Spanish phonetics and pronunciation

This course incorporates a type of perception training known as HVPT. My colleagues and I have received grants to develop this work and make it available to our students. You can read more about it here.

Course description

This course is intended to guide students to become more aware of Spanish pronunciation, and their pronunciation in particular. This course presents the basic rules of correspondence between sounds and spelling in Spanish, as well as an introduction to basic articulatory phonetics. It also introduces the basics of phonetic transcription, syllable structure and the combinations of sounds allowed in specific syllable positions. Building on an understanding of phonetics and phonology, the course provides training in perception and production of the sounds of Spanish. By the end of the course, students will feel more comfortable with their oral and listening skills.

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, students will:

• demonstrate greater awareness of their own pronunciation and improved pronunciation in Spanish by completing a series of targeted sound recordings and graded assignments,
• demonstrate improved listening identification by completing a series of listening tasks.

Learning goals

By the end of this course, students will:

• express basic principles of phonetics and phonology with appropriate terminology,
• describe the articulation of Spanish sounds and how they are organized into the phonological system of the language, and explain differences regarding English,
• describe and recognize regional and social variation in Spanish pronunciation,
• describe the principles of Spanish orthography and pronunciation and apply these principles in your own speech and in your listening comprehension in controlled contexts,
• read a phonetic transcription as well as produce one,
• recognize features of non-native pronunciation and apply strategies to reduce them.

Sample Lecture Notes

Introductory lecture on syllable structure

Lecture on /b d g/

Sample Assignments

Speech visualization assignment for rhotics

Recording assignment for /b d g/