Resoures

This page describes some resources that we find useful. If you have suggestions for others, please add them using the Comments section below.

Writing about English sounds

There are three commonly used ways of referring to sounds: phonetic symbols, the SAMPA set of adapted symbols, and exemplifying words. In a given situation, one approach is usually either clearer or more convenient than the others. We may well use all three.

Phonetic symbols

For adding a few phonetic symbols to a text, there are webpages where the symbols can be copied for pasting. For example: http://ipa.typeit.org/

Alternatively, if you are going to be using phonetic symbols a lot, you can download and install the UCL Phonetic Keyboard extension or similar software.

For converting text from normal English into phonetic symbols, the Lingorado site is a good starting point, but one needs to check the output (particularly with respect to reduction).

The Oxford Learner's Dictionary has phonetic transcriptions and models for both British and American English.

Adapted symbols

In emails and informal writing, it can be useful to use an earlier approach, the SAMPA system. This makes use of capital letters and symbols from a normal keyboard to represent phonetic symbols which can't normally be typed. For example, schwa is written using the '@' symbol, the <th> sound in thin is written using 'T', the <th> in these using 'D', the <sh> of ship using 'S', and the <s> in measure using 'Z'. 

Note that SAMPA uses the same keyboard positions as the UCL Phonetic Keyboard extension, so the two are helpfully complementary.

Word exemplars

Teachers have always referred to sounds by using words containing them: for example, "the vowel sound in cat." By inventing his 'lexical sets' in 1982, John Wells gave us 24 word exemplars that simplify this process; people can now just say, "the TRAP vowel," and everyone knows what they are talking about. (The exemplars are written in capitals.)

(Wells designed the set for a different purpose, but it serves English teachers well. You can read more about it on Wikipedia.)

Useful books

On English pronunciation

There are many books about English pronunciation aimed at teachers. For the approach we will be working on in this session, we recommend, Catford's Practical Introduction to Phonetics. This a collection of exercises which will help you to explore sound-making experientially, and to understand English pronunciation from an articulatory point of view.

Teaching English pronunciation

Adrian Underhill's Sound Foundations (1994) starts from a clear position about how people learn pronunciation as a motor skill and how teachers can create exercises which support this. (We would now call this an 'Articulatory Approach' to teaching pronunciation.). He, like us, was inspired by the work of Caleb Gattegno.   

Swan's Learner English has useful comparisons between various L1s and English, including their pronunciation. 

Yates and Zielinski have done a similar job in the appendices to their Give it a Go!, which is a free download.