Weekly outline

  • Welcome to Phonetics: English Consonants

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    English IPA



    This course introduces L1 EFL students to English consonants. It discusses the following points: 


    a. The difference between English vowels and English consonants. 

    b. Description of English consonants: places of articulation of consonants, manners of articulation of consonants and the voicing of consonants.

    The general objectives of this course are as follow: 

    1. Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the facts they have learned about English Consonants. 

    2. Students will be able to apply the knowledge they acquired about the phonetics of English consonants to actual situations. 

    3. Students will be able to break down objects or ideas about English consonants into simpler parts and find evidence to support generalizations.

  • About the course / About the lecturer


            

    University    : Abou-Bekr Belkaid University of Tlemcen
    Faculty: Letters and Foreign Languages
    Department: English Department
    Module: Phonetics of English
    Level: 1 st year EFL students
    Semester: 2
    Unit Type: fundamental unit
    Coefficient: 1
    Credit: 2 
    Class Meeting Time: Monday from 11.30h to 12.30h
    Class Location: Room 16
    Instructor Name: Dr. FERKACHE SARRA MENAL 
    Email Address / Teams Account: sarramenal.ferkache@univ-tlemcen.dz
    Availability at the University: Monday & Tuesday from 9:00 to 12:00 
    Course Title: English consonants
    Course Period: Eight weeks

                                                                 

  • Content of the course

                              Theoretical framework of English Consonants


    Chapter 1. Consonants Vs Vowels in English language

    • Constriction of air
    • Speech organs

    Chapter 2. English Consonants: manner of articulation

    • Plosives (Stops)
    • Fricatives
    • Affricates
    • Nasals
    • Approximants
    • Lateral

    Chapter 3. English Consonants: Place of articulation

    • Bilabial Consonants
    • Labio-dental consonants 
    • Dental consonants
    • Alveolar consonants
    • Palato-Alveolar consonants
    • Palatal consonants
    • Velar consonants
    • Glottal consonant

    Chapter 4. English Consonants: Voicing

    • Voiced consonants
    • Voiceless consonants

  • Pre-Requisites

    Before embarking in the course, students should: 

    • Have background knowledge in the English sounds in English: vowels and consonants. 
    • Make the difference between English consonants and English vowels.

  • Course learning objectives

    • Be familiar with English consonants and the speech organs involved in their pronunciation. 
    • Learn how to phonetically transcribe English consonants. 
    • Learn the correct pronunciation of English consonants. 
    • Do tasks and practice phonetic transcriptions of words, phrases, and sentences.

                                                                    

  • Evaluation methods

    During each session, students will be practicing sounds and practice their pronunciation to feel and identify the speech organs involved into different consonants’ pronunciation. After the end of the classroom session, a set of activities will be given to the students with a one-week deadline. These activities will be marked and the points that students collect out of these activities will be counted as a TD mark.  

    The final exam will be based on theoretical knowledge (about 30%) and the remaining (70%) will be about the phonetic transcription of different phrases or sentences. • The student who has not obtained a 10 average will then be invited to take the make-up exam. The calculation of the final average after the make-up exam will be the sum of the TD mark and the make-up mark divided by 2.
      
                                      


  • Pre-test

    This test aims to check students' background knowledge in English alphabet and their ability to make the difference between English vowels and English consonants. 

                                

  • Chapter 1: English consonants Vs English Vowels

    This chapter aims at identifying the main aspects that differentiate English vowels from English consonants. These aspects are not basic, but the two categories of English sounds are examined phonetically and phonologically. Students, therefore, will be able to phonetically describe the differences between vowels and consonants and identify the speech organs which produce them.   

  • Chapter 2. English Consonants: manners of articulation

    This chapter tackles one of the properties of English consonants which is the manner of articulation of consonant sounds. It explains in detail the plosive, fricative, affricative, approximant, nasal, and lateral sounds. After this chapter, students will be able to identify how English consonants are produced.    

  • Chapter 3. English Consonants: places of articulation

    This chapter discusses the places of articulation of consonant sounds in English. This chapter breaks down the followings: Bilabial sounds, Labio-dental sounds, Dental sounds, Alveolar sounds, Palate-alveolar sounds, Palatal sounds, Velar sounds, Glottal sounds. After studying this, students will be able to tell how different English consonants have different places of articulation.   

  • Chapter 4. English Consonants: Voicing

    This chapter explains one of the properties of English consonants which is voicing. This chapter will discuss the difference between voiced and voiceless consonants. By the end of this chapter, students will be able to tell whether the sound is voiced or voiceless. 

  • Exit test & Evaluation

                              

    This section offers different tasks in order to do a final assessment for students. This section gauge students understanding of the whole course. 

  • Bibliography

    Johnson, Keith. Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics. 2nd ed. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Pub, 2003. 

    Laver, John. “Linguistic Phonetics.” The Handbook of Linguistics. Ed. Mark Aronoff and Janie Rees-Miller. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.

    Mlinar, Romeo. “Pronunciation of English Diphthongs by Speakers of Serbian: Acoustic Characteristics”, MA Thesis. University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, 2011. Web: http://www.languagebits.com/files/ma-paper/ 1 

    Ogden, Richard. An Introduction to English Phonetics. Edinburgh University Press, 2009. 

    Robinson, Tony. BEEP (British English Example Pronunciations). 1996. Cambridge University Engineering Department, Cambridge, UK. Accessed Aug. 2010. <ftp://svr ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/dictionaries/beep.tar.gzftp://svrftp.eng.cam.ac.uk/pub/comp.speech/dictionaries/beep.tar.gz> http://www.languagebits.com/files/ma-paper


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    Abbreviation: 


    IPA= International Phonetic Alphabet

  • Examiners' assessment of the course

    This section is kept only for the examiners of this course.