Spanish Phonetics
Created by: Marga Menendez-Lopez
What is it?
Welcome to the Listening Course on Spanish Pronunciation and Phonetics. This is an introductory listening course aimed at practising recognition of the sounds and main accents of Spanish. It contains practical exercises alongside a short explanation and is divided into two parts.
- Part 1: basic listening exercises practising the distinction between similar sounds (minimal pairs);
- Part 2: more advanced listening exercises on the main accents of Spanish: northern peninsular Spanish, Spanish of the low/coastal lands and Spanish of the high lands.
Who is it for?
The basic exercises are intended for students of Spanish with no previous experience of phonetics. The more advanced exercises on regional accents are more suitable for upper intermediate/advanced students of Spanish (B2-C1 in the Common European Framework of Reference).
What does it consist of?
These listening exercises have been designed using Hot Potatoes software (http://hotpot.uvic.ca/). They are self-contained units. This means that the students can choose units or exercises independently and do not need to work consecutively from unit 1 to unit 8. The explanation is on the left (or sometimes in a web link), the exercise on the right, and the feedback is automatic.
These exercises have been designed for formative purposes, so the student can do the same exercise as many times as they want. Each exercise consists of a bank of questions, so every time the exercise is loaded the questions may be different and/or in a different order.
The audio and video recordings are of native speakers of Spanish with different accents. The video clips are used in the last unit, summarising regional varieties.
The exercises are a selection of phonetic phenomena, not an exhaustive account of all the aspects of Spanish phonetics. The focus in the basic exercises is the distinction between minimal pairs rather than syntactic phonetics or intonation. The exercises on accents comprise a selection and a generalisation of phonetic markers of each accent.
How does it work?
These exercises are mainly intended for independent use, although they can also be used in a classroom situation, with headphones (and microphones, for pronunciation practice). There is a table of contents on the left-hand side which contains the units for this course. Each unit is self-contained, and where there is a range of different exercises in each unit, the exercises go from easier to more complex. When the units have the same type of exercise the words are different but there is no progression in difficulty.
In which language?
Instructions and explanations of the basic exercises use English so they can be used by students with different levels of Spanish. Feedback is mainly written in simple Spanish.
In the advanced exercises on regional accents there is a progression in the use of Spanish. The explanations are still in English, so they reach a larger audience, but the instructions and feedback are in Spanish. In the last unit, which consists of a summary of all the phonetic phenomena studied in the course, the explanations are in Spanish.
Tildes (graphic accents)
There is a unit on rules for writing the graphic accent after the exercises on syllables.
Phonetics
The exercises use the phonemic symbols that can be found in dictionaries. It is important for the student to be familiar with the phonemic alphabet in order to use this course and the dictionaries’ pronunciation guides. Therefore a unit on the phonemic alphabet and transcription is included. For practical and pedagogic purposes, /θ/ and /s/ are considered different phonemes, but there is no distinction made between /ʎ/ and /j/.
Can you use these exercises for spoken pronunciation practice?
Yes. Using sound recording software, like Audacity, the student can repeat and record the words that they hear in the exercises and then compare their pronunciation with that of the native speaker.
Contact
Marga Menéndez-López: m.menendez-lopez@surrey.ac.uk
For technical queries: Rachel O’Callaghan.
Copyright Information
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