charles W. Kreidler. (1989). The Pronunciation of English: A Course Book. Blackwell Publishing Ltd
  • English to English pronouncing dictionary with RP phonemic transcription such as Cambridge, Longman or Oxford dictionaries.
  • Interactive IPA chart: www.ipachart.com
  • Phonemic Chart: download it on your PC or as a Mobile Applications from www.onestopenglish .com or Macmillan ‘Sounds’, or from British Council ‘Sounds Right’
  • Audio and video materials about the English sounds’ descriptions and production: http://www.rose-medical.com/consonant-sounds.html
  • Google the Vocal tract quiz/game for practising the articulators
    • Silent letters: mws.ust.hk/sir/silent_words.php
    • Online phonetic keyboard and converter: ipa.typeit.org/full/ , www.phonetizer.com