Sylabus
Course description and objectives:
Can we guess where the speaker is from based on their foreign accent in English? Why is it challenging for non-native speakers to sound native-like? Can we identify the sound patterns of English in non-native speakers? If so, can it help non-native speakers improve their foreign accent? This course is designed as a quick journey through the phonetic realms with a particular emphasis on foreign accents in English. It intends to be not just theoretical, but also empirical. Target audience: anyone interested in delving into the sound patterns of English as a foreign language, without prior experience in phonetics.
During the first weeks, the students will learn the basics of English phonetics and phonology, one of the sessions being especially dedicated to exploring various features of foreign-accented English, including listening to extracts from non-native English speech corpora and other resources. This will provide the students with the essential knowledge necessary for the empirical part of the course, which will allow them to get hands-on experience of phonetic analyses performed in Praat, a computer program used by phoneticians from all over the world. Next, each student will be asked to carry out their own phonetic “mini-study”, which will consist in finding and recording two speakers of English as a foreign language, preferably speaking the same mother tongue as the student, and subsequently analyzing the recordings, the objective being to try to find any distinctive features of the particular foreign accent of English. The instructor will provide guidance through all the stages of the study.
The aim of the course is to give the students an opportunity to discover the variability of English by exploring the sounds of different foreign accents. In addition, the students will experience what it is like to carry out a simple phonetic study including getting through all the stages it involves (participant recruitment, obtaining consent to participate, (meta)data collection, analysis & presentation of results).
At the end of the semester, each student will give a brief oral presentation of their findings and will be awarded 5 credits for successful completion of the course upon submission of a brief report (max. 2 pages) summarizing their experiment. The course will be taught in English. The students will need to bring their laptops and headphones to class starting week 7.
Course syllabus:
* Week 1Course introductionIntroduction, course outline, requirementsWhat phonetics and phonology deal withWhat foreign-accented English is
* Week 2Introduction to English phonetics and phonology IPhonemes & transcription (International Phonetic Alphabet)Vowels
* Week 3Introduction to English phonetics and phonology IIConsonantsSound interactions (linking, assimilation, phonotactics)
* Week 4Introduction to English phonetics and phonology ILexical stressStrong and weak syllables, rhythm
* Week 5Recording session in the labRecording participants for our experiments
* Week 6Foreign-accented EnglishesFeatures of selected foreign-accented Englishes
* Week 7Introduction to PraatFirst steps in Praat, a program used for phonetic analyses
* Week 8Mini-study preparationDeciding what can be analyzed in the recordings
* Week 9Phonetic analysesWorking on phonetic analyses under the instructor's supervision
* Week 10Phonetic analysesWorking on phonetic analyses under the instructor's supervision
* Week 11Phonetic analysesWorking on phonetic analyses under the instructor's supervision
* Week 12Presentation of results
