Abstract
The pronunciation course of standard Czech contains speech material for drill practice of Czech sounds; partially, it also introduces the basic grammaticalized phenomena of sentence prosody. It is intended for non-native speakers interested in mastering the pronunciation of the Czech language that is acceptable for cultured and stylistically neutral communication, both private and public. The exercises are aimed at stabilizing the correct perception of the sound inventory in mutual connection with the development of the speaker's articulation skills.
The material is organized into 26 lessons based on the sound properties of the Czech language system, focusing on meaning-relevant contrasts and phenomena specific to the Czech language. The basis of the training material is sets of words in a volume sufficient to stabilize the auditory pattern and to form suitable articulatory skills. Individual lessons contain collections of specialized sets of examples based on the combinatorics of sound groups with varying difficulty of articulation. Short sentences are included at the end of each lesson. Pronunciation exercises are complemented by several lessons on the issue of continuous speech: voicing assimilation across the word boundary, dividing into stress words, word stress on prepositions, and an overview of the basic sentence intonation patterns.
The course is primarily intended for work with an experienced teacher, who can select target sound phenomena and the order of the exercises according to the needs of a specific language group or individual student. To make the book more straightforward to use during self-learning, it includes numerous notes and comments that explain the motivation behind the arrangement of the examples, possibly the procedure and the goal of the exercise, for the phonetically less informed user.
The entire material is narrated by two professional speakers, a man, and a woman, in a neutral speaking style and an average speaking rate while maintaining a stable quality in the realization of the observed phenomena.
The audio track can be accessed using the QR code provided for each exercise. By loading the code, the exercise opens in the ProCzeFor internet application. Hence, users have access to other functions besides the audio track, e.g., they can change the length of the pauses and the number of playbacks or display the transcription of the text.