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Syllabus for Practical British English Phonetics
WS JO year I and II

Aims of the course
The ultimate aim of the course in phonetics is for the students to achieve the ability to speak
English with a close resemblance to the pronunciation of British educated speakers of English.
This goal, however, is hardly ever achievable. Therefore, the assessment of students' speech
must be based on the intelligibility criterion, preferably in a situation where a student is forced
to speak impromptu. In such a situation, what from the point of view of English phonetics
and/or phonology may be viewed as an error, may be ignored as long as it does not prevent
comprehension. Such 'errors' include those not perceived by native listeners (e.g. final
devoicing in some contexts, when the devoiced consonant is preceded by a vowel of an
appropriate length, since the voicedness / voicelessness of consonants is perceived through the
length of the preceding vowel). It must be remembered, though, that accumulation of such
errors may easily lead to mis-/in-comprehension and is therefore highly undesirable. ANY
performance on the part of the student that impedes comprehension must be considered
unacceptable.

General guidelines
It should be borne in mind that with the mere 90 minutes per week allotted for practical
phonetics it is not possible to produce the desirable effects by work in class. Therefore, it must
be made clear from the very beginning that a lot of individual work and effort on the part of
the student is required if they are to be able to perform up to the standard. The phonetics
teacher must be aware of his/her role in class as the facilitator of the learning process whose
main task is to give the students the guidelines that will enable them to develop their own selfmonitoring
tools and thus give them insights into how to work on their pronunciation of
English.
A variety of techniques can be used here, a few of which are suggested below:
developing the students' ability of self-assessment - evaluation of students' own
recordings, of student's own and peers' performance, work in pairs and groups,
variation of input by changing partners (e.g. by asking students to move around the
classroom);
the students should be made aware of the importance of work with a pronunciation
dictionary; to achieve this, they might for instance be assigned to prepare texts to be
read out loud. It is also suggested that the students learn the correct pronunciation of
the most frequently mispronounced words by heart (for a list of such words, see
English Phonetics for Poles, pp. 295-309);
in the third and fourth semester of the course, the teacher might analyse texts from the
point of view of intonation and show his/her students how the same text can express
different emotions and attitudes of speakers (hence often have a different meaning)
depending on stress, rhythm and intonation;
towards the end of the course, the students can be asked to interpret their own texts,
e.g. to stage short conversations, sketches or even one-act plays;
it is beneficial for students to practice pronunciation of the so-called 'tongue-twisters'
in their native language, which serves the purpose of exercising the articulators.
The problem of control and automation of the newly acquired L2 speaking habits proves to be
the most significant obstacle on the students' way to clear speech. To help them achieve this
goal, the teacher, starting from the second semester of the course, should ask the students to
prepare short speeches similar to the texts tackled previously in class. The teacher might then
ask her/his students to prepare their own weather forecasts / guided tour commentaries / news
items / stories about school experiences / descriptions of dreams etc.

Focus and problem areas
Though the major focus of instruction in the first two semesters of the course is the
acquisition of the ability to produce the English segmentals, language being a closed system, it
is impossible to separate suprasegmental features from spoken language. Therefore phonetics
teachers are advised and encouraged to provide their students with as many insights into
aspects of stress, rhythm, intonation and connected speech as possible from the very beginning
of the course. An appropriate balance between theoretical instruction and practice must of
course be kept and, needless to say, the more complicated a phonological problem, the later in
the course it should be mentioned.
The following phonological processes ought to be explained during the course:
- the general notion of interference (transfer) from LI;
- palatalisation, with the emphasis on the Polish allophone [?] (e.g. cf. PL 'nit' vs. ENG 'need';
- devoicing (cf. the example above);
- nasalisation (e.g. ENG 'chance', 'prince' vs. PL 'szansa', 'tramwaj');
- the fact that /?/ exists in Polish as an allophone of /n/ and according to the Polish rules of phonetic distribution occurs only followed either by /k/ (e.g. 'parking', 'bank') or /g/ (e.g. 'kangur', 'Kongo'); it must be noted that the distribution of /?/ among some speakers of Polish can be very limited, while relatively frequent among other;
- aspiration of syllable-initial voiceless stops;
- the problem of stress, content words and the resultant vowel reduction, the distribution of/?/;
- differences between British and American English, including those on the systematic (phonetic inventory), allophonic (dark vs. clear '1') and connected speech (r-colouring for British English) level.

In the fourth semester of the course the emphasis is on the suprasegmental features. It must be
made clear to the students that the acquisition of intonation patterns and their appropriate use
is a process completely different from the work on the acquisition of segmentals. Since
intonation is context-bound and relative (it is up to a speaker to choose an intonation pattern
depending on what s/he wants to express), it is only through a vast amount of language
exposure that the students can acquire what can be termed the desired intonation habits. Thus
the teacher's role in the fourth semester is in a sense even more limited to merely providing
the students with the necessary guidelines for their own study along with as much varied
language material as possible.
Prepared by Maciej Machniewski

The course in British English Practical Phonetics will be run over four semesters:

Semester 1
Scope of instruction: British vowels: pure vowels, diphthongal glides, diphthongs. Each sound
will be practised individually and in opposition to other sounds (e.g. long against short
monophthongs, monophthongs against diphthongs). Particular attention should be paid to the
durational aspect of vowels (opposition between long and short vowels). Students should be
made aware of the differences between Polish and BrEnglish vowels. Crucial issues should be
pointed out by the teacher (e.g. pre-fortis clipping, strong and weak vowels, etc.)
Teaching materials: "Sounds English" J.D. O'Connor & C. Fletcher, additional materials:
"Practice in spoken English", G.L. Barnard & P.S. McKay.
Classroom practice: work with books and tapes, drills, individual and pair work. Students
may be asked to read out loud short text from the book and to prepare short speeches to be
delivered in front of the group.
Assessment: continuous assessment on the basis of students' in-class performance (homework,
exercises from the book, speeches, etc.), texts recorded at home, and their performance during
individual meetings that will be held at regular intervals throughout the semester. Peer
assessment and correction should be encouraged.

Semester 2
Scope of instruction: consonants - obstruents and sonorants. Each consonant will be practised
individually and in opposition to other sounds (e.g. voiced against voiceless consonants).
Particular attention should be paid to crucial aspects (e.g. aspiration, linking and intrusive "r",
final devoicing, "-ing" endings, coalescence, assimilation, elision).
Teaching materials: "Sounds English" J.D. O'Connor & C. Fletcher, additional materials:
"Practice in spoken English", G.L. Barnard & P.S. McKay, "Phonetic Drills" J.D. O'Connor.
Classroom practice: work with books and tapes, drills, individual and pair work. Tongue
twisters and pronunciation games can be used as warm-up exercises. Students may be asked
deliver short impromptu speeches (e.g. on the topics discussed in communication classes).
Students may also practice reading from the phonetic transcript (see "Phonetic Drills" J.D.
O'Connor).
Assessment: see above.

Semester 3
Scope of instruction: Revision of vowels and consonants. Introduction to intonation. The first
part of Semester 3 will be devoted to the revision of the material covered during the first two
semesters, with particular emphasis put upon the most difficult sounds with which students
may still have problems.
Issues tackled in the remaining part of the semester shall include: primary and secondary
stress, stress shift, rhythm, as well as basic intonation patterns (wh-questions, yes/no
questions, tag questions, listings, etc.) The teacher may also concentrate on the phonotactic
processes that were only briefly mentioned in the second semester, i.e.: assimilation,
coalescence, insertion, elision. Due amount of time and attention should also be devoted to
practising weak forms and linking.
Teaching materials: texts from "Modern English Pronunciation Practice" and "Phonetic
Drills" may be used for revising vowels and consonants. Short exercises for stress, intonation
and linking from "Sounds English", "Phonetic Drills", "Rhymes and Rhythm".
Classroom practice: work with books and tapes, texts read out loud, impromptu speeches
delivered in front of the group. Students may also be asked to stage short mini role-plays.
Assessment: see above

Semester 4
Scope of instruction: British English intonation. Students will practise the most common
intonation patterns of British English (i.e. fall, rise, fall-rise, rise-fall) and be made aware of
different functions of intonation.
Teaching materials: "Intonation in Context" by B. Bradford and "Pronunciation for Advanced
Learners of English" by D. Brazil. Additional materials from "Rhymes and Rhythm", "Here is
the News". Apart from these, the teacher may also present recordings of BBC news,
interviews, episodes of British sit-coms as means of providing students with some exposure to
genuine British speech.
Classroom practice: work with books and tapes, impromptu speeches delivered in front of the
group. Students may also be asked to stage short mini role-plays.
Assessment: see above

Course books and reference materials:
Baker, A. Ship or Sheep? CUP
Barnard G.L., P.S. McKay 1963 Practice in Spoken English. London: MacMillan
Bradford, B. 1988 Intonation in Context. CUP
Brazil, D. 1994 Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English. CUP
Cruttenden, A. 1994 Gimson's Pronunciation of English. London: Edward Arnold
Hancock, M. 2003 English Pronunciation in Use. CUP
Fisiak, J., M. Lipinska-Grzegorek, T. Zabrocki 1978 An Introductory Polish-English Contrastive Grammar. Warszawa: PWN
Mortimer, C. 1993 Dramatic Monologues for Listening Comprehension. CUP
Munro Mackenzie, M.D. 1967 Modern English Pronunciation Practice. London: Longman
0' Connor J.D., C. Fletcher 1989 Sounds English. Essex: Longman
O'Connor, J.D. 1980 Better English Pronunciation. CUP.
O'Connor, J.D. Phonetic Drills
Ponsonby, M. How now, brown cow. Prentice Hall
Sobkowiak, W. 1996 English Phonetics for Poles. Poznan: Bene Nati
Voughan-Rees, M. 1992 Rhymes and Rhythm.
Wells, J.C. 1990 Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Essex: Longman