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

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. 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 attending the course virtually 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.

For links to the course materials, see below:

THE COURSE MATERIALS WILL BE UPLOADED SHORTLY AND WILL BE PLACED HERE.

THE MATERIALS FOR THE “LISTENING” COMPONENT OF THE COURSE CAN BE ACCESSED BY SCROLLING FURTHER:

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:

01-RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION (1): ‘STAGED’ RP

01-01-FRY AND LAURIE (CONTENT WARNING: innuendo)

Marvellous England Commentators – Fry and Laurie:

http://www.spence.saar.de/arcanum/phonetics/listening/videos_etc/01-01-Marvellous_England_Commentators.mp4
(2:17)

02-RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION (2): OLDER RP

02-01-BERTRAND RUSSELL (CONTENT WARNING: tobacco use)

Bertrand Russell: Face to Face Interview (BBC, 1959):

http://www.spence.saar.de/arcanum/phonetics/listening/videos_etc/02-01-Bertrand_Russell_1959_Interview.mp4
(28:50)

03-RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION (3): (MOSTLY) STANDARD RP and/or SOUTHERN ENGLAND, EDUCATED

03-01-MICHAEL HALLIDAY:

M.A.K. Halliday was born into a middle-class family in Leeds, Yorkshire, in 1925. Like most British academics of his generation, he spoke in an accent that contained few, if any, indications of which part of the U.K. he was born in.

M.A.K. Halliday presenting his paper ‘The grammatical construction of scientiﬁc knowledge: a historical view of the framing of the English clause’ at the International Conference on Languages of Science, University of Bologna, Italy, PART 1 and PART 2:

http://www.spence.saar.de/arcanum/phonetics/listening/videos_etc/03-01-MAK_Halliday_1995_Bologna_PART_1.mp4
(19:49)

http://www.spence.saar.de/arcanum/phonetics/listening/videos_etc/03-01-MAK_Halliday_1995_Bologna_PART_2.mp4
(19:37)

This paper is available as:

Chapter 4 of Volume 5 (The Language of Science) of The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday

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