Linguistics Assessment

Online Phonetics Training

Welcome to the online training in basic phonetics offered by the University of British Columbia (UBC) Department of Linguistics.

The materials presented here were prepared by Strang Burton, Katherine Irvine, Jolien Otten, Johanna Tan, and Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson with support provided by NSERC and the UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF). These materials are intended for personal use only (i.e., for completing the online training); all other uses require express permission from the UBC Department of Linguistics. For further information, please contact Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson.

Scope and design of the training (PLEASE READ CAREFULLY):

The training materials presented here are intended to provide a very basic introduction to Phonetics with particular emphasis on phonetic transcription. The course materials are divided into five Units for Study, Practice, and Testing (but see Concerning Unit 5 below ). Each Unit has a specific focus: consonants (Unit 1), vowels (Unit 2), stress, intonation and tone (Unit 3), a sampler of non-English sounds (Unit 4), and transcription practice (Unit 5).

Study — Although Units may be done in any order, we recommend following the order given as each Unit builds on those preceding it.

Practice — This section provides practice for Units 1-4 and testing for Unit 5 (see below). In each Unit, questions are randomly selected from a larger database and answers are provided so that students may check their knowledge of the materials. Note: a new randomization occurs whenever the user reloads a page or re-enters the site.

Test — Test Units may be completed independently and in any order. Tests need not be completed within a single session; however, a new randomized subset of questions is generated for each session. Although feedback is provided for every answer in Units 1-4, test scores are revealed only upon completion of an entire Unit. Units 1-4 may be taken as many times as necessary to pass. The Unit 5 test of phonetic transcrption is handwritten and must be submitted for grading to Linguistics Department. Note: the Unit 5 test is done in the Practice section as described below. EVERYONE PASSES (eventually)!

Concerning Unit 5 (phonetic transcription), both practice and testing are done in the Practice Section. Since the test is handwritten and must be handed in to the Linguistics Department, it is not necessary to complete the test in one session. What is necessary within one session is that students

be logged on in order to access the Practice section and choose Unit 5
print the page or write down the sound file numbers corresponding to the 10 items displayed – e.g., 1: 019, 2: 014, 3: 002, ... 10: 001.
download the sound files to a local machine so they can be listened to repeatedly and/or displayed in Praat and other audio visualization programs.

If these steps are not followed, it will be impossible to grade the transcriptions.

Registration:

Student/users must register with either their student number or a number assigned through prior arrangement with the Department of Linguistics.

To begin registration, click on the "Register" link in the top right corner of this page. You will be asked to provide your name, student number, year of study and major. You will also be asked to select a password. Although site administrators have access to your chosen password, it is best if the chosen password is one that will not be easily forgotten. To complete the registration process, make sure that all the necessary registration information has been entered and then click the "Register" button.

Requirements:

In order to view the special characters used to specify phonetic content, your machine must be configured in specific ways:

1. Your browser must be unicode compliant. Two browsers are recommended:

Safari for Mac; Mozilla Firefox for PC (download the Firefox browser for free at the Mozilla Homepage)

DO NOT USE Internet Explorer for either hardware platform

2. You should have one of the freely availabe Unicode fonts installed on your computer. The preference is Lucida Sans Unicode ( Download), but Arial Unicode also works: MAC (OS X), PC (Windows).

3. PC users must be running Windows 95 or later; Mac users must be running OS X (Unix and Linux users should consult the Unicode site for issues regarding the display of the phonetic characters).