Syllabus for Practical British English Phonetics
WSJO year I and II
Aims of the course
The ultimate aim of the course in phonetics is for the students to achieve the ability to speak
English with a close resemblance to the pronunciation of British educated speakers of
English. This goal, however, is hardly ever achievable. Therefore, the assessment of students'
speech must be based on the intelligibility criterion, preferably in a situation where a student
is forced to speak impromptu. In such a situation, what from the point of view of English
phonetics and/or phonology may be viewed as an error, may be ignored as long as it does not
prevent comprehension. Such 'errors' include those not perceived by native listeners (e.g. final
devoicing in some contexts, when the devoiced consonant is preceded by a vowel of an
appropriate length, since the voicedness / voicelessness of consonants is perceived through the
length of the preceding vowel). It must be remembered, though, that accumulation of such
errors may easily lead to mis-/in-comprehension and is therefore highly undesirable. ANY
performance on the part of the student that impedes comprehension must be considered
unacceptable.
General guidelines
It should be borne in mind that with the mere 90 minutes per week allotted for practical
phonetics it is not possible to produce the desirable effects by work in class. Therefore, it
must be made clear from the very beginning that a lot of individual work and effort on the
part of the student is required if they are to be able to perform up to the standard. The
phonetics teacher must be aware of his/her role in class as the facilitator of the learning
process whose main task is to give the students the guidelines that will enable them to develop
their own self-monitoring tools and thus give them insights into how to work on their
pronunciation of English.
A variety of techniques can be used here, a few of which are suggested below:
· developing the students' ability of self-assessment – evaluation of students' own
recordings, of student's own and peers' performance, work in pairs and groups,
variation of input by changing partners (e.g. by asking students to move around the
classroom);
· the students should be made aware of the importance of work with a pronunciation
dictionary; to achieve this, they might for instance be assigned to prepare texts to be
read out loud. It is also suggested that the students learn the correct pronunciation of
the most frequently mispronounced words by heart (for a list of such words, see
English Phonetics for Poles, pp. 295-309);
· in the third and fourth semester of the course, the teacher might analyse texts from the
point of view of intonation and show his/her students how the same text can express
different emotions and attitudes of speakers (hence often have a different meaning)
depending on stress, rhythm and intonation;
· towards the end of the course, the students can be asked to interpret their own texts,
e.g. to stage short conversations, sketches or even one-act plays;
· it is beneficial for students to practice pronunciation of the so-called 'tongue-twisters'
in their native language, which serves the purpose of exercising the articulators.
The problem of control and automation of the newly acquired L2 speaking habits proves to be
the most significant obstacle on the students' way to clear speech. To help them achieve this
goal, the teacher, starting from the second semester of the course, should ask the students to
prepare short speeches similar to the texts tackled previously in class. The teacher might then
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ask her/his students to prepare their own weather forecasts / guided tour commentaries / news
items / stories about school experiences / descriptions of dreams etc.
Focus and problem areas
Though the major focus of instruction in the first two semesters of the course is the
acquisition of the ability to produce the English segmentals, language being a closed system,
it is impossible to separate suprasegmental features from spoken language. Therefore
phonetics teachers are advised and encouraged to provide their students with as many insights
into aspects of stress, rhythm, intonation and connected speech as possible from the very
beginning of the course. An appropriate balance between theoretical instruction and practice
must of course be kept and, needless to say, the more complicated a phonological problem,
the later in the course it should be mentioned.
The following phonological processes ought to be explained during the course:
· the general notion of interference (transfer) from L1;
· palatalisation, with the emphasis on the Polish allophone [?] (e.g. cf. PL 'nit' vs. ENG
'need';
· devoicing (cf. the example above);
· nasalisation (e.g. ENG 'chance', 'prince' vs. PL 'szansa', 'tramwaj');
· the fact that /?/ exists in Polish as an allophone of /n/ and according to the Polish rules
of phonetic distribution occurs only followed either by / k/ (e.g. 'parking', 'bank') or /g/
(e.g. 'kangur', 'Kongo'); it must be noted that the distribution of /?/ among some
speakers of Polish can be very limited, while relatively frequent among other;
· aspiration of syllable-initial voiceless stops;
· the problem of stress, content words and the resultant vowel reduction, the distribution
of /?/;
· differences between British and American English, including those on the systematic
(phonetic inventory), allophonic (dark vs. clear 'l') and connected speech (r-colouring
for American English) level.
The third semester should be devoted to the consolidation of segmentals.
In the fourth semester of the course the emphasis is on the suprasegmental features, especially
the so-called fast speech processes: linking, elision, glottaling, insertion, assimilation and
coalescence. Time allowing, teachers might introduce elements of intonation. It must be made
clear to the students that the acquisition of intonation patterns and their appropriate use is a
process completely different from the work on the acquisition of segmentals. Since intonation
is context-bound and relative (it is up to a speaker to choose an intonation pattern depending
on what s/he wants to express), it is only through a vast amount of language exposure that the
students can acquire what can be termed the desired intonation habits. Thus the teacher's role
in the fourth semester is in a sense even more limited to merely providing the students with
the necessary guidelines for their own study along with as much varied language material as
possible.
Prepared by Maciej Machniewski
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The course in British English Practical Phonetics will be run over four semesters:
Semester 1
Scope of instruction: British vowels: pure vowels, diphthongal glides, diphthongs. Each sound
will be practised individually and in opposition to other sounds (e.g. long against short
monophthongs, monophthongs against diphthongs). Particular attention should be paid to the
durational aspect of vowels (opposition between long and short vowels). Students should be
made aware of the differences between Polish and BrEnglish vowels. Crucial issues should be
pointed out by the teacher (e.g. pre-fortis clipping, strong and weak vowels, etc.)
Teaching materials: Say it right Sawala, Szczegóła, Weckwerth (main coursebook),
(students are obliged to buy a copy)
Additional materials: “Sounds English” J.D. O’Connor & C. Fletcher, “Practice in spoken
English”, G.L. Barnard & P.S. McKay.
Classroom practice: work with books and tapes/CDs, drills, individual and pair work.
Students may be asked to read out loud short text from the book and to prepare short speeches
to be delivered in front of the group.
Assessment: continuous assessment on the basis of students’ in-class performance (homework,
exercises from the book, speeches, etc.), texts recorded at home, and their performance during
individual meetings that will be held at regular intervals throughout the semester. Peer
assessment and correction should be encouraged.
Semester 2
Scope of instruction: consonants - obstruents and sonorants. Each consonant will be practised
individually and in opposition to other sounds (e.g. voiced against voiceless consonants).
Particular attention should be paid to crucial aspects (e.g. aspiration, linking and intrusive “r”,
final devoicing, “-ing” endings)
Teaching materials: Say it right Sawala, Szczegóła, Weckwerth (main coursebook),
Additional materials: “Sounds English” J.D. O’Connor & C. Fletcher, “Practice in spoken
English”, G.L. Barnard & P.S. McKay, “Phonetic Drills” J.D. O’Connor.
Classroom practice: work with books and tapes/CDs, drills, individual and pair work. Tongue
twisters and pronunciation games can be used as warm-up exercises. Students may be asked
to deliver short impromptu speeches (e.g. on the topics discussed in communication classes).
Students may also practice reading from the phonetic transcript (see “Phonetic Drills” J.D.
O’Connor).
Assessment: see above.
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Semester 3
Scope of instruction: Revision of vowels and consonants. Semester 3 will be devoted to the
revision of the material covered during the first two semesters, with particular emphasis put
upon the most difficult sounds with which students may still have problems.
Issues also tackled in the semester shall include: primary and secondary stress, stress shift and
rhythm. Due amount of time and attention should also be devoted to practising weak forms
and linking.
Teaching materials: texts from “Sounds English”, “Modern English Pronunciation Practice”
and “Phonetic Drills” may be used for revising vowels and consonants. Short exercises for
stress and linking can be found in “Sounds English”, “Phonetic Drills”, “Rhymes and
Rhythm”.
Classroom practice: work with books and tapes/CDs, texts read out loud, impromptu
speeches delivered in front of the group. Students may also be asked to stage short mini roleplays.
Assessment: see above
Semester 4
Scope of instruction: Focus on the phonotactic processes that might only briefly have been
mentioned in the previous semesters, i.e.: linking, elision, glottaling, insertion, assimilation and
coalescence.
Time allowing, British English intonation. Students will practise the most common
intonation patterns of British English (i.e. fall, rise, fall-rise, rise-fall) and be made
aware of different functions of intonation.
Teaching materials: “Rhymes and Rhythm”, “Here is the News”. Apart from these, the
teacher may also present recordings of BBC news, interviews, episodes of British sit-coms as
means of providing students with some exposure to genuine British speech.
“Intonation in Context” by B. Bradford and “Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of
English” by D. Brazil.
Classroom practice: work with books and tapes/CDs, impromptu speeches delivered in front
of the group. Students may also be asked to stage short mini role-plays.
Assessment: see above
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Course books and reference materials:
Sawala, Szczegóła,
Weckwerth
Baker, A.
Barnard G.L., P.S. McKay
Bradford, B.
Brazil, D.
2011
Cruttenden, A.
1994
Hancock, M.
Fisiak, J., M. LipińskaGrzegorek, T. Zabrocki
Mortimer, C.
2003
1978
Munro Mackenzie, M.D.
1967
O’ Connor J.D., C. Fletcher
O’Connor, J.D.
O’Connor, J.D.
Phonsoby, M.
Sobkowiak, W.
Voughan-Rees, M.
Wells, J.C.
1989
1980
1963
1988
1994
1993
1996
1992
1990
Say it right
Ship or Sheep? CUP
Practice in Spoken English. London: MacMillan
Intonation in Context. CUP
Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English.
CUP
Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. London: Edward
Arnold
English Pronunciation in Use. CUP
An Introductory Polish-English Contrastive
Grammar. Warszawa: PWN
Dramatic Monologues for Listening Comprehension.
CUP
Modern English Pronunciation Practice. London:
Longman
Sounds English. Essex: Longman
Better English Pronunciation. CUP.
Phonetic Drills
How now, brown cow. Prentice Hall
English Phonetics for Poles. Poznañ: Bene Nati
Rhymes and Rhythm.
Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Essex: Longman
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