Spectrogram puzzles: A tool for teaching acoustic phonetics

Abstract

One of the most useful tools for the acoustic analysis of speech is the spectrogram. A spectrogram is a visual representation of speech which includes time, frequency, and amplitude information. To conduct appropriate and accurate acoustic-phonetic analyses, students must learn to identify important features of vowels and consonants on spectrograms. To help students learn to identify these features, the spectrogram puzzle exercise was developed. In this exercise, spectrograms of sentences are printed using a large-format printer and cut into phoneme sections. Students then arrange the segments into the appropriate order based on a provided sentence. Depending on students’ level of knowledge and experience, task difficulty can be increased or decreased by: (1) providing phonetic transcription versus orthography, (2) including more or less easily identifiable consonants, (3) including citation-style speech versus conversational or disordered speech, and (4) having teams versus individual students complete the exercise. Through these modifications, this activity can be used with a wide range of students from beginning undergraduate to advanced graduate students. For all students, spectrogram puzzles provide a hands-on, interactive learning experience that can facilitate critical thinking, collaborative learning, and acquisition of knowledge about the representation of speech sounds on spectrograms.