Practical Exercises

Phonetics includes a lot of transcription, and that takes lots of practice!

On these pages you will find a range of transcription exercises: these consist of video files showing the production of either nonsense words or real words pronounced with a twist.

Nonsense words are a good source of transcription training because they require the listener to rely on their ear and their ear alone, without the bias of target expectation. In other words the aim is to keep the influence of one’s own phonology to a minimum here, although the listener is always bound to approach the listening task with prior expectation based on their linguistic experiences. Real words mispronounced or pronounced differently can raise the listener’s awareness of target variation that might be due to: different accents and dialects; individual differences or speech disorders.

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5