Practical English Phonetics / Phonetics with Listening Practice (General), SoSe 2026

In this course we are concerned with certain aspects of what the British linguist J. R. Firth called the noises we make with our faces in order to live.

You will learn how the sounds of English differ from the sounds of German, both in terms of the way they are produced and in terms of the way they relate to other sounds in the system(s) of the English language. You will practise producing individual English sounds and will also practise what the 18th century phonetician Joshua Steele called the melody and measure of English speech, i.e. its intonation and rhythm. Rhythm will provide a context in which to practise some other very important aspects of English, such as weak forms (the reduced, simplified way in which short function words like should or some or than are typically pronounced in normal speech), linking (running your words together smoothly into larger units, so that an apron sounds almost the same as “a napron”), and clipping (of which there are two types: 1) pre-fortis clipping, or shortening the length of the middle of a syllable if the end of the syllable is to be pronounced with more force, as in search, where the vowel is somewhat shorter than the vowel in surge, and 2) rhythmic clipping, or shortening the length of a stressed syllable if it is followed by unstressed ones, as in search – searching – searchable). In addition, you will have opportunities to review what you already know about the complicated relationship between sound and spelling in English.

The course includes a series of listening exercises, which are designed to provide a sample of all the major varieties of English. We will learn, among other things, why so many people misheard Neil Armstrong’s famous first words from the surface of the moon, why Australians and New Zealanders misunderstand each other’s short vowels (e.g. pan–pen–pin–pun), and what the underlying rhythm of Indian English is that presents speakers of other Englishes with so many hurdles when they try to understand what is being said. We will also listen to a recording of what English is predicted to sound like in 100 years’ time.

Students can choose between following the course in synchronous online mode (via MS Teams meetings) or attending in person. It is possible to switch between in person and online participation as often as necessary.

There will be other tasks for you to work on between the weekly (virtual or face-to-face) meetings.

At the end of the course, there will be a brief (20 minutes) online oral exam, which will involve reading a text aloud, speaking spontaneously, and demonstrating at least a passive knowledge of the phonetic symbols used for transcribing English sounds. This exam can be done in person on campus if preferred, but the online form is easier to organise and provides more flexibility when it comes to choosing a date and time for the exam to take place.

We meet on Wednesdays from 10:15 to 11:45.

We start in Week 1 of the lecture period, on Wednesday 8 April 2026.

If you are attending on person, the class takes place on the Saarbrücken campus of Saarland University in Building A2 2, Room 1.22 (Sprachlabor).

All students taking the course will be members of the corresponding MS Teams team and will be invited to the entire series of online meetings, so if you are participating online, whether just for one week or for the entire semester, you will find each week’s meeting listed in your MS Teams calendar.

The course will be structured in a number of blocks:

The first block will involve exchanging contact details and making decisions about communication channels and frequency of virtual or real contact, as well as providing a general overview of free online resources available for doing phonetics. You will give me information about your previous experience and the goals you wish to achieve in this course.

The second block will involve you sending me a voice message in which you read aloud two paragraphs of English prose. You can then tell me what aspects of your pronunciation you think you need to work on, and I can tell you whether I agree with you or whether there are other things I think you should work on. I will then point you to the resources you will need to practise with.

The third block will involve becoming more familiar with the basic concepts and terminology of Systemic Functional Linguistics and of phonetics and phonology; there will be reading material as well as slide shows. The central unit of the sound system of English is the syllable, so we will take the syllable as the point of departure for our explorations. We will look at the internal structure of the syllable, and at the larger units in which the syllable functions. We will also look at the more abstract phenomena that the sound system of English helps to “realise”, and at the more concrete phenomena that the sound system helps to organise and structure.

The fourth block will consist of practice in describing and producing the individual consonant and vowel sounds of English as they occur in syllables. We will begin with the material world: the anatomical organs of articulation, and the physiology and physics of sound. We will then study the differences between the sound systems of English and German. These differing systems are projected onto the material world of anatomy and physiology and physics to create the actual phonetic differences that you will need to master: you will learn to hear, and become able to produce, the difference between the English word happy and the German word happy (which is approximately the same as the difference between the English word jam and the English word gem) and you will learn to speak with one voice in English.

The fifth block will involve becoming more aware of what happens when syllables are strung together to form larger rhythmic units. Syllables rub against each other at their edges; sometimes sounds adapt to the new environment, sometimes they are simplified or lost. Some syllables stand out more than others. We will study the functions of these differences and practise their physical manifestations.

The sixth block will consist of practice in English intonation, based on material by M.A.K. Halliday. Intonation is understood in the broader sense, where it includes all the consequences of deciding how to chunk information into digestible bits and how to assign degrees of importance, as well as the interpersonal and logical functions of rising or falling pitch.

The seventh block will involve assessment. Students will demonstrate that they can read IPA transcriptions, and will read aloud the same passage as at the beginning of the course, as well as discussing a topic of their own choosing.

—————-

LINKS TO COURSE MATERIALS:

—————-

BLOCK 1 — DEFINING GOALS

Week 01: Wednesday 8 April 2026 — Unit 01

1) “Where is everything?”

Everything you need for Week 01 is here:
http://spence.saar.de/phonetics/unit01_20261

2) “What do I need to do before the class?”

i) Make sure you received a “Welcome” email from me – it contains important information, which you should keep handy. Having that information readily available will save you time later.

ii) Help me to get an initial idea of what you already know and what you want to achieve in the course, by completing this form:

http://spence.saar.de/phonetics/unit01_20261/B__Survey/surveyform_phon.pdf

The most important questions are the ones concerning previous experience with IPA symbols, whether you have already taken a lecture course in phonetics, and how easily you can work online. All information will be treated in the strictest confidence and will be destroyed as soon as it is no longer needed (viz., once your results have been received by the examinations office).

If there are any questions on that form that you consider irrelevant or too personal, just ignore them. But if you have any special needs – for example, if you are affected by a disability – please let me know as early in the semester as possible (see below for more details).

If you are completing the form by typing in your answers, I would suggest using the Adobe Acrobat Reader. In any case, make sure that your answers have really been saved and do not simply disappear(!)

I generate all my HTML and PDF files myself, by typing lines of code by hand in XeLaTeX and then compiling to produce the required format. I’m aware that my PDF files are not yet as barrier-free as they should be.

iii) Send me (no later than a few days before the class, if possible) a recording of yourself reading this text aloud:

http://spence.saar.de/phonetics/unit01_20261/E__Initial_Assessment/einstufung_reading_2601.pdf

You can send it by any means you like – as an email attachment, as a WhatsApp message to my German mobile phone number, via an MS Teams chat, or by any other means that might happen to work for both of us.

I will then send you some feedback on your pronunciation, and suggest which aspects of English phonetics you should concentrate on during the semester. The feedback will be in the form of an audio file delivered via MS Teams, plus a scan of a handwritten document that will be sent as an email attachment. If you are unable to read my handwriting at any point, please do not hesitate to ask me for help!

iv) Here is the official chart of phonetic symbols published by the International Phonetic Association, together with an extended version that contains additional symbols that are in widespread use:

http://www.spence.saar.de/phonetics/unit01_20261/D__IPA_Chart

You don’t need to know all of those symbols, but it’s probably a good idea to have constant access to a full IPA chart.

v) If you have time, look at the slides for the first week’s session, plus a printer-friendly version containing their content in a more compact format:

http://www.spence.saar.de/phonetics/unit01_20261/F__Slides_and_Printout

If you like working on paper, you could print out the printer-friendly version of the slides and use it to take notes on, while looking at the slides and/or watching the screen recordings of me working through the slides (see below).

This will save you from having to rush to scribble down what’s on the slides. You will thus have more time to take additional notes of your own, to think about the issues raised, and to formulate questions.

If you want to ask a question (in class, or while participating synchronously online), just interrupt! It’s more interesting that way.

vi) Have a look at the plan for the course

http://www.spence.saar.de/phonetics/unit01_20261/C__Plan

This plan is provisional; the course was already due for a significant overhaul of its structure before it suddenly suffered a name change.

The decision to rename this course "General" was taken without my knowledge or consent and without any kind of consultation at all. I suspect that the intention may have been to address the long-standing “elephant in the room”, namely that students care nothing about whether the course title announces “British” or “American” English, but that they expect to be taught a kind of mixture of the two, or both at once, or something-or-other.

I shall interpret the forced change as follows:

All of the world’s Englishes are fair game. You can learn as much as you want about any or all of them.

The fact that this change is not part of any kind of ongoing process of collectively-led syllabus-planning means (bitterly, but literally) that all decisions are up to the course leader and the course participants alone.

A more detailed version of the plan will therefore be published shortly. It will detail the work to be done before and after each session, as well as showing which activities we will be engaged in during each (virtual or face-to-face) meeting.

vii) Feel free to explore the other materials for Week 01.

In particular, you might like to look at the following:

viii) Here there will be some screen recordings of me introducing the course and going through the slides:

http://www.spence.saar.de/phonetics/unit01_20261/G__Screen_Recordings

Note: There will probably only be recordings of the second half of the first week’s presentation – and those parts will have been recycled from previous semesters; the information contained in the slides should not have substantially changed since then, however. In cases of doubt, consult the slides themselves, not the video.

These videos are provided for the benefit of students who are starting late ... a major distinguishing feature of Saarland University is that students can enrol up until the end of the second week of lectures.

ix) In this directory you will find subdirectories containing photos of some of the people (linguists, phonologists, phoneticians ... ) with whom you will become acquainted during this course:

http://www.spence.saar.de/phonetics/unit01_20261/H__People

For one of these people — in all likelihood the most brilliant of them all – there is no photo available on the Internet. The main reason for that is probably that she was a woman. This notwithstanding, her students universally thought that she was awesome. If you are very keen, I can provide you with a link to a paper about a paper she delivered to her colleagues at a staff meeting once. Her name was Eileen Whitley. (The rest is silence. — Sh. |Ham. V.ii.395)

3) “What will we be doing during the class?”

0)a) First of all, some slides from the Contact Point for Studying with Disability, which is part of the university’s Equal Opportunities and Diversity Management Unit. If you are living with disability or chronic illness, the university can provide various forms of support.

http://www.spence.saar.de/phonetics/KSB/KSB_Slides_for_lecturers.pdf

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any kind of special needs. My current focus in this area is on dyslexia and colour-blindness – I am trying to make my teaching materials more accessible to all students who are dealing with either of these issues, while at the same time trying to conform more closely to the ‘Corporate Design’ of Saarland University.

0)b) Second, please note that I will from time to time use the phrase CONTENT WARNING to alert you to the fact that some of the material may be offensive or triggering to some students, because it contains sexual innuendo, or references to drugs, or violence, or something else that could prove to be unsettling. My generation was much less sensitive to such things than yours is.

And now to the actual course contents:

1) We will spend some time during the first session getting to know each other, focusing on people’s career plans, their previous experience with phonetics, and the specific goals they hope to achieve in this course.

2) I will present a general overview of the course, exploring its overall structure and discussing how the weekly classes and the oral exams will work.

3) I will list some guiding principles for the study of phonetics.

4) I will direct you to some useful resources for the study of phonetics.

We will probably not have enough time to finish part 4); you can go through the rest of the material as homework.

4) “What do I need to do after the class?”

1) Finish looking at the list of resources for the study of phonetics, on the slides for Week 01.

2) If you haven’t done so already, send me the recording of yourself reading aloud the text I asked you to send me a recording of yourself reading aloud (see above).

3) If you’ve already received some feedback on your recording, and there’s something that is unclear, ask me to explain.

If there are any questions, just ask.

———

The rest of the course materials will be uploaded shortly.

Listening Practice: Links

Local copies of videos for listening can be found here:

http://www.spence.saar.de/arcanum/phonetics/listening/videos_etc/

– ask the course leader to send you your login details.

Any local copies of the texts of those videos would be here:

http://www.spence.saar.de/arcanum/phonetics/listening/texts_etc/

The worksheets for some of the videos are here:

http://www.spence.saar.de/phonetics/exercise_sheet_01-01/exercise_sheet_01-01.pdf

http://www.spence.saar.de/phonetics/exercise_sheet_02-01/exercise_sheet_02-01.pdf

http://www.spence.saar.de/phonetics/exercise_sheet_11-07/exercise_sheet_11-07.pdf

LINKS TO VIDEOS FOR LISTENING PRACTICE: