PTLC2005 Cabrera Abreu & Vizcaíno Ortega: Acoustic phonetics and EFL teaching 1
Acoustic phonetics and EFL teaching
Mercedes Cabrera Abreu, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Francisco Vizcaíno Ortega, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
1 Introduction Traditional studies on English pronunciation have neglected any
acoustic approach to the teaching of English as a foreign language. A possible reason
for this might have been the difficulties, (a) to access user friendly materials and devices
for the study of acoustic data, and (b), to develop an effective method which implements
all this into a unified teaching tool. Fortunately, in the past decade or so, the situation
has changed drastically. More and more institutions have favoured spaces in which
students and teachers can resort to a wide range of tools and materials which have
either been stored in a computer by downloading, or is accessible on-line. In this
context, we propose a methodology which integrates teaching tools, acoustic phonetics,
and resources from the internet.
2 Session type and structure Each session lasts approximately ninety minutes, so that
two sessions with a break in between can be organised per day, along two weeks,
making a total of 30 hours. They take place in a computer room, in which all the
computer terminals have direct access to the internet, and they also store on their hard
disk speech analysis software in addition to small speech files which have been
designed and recorded specifically for this course. The sessions are a mixture of both
theory and practice, so that after the lecturer has introduced and described concisely the
main points about a given topic, students turn to a wide range of practical exercises (see
below in §3.4), together with individual guidance and feedback from the lecturer, so that
they are sure to make a steady progress. Either towards the end of the session, or after
the presentation and study of a specific topic, the main findings are put together for
discussion.
3 Course Materials: Accordingly, this structure is itself built onto Powerpoint©
presentations, which are later printed out as students’ handouts. Thus, the initial
introductory and descriptive sections show short and concise descriptions supported by
dynamic illustrations and diagrams wherever possible. Along the set of introductory
transparencies for each topic, the transitions from one page to the next is sometimes
smoothly performed by means of rhetoric questions which refer explicitly to the logic
development of a particular process. This is the case, for instance, of the description of
the oral cavity functioning either as source or filter of sound. The question what happens
if there´s no vocal fold vibration? leads onto the alternative option of absence of voice,
that in which the oral cavity functions both as source and filter. On other ocassions, a
question of the type What’s up? is formulated at the end of a transparency as a prompt
to the student to perform a simple oral exercise whose answers are included in the
following transparency. These transitions are very effective in allowing time to the
student to in-take all the information that is being presented, and also, to the lecturer to
re-assure that a steady progress is taking place.
3.1 Web tutorials: Another source of information we resort to at this stage is a set of
web-tutorials available from (1) (see reference list below), especifically to those about
loudness and pitch. The lecturer together with the students browse through them with
the main objective of understanding the difference between loudness and pitch in
speech. These tutorials are integrated into the presentations by adding their URL
addresses on the relevant slides.
PTLC2005 Cabrera Abreu & Vizcaíno Ortega: Acoustic phonetics and EFL teaching 2
3.2 Web sites: A set of web sites are also included to further reinforce, illustrate or even
do some more practice about a given topic, especially at a more advanced stage. For
instance, (2) (see reference list below) is used as a concise outline about the acoustic
features of consonants. In addition, (3) (see reference list below) turns out to be an
excellent place to resort to also at an advanced level, and for student’s self study, as it
contains the following items: a) a user-friendly Powerpoint© presentation on the
acoustics of consonants, b) tables with easy-to-access basic information on the acoustic
cues of consonants, c) exercises including answers about segmenting spectrograms, d)
clickable boxes which first spell out the formant transitions values, and later illustrate
such values in terms of spectrograms, e) clickable phrases which lead onto
spectrograms or schematic diagrams, f) links to other relevant sites, and g) spectrogram
reading exercises including audio files.
3.3 Software programmes: WASP 1 is used by the students to produce and analyse
speech files. It is another freeware online device that can be downloaded from the UCL
web site, and that allows the user to record, display and analyse speech. This
straightforward software, which displays both spectrograms and fundamental frequency
tracks, proves to be really helpful in the process of comparison of utterances produced
by a native speaker of English (see § 3.4.4) against those produced by the students
themselves. Thus, the programme is a powerful tool for the identification of phonetic and
phonological cues present in the native speaker’s production that the students are
encouraged to imitate in their own recordings.
3.4 Practical exercises: These exercises are aimed towards the checking of student’s
progress and understanding of the basic topics presented by the lecturer, and also to
test their ability for spectrographic analysis. Thus, we organised them in the following
way:
a.
fill-in-the gap statements, with a set of terms to choose from,
b.
statements to be valued as being True or False,
c.
multiple choice questions,
d.
spectrographic analysis,
e.
Fundamental Frequency (F0) curve analysis.
3.4.1 Fill-in-the gap exercises: given terms of the following sort, resonance, oral cavity,
variable resonator, and vocal folds, these have to be inserted in one of the gaps left
empty in a set of statements, such as The concept of source is used with reference to
______ and ________.
3.4.2 Statements valued as True or False: a statement of the type The oral cavity shape
determines sound quality is valued as True, whereas a statement like The intonation
curve is not affected by the speaker’s emotions is valued as False.
3.4.3 Multiple choice questions: This exercise perfectly captures, in a simple, direct way,
typical areas of mistakes among Spanish learners of English. The following is an
example of the notion accent, which frequently gives rise to confusion among
Spaniards.
_________ syllables are syllables associated with pitch movements.
1
SFS/ WASP© Version 1.06 (3/10/2000) is a computer programme designed by Mark Huckvale at
University College London for speech analysis.
PTLC2005 Cabrera Abreu & Vizcaíno Ortega: Acoustic phonetics and EFL teaching 3
a. prominent
b. accented
c. stressed
d. emphatic
3.4.4 Spectrographic and F0 analysis
The set of spectrographic and F0 analyses described in this and the following sections
are performed on speech files recorded specifically for the present course by a native
English speaker with a nearly Received Pronunciation type of accent. The recording
includes 14 sets of words and short phrases whose contents are structured bearing in
mind the difficulties encountered by Canarian Spanish students of English as a second
language. Thus, sets 1-7 include minimal pairs and trios illustrating vowel and
consonant contrasts either word initial or word final, like for instance, son, sung, sum;
best, vest, west; sets 8-10 contain short utterances for intonation analysis (e.g. All the
yolks were bad; What happened to your gin?), and also for the study of final consonant
cluster simplification (e.g. . In sets 11-14 we include either one
or two words illustrating initial consonant clusters (e.g. Spain, sprain). Since there are no
words in Spanish with initial consonant clusters beginning with /s/, except for loan words,
we can check the tendency shown by a large number of our students to introduce an
epenthetic vowel /e/ at the onset of the word to facilitate their pronunciation. It is also
worth mentioning that most students produce lenition of voiced plosives again in
accordance with the Spanish phonological system (e.g. the word wordy was pronounced
worthy, which sounds reminiscent of the Spanish allophonic realization of /d/ in contexts
of this type).
F0 analysis covers several aspects, ranging from basic issues like the distinction
between pitch inflexions and tonal targets, to more complex topics like degrees of the
speaker’s pitch range, key or register.
Due to the complexity of spectrographic and F0 analysis, we decided to grade the
exercises in terms of the student’s level as beginner, intermediate and advanced.
a. Beginners:
a. identification of vowel and consonant limits, areas of greater or lesser
degree of intensity, vocal fold vibration.
b. Identification of the manifestation of a periodic and an aperiodic
sound.
c. Identification of the criteria which determine the acoustic structure of
vowels in English.
d. Contrastive analysis of smoothed versus non-smoothed sequences of
triphthongs.
e. Discrimination of basic notions like stress, accent, pitch, or
prominence, essential for a correct analysis of F0 tracks.
b. Intermediate:
a. Identification of specific acoustic cues on a model spectrogram.
b. Analytical listening, focusing on specific acoustic cues on a model
spectrogram.
c. Recording of student’s performance of the same words as shown in
the model and identification of specific cues on a student’s
spectrogram.
PTLC2005 Cabrera Abreu & Vizcaíno Ortega: Acoustic phonetics and EFL teaching 4
d. Identification of the overtone structure characterizing the distinctive
quality of English vowels.
e. Contrastive analysis of F0 contours and their pragmatic meanings in
English and Spanish.
c. Advanced:
a. Detailed description of similarities and/or differences between the
model spectrogram and the student’s spectrogram.
b. Detailed description of similarities and/or differences between a pair
of words/trios.
c. Detailed description of findings in student’s performances which differ
from the model, and tentative answers for these findings.
d. Recording of student’s performance of the utterances used in the
model: cross-linguistic comparison between the intonation curve
found in the model and that used in their own production.
Identification of final pitch movements in the utterance types reviewed
in English and in Spanish with special mention to the peculiarites of
Canarian Spanish.
4 Course Objectives The course is designed with the following objectives in mind:
a.
to develop an intermediate level of knowledge of acoustic
phonetics,
b.
to identify and discriminate the acoustic cues of English vowels
and consonants
c.
to develop a selft-study approach to the acoustics of English by
resorting to material from the internet
d.
to develop an awareness of the acoustic contrasts between
English and Canarian Spanish vowels, consonants and intonation,
e.
to present an integrated approach to the teaching of English
pronunciation and intonation in the context of EFL
f.
to offer a methodological framework for the implementation of
teaching tools teaching acoustic phonetics, and resources from
the internet.
5 For future improvement and development The course described here did not
require an assessment system, but this can take the form of a written exam paper
including the type of exercises illustrated in §3 above, together with an oral test, in which
students describe viva voce a spectrogram from the set which has been previously
analysed along the course. Thus, the lecturer evaluates the student’s progress both in
his/her pronunciation of English, and in his/her understanding of acoustic phonetics..
Last, but not least, the course needs an extension in time, so that rather than lasting 30
hours, it needs to be extendended to 60 hours.
6 References
(1) http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/resource/tutorials.html (consulted May 27, 2005)
(2) http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~jcoleman/consonant_acoustics.htm (consulted May 27,
2005)
(3) http://emsah.uq.edu.au/linguistics/teaching/ling2005/week8lec.html (consulted May
27, 2005)