Articulatory descriptions: It is all fun and games

Abstract

In the 100-level Phonetics for Speech and Hearing Sciences course at Indiana University, students learn articulatory descriptions for the vowels and consonants of American English. I have incorporated activities to help students practice the descriptions and apply them to real-world problems. The activities include (1) articulatory description puzzles: Students are given a series of consonant and vowel articulatory descriptions. They must then determine the corresponding vowels and consonants, which ultimately make up a quote. (2) Sounds of Fortune: In this “Wheel of Fortune”-style game rather than guessing letters in standard orthography, the answer is in IPA and students make their guesses by using the articulatory description (e.g., “I’d like to buy a high front tense vowel”). (3) Misheard song lyrics: Students are presented with song clips, which are likely to result in errors. The students write down what they hear in orthography. After that, they are presented with the actual lyric. They then phonemically transcribe both the real and misheard lyrics. They identify consonant errors across the two transcriptions and then compare in terms of their place, manner and voicing characteristics. These activities can be used directly after the introduction of the material as well as for review exercises.