The Sound Lab

This course teaches students core principles of articulatory phonetics, as well as the basics of the sound systems of Standard Southern British English and General American. We examine how speech sounds are generated by our vocal organs, how to transcribe speech sounds, and discuss issues in phonetics and phonology. In addition, the course helps all students to improve their listening skills and trains L2 (or 'non-native') speakers of English to manipulate their English pronunciation. We will see how these theoretical and practical elements are closely connected.

Note: each student uses two books in this course: Practical Phonetics and Phonology (2025) by Carley et al., and ONE of the following two: American English Phonetics and Pronunciation Practice (2020) by Carley et al., which teaches General American pronunciation, OR English Phonetics and Pronunciation Practice (2018) by Carley et al., which teaches General British pronunciation.