Report on the Phonetics Teaching and Learning Conference (#PTLC2015) at UCL. August 5-7th, 2015 - Part 3

This is my last report on PTCL 2015. My two previous posts discussed Day 1 and Day 2, including links to all the live tweeting and the programme, so you can visit this page to read about them, and about other events I have reported on.


I have tried to link to the author's webpages/institutional affiliations whenever possible so that you can contact them, or Google their work and learn more about what they do.


(Once more, just in case, I would like to remind you that any unintentional misinterpretation of the work on the presenters is my fault, so my apologies to you for any errors!)

***

Day 3 of PTLC kicked off with Andrej Stopar and his study on Slovenian speakers of English and their perception of four vowels, one of which was the "pretzel" (loved it!) vowel /æ/. Surprisingly (for my context, that is), his perception tasks rendered better results for /ʌ/ and /ɜ:/ over /e/ and /æ/.

Janice Wing Sze Wong discussed the results of her high variability phonetic training study on English vowels 1 and 2 with her Cantonese-speaking students. Her analysis was mostly acoustic, and based on formants 1 and 2, and on duration (which I thought highly relevant for this pair of vowels!).


Josefina Carrera-Sabaté, Imma CreusBellet and Clàudia Pons Mol presented a fantastic set of resources to learn Catalan: El Sons del Català and Guies de pronunciaciò del Català . They have done a great job with the websites, which have really enticed me to start learning Català!

Pavel Trofimovich, Sara Kennedy and Josée Blanchet presented a truly inspiring paper on speech ratings on fluency, comprehensibility and accentedness for learners of French as L2. I have been Googling their research papers, as they have done really interesting work on interlanguage issues in terms of phonology and phonological awareness, among other things. They have made some thoughtprovoking observations regarding the segmental, suprasegmental and fluency aspects that may have affected the raters' assessment of their samples of learner speech: accentedness ratings were lower when intonation choices were accurate and pitch range narrower; and the same features had a positive effect on fluency and comprehensibility, added to longer speech-runs and fewer hesitations. I would personally be interested in replicating this study in my context, somehow.

Shinichi Tokuma and Won Tokuma brought the conference to a close with a very interesting study on the perception of /p, b/ and robustness in terms of babble noise for Japanese learners of English. Among other things, they have found that improved L2 perception in their subjects was inversely related to the signal-to-noise ratio of the stimuli, and that /p/ was more robust to noise in all their experimental conditions.

We had a great "bonus track" session, right after lunch, with Nobuaki Minematsu from the University of Tokyo. He delivered a fantastic presentation on World Englishes and intelligibility. His talk discussed the basic difficulties we may encounter when trying to grasp the complex idea of what mutual intelligiblity really is and entails, especially in terms of its diversity. His ongoing project is aimed at finding a way of measuring intelligibility objectively (via matrixes and a few really complex ways entirely beyond my engineering-blind mind!) and somehow predicting possible intelligibility problems between speakers of different L1s communicating in English, based on a collection of misunderstandings and miscommunication. It was an excellent conference close.


A huge "Thank you!" to the organisers for a fantastic and welcoming conference. I felt at home at the lovely Chandler House at UCL and I hope I can stay in touch with all the wonderful people I have met, or encountered once again after 5 years. I am really grateful.

***

As I mentioned earlier for my experience at IPrA, it is a real blessing to be able to attend and take active part in these international events every now and then. The networking is incredible, and the whole conferencing thing is a fascinating learning and mind-opening experience. As I always say, if the world does not come to you, you should "go to the world". At times your local context, however great, cannot provide you with the learning experiences you need, so salary and life-permitting, I will try to continue furthering my learning paths in my beloved Buenos Aires, and abroad, and sharing all my experiences with you.


Hope you have enjoyed my attempt to bring the world to you, wherever you are reading this from!

Report on the Phonetics Teaching and Learning Conference (#PTLC2015) at UCL. August 5-7th, 2015 - Part 2

My previous post briefly commented on the sessions I attended at PTLC 2015 on Day 1. I am now going to report on a very busy day at the conference, Day 2, before it all flies away from my short-term memory and all my teaching duties take over! 

(My usual disclaimer: all misinterpretations of the presentations are my own, and totally unintentional)

Day 2: August 6th

The opening plenary was by Dr. Eleanor Lawson, who struck me as sooo knowledgeable and so young! She made a fascinating report of a few studies on Scottish postvocalic /r/, and what different types of measurements (impressionistic, MRI, UTI) contributed to the study of coarticulation. The presentation continued with the description of the whole development process for these two amazing online resources: Seeing Speech and Dynamic Dialects. It was, simply, an amazing presentation.

And after that, we had the fabulous experience of trying ultrasound imaging on our own tongues! 

Trying my Spanish alveolar trill! :D Sooo exciting!

The second session of the day started with a very entertaining presentation of teaching ideas for laboratory phonetics by Timothy Mills, Karen Pollock and Benjamin V. Tucker from the University of Alberta. One of their techniques involved getting students to create their own "Frankeintracts" of the vocal tract, making use of any material of their choice (apparently some students even attempted models that could actually utter sounds!). Other very interesting activities consisted in the students' plotting of their own vowel formants and a few designs of tests for the perception of neutralisation of items such as "latter/ladder". 

Mercedes Cabrera-Abreu and Francisco Vizcaíno-Ortega were up next (represented by Mercedes on this ocassion), and their presentation was a discussion of their classroom assessment tasks for their courses on acoustics, and the results obtained. From spectogram and waveform recognition tasks to the actual hand-drawing of spectograms, students were assessed on numerous aspects of acoustic phonetics, with different levels of success. I found the tasks particularly interesting (and difficult, given my really basic knowledge of acoustics!), and this presentation opened my mind to a other ways of testing.

I, Marina Cantarutti, was the following presenter. I discussed a very humble classroom experience on intonation teaching through speech genres (the lecture genre, in this case) and on my students' treatment of tonality, tonicity and tone in connection to thematic structure in a pre- and post-instruction tests. I have basically found that my students actively assigned different degrees of relevance to the various thematic elements in the text given by either conflating Themes and Rhemes in the same IP (lowering the relevance and possible contrastive value of the thematic element) or by treating them obliquely. I also made a point that contrary to my own expectations, students initially produced more cases of transfer from Spanish in terms of their treatment of focus, rather than of tone.

After lunch, two attempts at a group picture, and a tour round the labs and the library, we were all ready for more.

The whole #PTLC2015 bunch! (Credits: PTLC, FB page)

Smiljana Komar from the University of Ljubliana introduced her results in perception tasks for the fall-rise tone. She found some interesting cases of mistaken perception of fall-rises for falls, and then for rises. Her findings in a way appear pretty similar to the ones I believe we would find over here in Buenos Aires, if we tried the same tests, which makes the whole thing really intriguing, given that we have different L1s!

Yusuke Shibata, Masaki Taniguchi and Tamikazu Date presented an experience with junior high teacher and students, connected to notions of tonicity and focus. They have found these features to be highly teachable, and they expect to be able to "persuade" and also train teachers towards the active integration of pronunciation and intonation work at schools.

Junko Sugimoto and Yoko Uchida carried out an analysis of the government-approved ELT books in Japan in search of pronunciation tasks and training. They have found that there were activities connected to vowels, consonants and well as articulatory explanations and resources on phonics and Katakana. In my opinion, the books they analysed presented a number of very interesting contents and tasks, and they far exceeded the number of activities and pronunciation training available in the EFL textbooks that we have on this side of the world.

Nikola Paillereau presented a comparison between some specific Czech and French vowels as produced by students acquiring French as L2. The focus on this presentation was the assessment of L2 vowels using a piece of software called VisuVo -which, unfortunately, is not open to the public yet-, which was designed by the presenter and a collaborator . The program allowed for measurement and plotting of vowel formats and comparison of other variables across speakers and in an intra-speaker manner. 

Rungpat Roengpitya discussed the design of different Phonetics courses at different departments at her university in Thailand. I found it particularly interesting that the inclusion of Phonetics for training in some medical sciences, such as Dentistry, was aimed at helping the future professionals become aware of how they can improve a patient's quality of life by knowing how their intervention may affect speech.

Pekka Lintunen and Aleksi Mäkilähde (represented by the former on this occasion) carried out a very interesting study regarding what students prefer, like and find motivating about the Phonetics courses they attended. Their survey revealed that students find accents and intonation topics more engaging than other themes in the course. Part of their study also assessed whether students' view of Phonetics as highly benefitial to their future career had changed, and in most cases, students agreed that Phonetics was necessary for their professional development. There were a few caveats and self-objections that the presenter made to the survey and its delivery, but it was overall a very interesting, and easily replicable study, worth further thought!

The closing prenary was by Professor David Deterding, and it was aimed at discussing misunderstandings and the role of pronunciation for intelligibility. We participants had a lot of fun decoding many instances of English as an L2/FL speech from different locations (Brunei, Nigeria, among a few others), and in the end, it turned pretty challenging to make sense of many words. (This may seem quite obvious and ordinary for people teaching in multilingual environments, but in my teaching setting, where most of my students' L1 is Spanish and where English is only used in the classroom, activities like these really open up your mind!) . Deterding's talk included a review of the Lingua Franca Core, and some comments regarding attempts at revised versions in different environments. Apart from the well-known objection to stress-timed rhythm as a feature making speech less intelligible from an international perspective, there were a few comments regarding the role of consonant clusters in the blurring of comprehension at word level. Event though David did not perhaps tackle upon this explicitly in his talk, later personal communication made it clear that of course, we need to make a distinction between aims we may have regarding perception, and those for production. We all agree that perception and exposure to all accents of English, including "international Englishes" is essential if we want our language teaching training to be enabling and empowering for communication.

***

This is the end of Day 2 (because, of course, I will not report on the wine-tasting session!). Just in case: I'm just the messenger here, so I am merely reporting on the sessions, and adding a few comments, but of course, any objections or remarks on the presentations should be addressed to the authors themselves (do note that I have, in most cases, added links to the speakers' institutional affiliations!).

 I'll be wrapping up my discussion of PTLC on my next post on Day 3, which will probably be out during the weekend. Thanks for bearing with me!

Report on the Phonetics Teaching and Learning Conference (#PTLC2015) at UCL. August 5-7th, 2015 - Part 1

I have just attended another fabulous conference, this time, on the teaching and learning of Phonetics at University College London. I was also blessed with the opportunity of presenting my own paper! PTLC takes place every two years, and as with other conferences the papers submitted are subjected to blind review by the academic commitee (hopefully the proceedings will be published soon!). In the meantime, you can read about the conference and check previous proceedings here.

In this post, I will be talking about some of the presentations I would like to comment on (as usual, any misinterpretations are my own). If you want to get a deferred "feel" of what the conference was like, you may want to see the Storify collection of live- tweets that Jane Setter put together (scroll to the very bottom of this post - and yes, there was some hectic tweeeting!)

This first post is on Day 1. 

Day 1: August 5th

The conference kicked off with University of Reading's Jane Setter's presentation of her "flipped learning" experience in her Phonetics courses at graduate and undergraduate levels. This methodology basically consists in making the most of class-time for practical and problem-solving tasks while assigning videotaped lectures and practical tasks with key as homework. There were some interesting references to the well-known Bloom's taxonomy, and also to Dale's 1969Cone of Experience, a thought-provoking approach to types of learning tasks that may contribute to the increase of retention types. Jane discussed the results of her assessment tasks with the flipped and "unflipped" (?) classes, with a marked improvement for students in the former, except for the dictation tasks. (Dictations and decoding tasks are always a problem, if you ask me! This does deserve a whole new post!)

Shawn Nissen from Brigham Young University also reported on a blended learning experience with large Phonetics classes (for Speech Therapy trainees, if I remember correctly) consisting of, among other things, lots of self-paced theoretical and practical tasks with key, leading to online assessment tasks (of which an 80% success grade should be achieved). I found it particularly interesting, and challenging as well, that many of the materials for decoding included audio files containing noise levels, and also disordered speech. There were also some true and realistic remarks worth recalling, such as the fact that Phonetics teaching needs to be orderly and it needs a "unique learning environment"and set of techniques we may not find when teaching other subjects.

Alice Yin Wa Chan introduced some of her own ideas to bring variety into the Phonetics classroom, including the use of water bottles as an analogy to draw students' awareness of the cavities, shapes, amplification in the vocal tract. She also found ways of connecting students' cultural practices (like the use of acronyms to describe their relationship status) to minimal pairs, and a reference to Peter Roach's comparison of allophones to different styles in handwriting.

Gwen Brekelmans discussed the results of her study on a group of Dutch learners of English at University and compared the effects of lack of explicit pronunciation instruction in two groups, one group of learners who had taken their "year abroad" experience, and others who had instruction for two years but were not trained during their third year. Once instruction had stopped for the second group of learners, subjects showed a clear deterioration of their foreign accent, especially in vowels. Those students spending a year abroad did show a bit more improvement. In all cases it was found that pronunciation of English as an L2 did not remain fully stable after instruction (which is exactly what happens with many of my teacher trainees once they graduate, sadly. Lots of pondering to do in this respect. It is definitely something worth giving a thought...)

Eva Estebas made a truly interesting presentation (fitting timely and perfectly with my current personal interests!) on an adaptation of ToBI and the School of London's nuclear configurations to teach intonation and help learners work autonomously at a graduate distance programme (big challenge, if you ask me!). Eva called this special concoction "TL_ToBI" (Tone and Break Indices for Teaching and Learning), and I would say she collected the best of both approaches, focusing on the connections between metrical and tonal structure, and the notation and visual aids for ToBI, and the tune description and nuclear configurations of the British School. Estebas reported an improvement in students' perception and production of English Intonation after employing this new approach.

***

Here ends my Day 1 report on PTLC. More on this great conference coming up soon!

In the meantime, take a peek at this wonderful collection of tweets!

Talk like Hawking: Teaching with a synthetic voice

Hiya! I have been pretty busy and also a bit disappointed in life lately (soo dramatic!), but blogging has always been good medicine, so I'm back! 

***

I have always found voice matters interesting, and I do pay a lot of attention to people's voices in general. They have the power of generating feelings, immediate gut feelings, in me. 

For many years, I was concerned about my own voice, as it would invariably become hoarse and then turn to a whisper at least twice or three times a year. I was teaching over 55 periods a week and as we all know, our teaching activity is a 100% dependent on our voice (there's a limit to emergency video sessions one can plan when your voice's "on the blink"!). So I was basically "killing my voice softly".

Things changed for the better when I started training in vocal technique, and I will always be grateful to Carlos and Liliana at Instituto de la Voz for having saved me from potential hiatus and nodule problems. And I have now got the huge responsibility of passing on these techniques and voice care tips to my teacher trainees, which I try to do on a regular basis. 

Now. This whole babble is related to today's blog post, since in spite of all my care, my voice was gone yesterday due to an irritating bout of flu or something (and the winter temperatures hitting our country like we haven't seen for a number of years!). With several classes a day to teach, all pronunciation-related, how do you keep going?

Well, the obvious answer is: "You don't. You go home, you see a doctor, you get some rest for a few days till you recover". And that would be the right answer. But it's not always possible. So here's what I did yesterday.

***

Teaching Phonetics the Hawking-style

We are all familiar with Stephen Hawking. We all know what a miracle it is that he can share all his wisdom and knowledge with us through a computer. Therefore, I used him as an inspiration to try to teach my class without having to strain my voice.

So here's what I have done:

1) I typed part of my lecture at home, on my tablet (It runs an Android Kit Kat operating system).

2) I downloaded the following app: Talk, and selected English (GB) as the output voice. (I was in a bit of a hurry, so this is the first app that worked for me, but I will be comparing it with others below)

3) I tried the app out, and noticed that to make it less "robotic", I had to "teach" the system to read the way I wanted it to read. That is, I had to input extra punctuation marks, such as "" and ; to allow the machine to chunk units apart or produce some basic intonation patterns which would allow my audience to follow more clearly.  I also had to simplify my clauses and exploit thematic marking on the text to make sure my synthetic voice would signpost topics and paratones more clearly to my students.

4) I gave my tablet Internet access via my phone, using it as a router, since this app needs a working connection, and of course, I connected my tablet to my portable speakers.

The immediate result? Giggles, of course! It was fun. I got called "Marina Hawking". But it was, of course, not the same as being able to respond to students' queries in real time. I eventually had to replace the use of my tablet for the whiteboard when I needed to reply to students' queries on the spot. 

I wanted to brag and I finished my lesson by typing in "That's all, folks!", but the awful rendering by the system (giving "folks" a separate IP and using a fall) spoiled all the fun! (Try it!)

However, I was teaching a theoretical class, so the app did the trick. I had a Lab lesson right afterwards, and it was really difficult to succeed in this way. I was not in a position to deliver feedback on the spot, since obviously, my app would not read IPA symbols, and the need for synchronous comments while the student is reading out, or speaking, does not match my typing speed. In this particular case, gestures and the whiteboard did the job. Sort of. My teacher assistant allowed the class to happen, to be honest!

(Had I had a data projector, I would have projected the text my students were reading, and I would have highlighted their slips and mistakes on the spot, to allow them to at least see what I was trying to comment on! I could have also projected some vids and audio files from some of the pronunciation apps I reviewed in the past.)

So all in all, a text-to-speech act may save the day, but you defo need to take care of yourself and try to get your voice back asap!

***

Free Text-to-Speech Apps

After yesterday's experience and while resting in bed, I decided to review a few other apps that may do the job nicely.

App 1: Talk

App 2: Type and Speak 

App 3: Easy Text to Speech

(I will review them together, as they are very similar and use the same voice database. The same text was read by both apps identically, and with the same voice. They only differ in their interface.)

• These apps allow you to paste your text, or type it straightaway, and play it out. (Easy Text to Speech does not require any text-pasting, it just reads from your clipboard)
• You are able to choose from a long list of languages and accents.
• You can export or save your audio file.
• You need an active data or Internet connection.
• Tip! You need to "overpunctuate" your text to avoid a robotic output.

App 4: IVONA Text-to-Speech

This application uses its own voice database. You choose an accent, and a speaker, and you download the voice database for that voice in particular. I have chosen "Amy, UK English". So far, it sounds like the most natural reading option, because the voice is somehow soothing. 

It has not, of course, reached the state of artificial intelligence, in that it does not chunk my text the way I would like it to, and it does not always employ the intonation I expect, but it does recognise a few chunks and it appears to be able to recognise patterns of declination and paratones. 

This application also allows you to set your preferred pitch and speech rate for the chosen voice.

From what I have been able to make out, it does not need an active Internet connection. The voice data files I have downloaded were 150 MB, so I guess it should all be "there".

App 4: Google Translate (Web version)

Even though it is not a text-to-speech app but rather a translator, I cannot help feeling surprised about the changes that Google has introduced to their voices and to the whole reading aloud experience. It still sounds pretty "robotic", but there are some chunks of language that the system automatically recognises and reads out with some fixed intonation patterns. This creates an overall "weird" effect, since you hear upsteps, downsteps and sudden tone changes that make the whole text sound incohesive at times, but less so, if compared to what it was like last year!

BTW! I have found a tip on how to get Google to read out a phrase out for you. Type in this address in your browser:

http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=type your phrase here

And replace the bit that says "type your phrase here" with your own phrase, and voilá!

App 5: Bing Translator (Web version)

Much as I love Google, Microsoft has done a better job in terms of making their performance of read-out texts more natural. The Bing Translator option presents, in my humble opinion, a better chunking, and more natural selection of intonation patterns. 

See for yourself! Compare the output versions of a short paragraph of my lesson by both Google Translate and Bing Translator. Look out for some interesting word stress choices as well!

***

Final remarks and a few extras...

• A full selection of Android text-to-speech apps is available here.
• For a list of other possible uses for text-to-speech for language learning, and ideas to aid students with special needs, you can check out these resources:
• ‘Text-to-speech Technology’: What Does It Offer to Foreign Language Learners?http://callej.org/journal/7-2/Kilickaya.html

• Digital Support for English Language Teachers: http://blog.texthelp.com/2014/12/digital-supports-english-language-learners/
• Speech Recognition for Learning: http://www.brainline.org/content/2010/12/speech-recognition-for-learning_pageall.html

Hope this blog post has been of use! It has certainly inspired me to start considering writing a paper on synthetic-speech talk and intonation!

Phonetics-To-Go: Mobile Apps for Pronunciation Practice

Today I made a very humble presentation at one of the Colleges I work at, and the one I graduated at as well, for the annual "Jornadas", organised by a special commission in the English Department called EDAPI.

Bad hair day, as usual :p

I have decided to call the presentation "Phonetics-To-Go", as I have mostly done a review of some free or "low-cost" mobile apps I have found that allow you to take pronunciation with you, everywhere!

A few disclaimers:

1. I have only reviewed free apps, free trials and some 1-dollar apps. I know there are brilliant paid apps out there, but they exceed the scope of my presentation...( and my pocket at the moment!.)
2. The inclusion of these apps in my PowerPoint slides does not entail any endorsement. During the presentation I listed some of the pros and cons of each app and made a point of whether they include ads or require further payment, for instance.
3. I have focused on a few apps and a few skills. I know there are more advanced apps out there that allow you to work with spectograms and waveforms, to mention but a few, but I have addressed the profile of my audience and I have mostly focused on ELT.
4. I don't get any benefits out of reviewing these apps. Feel free to try them, and test them, install them or uninstall them, but do so at your discretion.
5. Not all apps will work on all devices, in spite of the operating system. For example, the apps for Blackberry only run in BB10 devices.
6. Before downloading an app, always read its description, check the company/individual behind the design, and particularly focus on the "permissions" you need to grant for the app to work on your device.
7. What to do with these apps and how to apply them in your lessons is a choice you will need to make for your own groups, levels and culture. I will, in the future, devote a post to possible uses for these apps.

Having made all the preliminary remarks I thought fit (faithful to my usual quest for "down-to-earthness"), here's the PowerPoint for you:

Phonetics-To-Go from PronunciationBites

Hope you find these apps (and my warnings) useful!
Best,
Marina

Tools & Apps #1: Typing IPA symbols

Today: How to insert IPA fonts in a document, website, mobile device....and more!

(Disclaimer 1: I know there are lots of posts on this in pronunciation- and tech-related blogs, and there are many tools I am not reviewing here, which you can consult in my Scoop.It collection at the end of this post. I am just presenting the ones I myself have found useful, with the usual warnings and "user discretion" advice!)

(Disclaimer 2: I have tested these tools on a Windows 7 and a Windows 8 computer, and on mobile devices running Android 4.1 and Blackberry 10.2 versions. I cannot help those Mac/iOS users out there, I fear, though some of these may work on these systems as well.)

The easy way out

There are a number of "phonemic typewriters" on the web you may want to try out. In general, all you have to do is to click on the keys and transcribe your desired words/passage. You then select your transcribed text and copy and paste it on Word, on the Web, on Twitter, on Facebook, you name it!

• I have found David Brett's typewriter really useful when in a rush, for a basic broad transcription, though given some recent changes to GB you may not find all the symbols you need. 

• 
  

  • 

  David Brett's
  Pete McKichan's Phonemic Script Typewriter below works similarly.

  

  McKichan's

If you need to go for narrow transcription with different diacritics and symbols for other languages than English, you may try Typeit .






Weston Ruter uses the IPA chart to function as a typewriter. Great resource if you need to be reminded of the place and manner of articulation of the symbols you are typing, among other features:

Even easier? Think again!

Yes, dear students, we've known about these for YEARS! And I have trained my eye to recognise transcriptions using these tools. Because what matters in the end is the rule behind the use of a certain sound for a certain spelling, or the choice of a particular weak and strong form, these websites may not be "the coolest" thing to use (especially if you have to sit face-to-face exams, where your knowledge should come straight from your head!). So, yes, these resources may be time-saving, but not grade-savers in the end. So think twice before using them to complete your homework transcriptions. And if you do use them, check the transcriptions against your spelling and weak-strong form rules, trying to account for every bit transcribed, or attempting to spot "errors". 

(Now, having made my usual "witch lecturer" warning, off to reviewing these tools)

Some websites offer a text-to-pronunciation transcription. Yes, they do! I myself have used them to prepare some keys to transcriptions or dictations for my lessons, but found I had to use up quite a lot of that time I thought I'd saved correcting errors or making more suitable choices of pronunciation. 

One of the most popular among my students (Busted!) is PhoTransEdit. You can see from the capture what I mean about "correcting mistakes", but I have to admit it is one of the most accurate tools of this kind I've found so far in spite of some "horrors":

Lingorado offers a similar functionality, but uses /ɛ/ for British English /e/, and it also presents a few issues with weak and strong forms and happY, for instance:

***

Many of these have iPhone, Android and Windows 8 mobile versions, which makes IPA-typing on your mobile or tablet easier. Other mobile apps I have tried on Android and Blackberry 10 include:

Multiling Keyboard: I found this integrated keyboard hellish to use at first, but once I got used to it, I could type IPA really easily. You just need to get acquainted with the location of the symbols on the keyboard and learn some swift movements to make your choice, but the keyboard includes diacritics as well, and I believe all the trouble is worth it. I have produced transcription keys on the spot for my learners, typing almost at the same speed rate they were handwriting their symbols on the page!

Phoneme Converter: if you are familiar with the shortcuts for the IPA symbols to type on a PC (see below), then this tool is going to allow you to type really fast using ASCII-IPA (say, using the @ for /ə/, for example) in order to paste your text later anywhere on your mobile device. This is a capture of its use on a Blackberry 10 device, though it is in fact an Android app:

A bit more challenging, but worth it! 

Indeed, having the IPA fonts in your computer does make things easier for us, and yes, it does pose a bit of a challenge. But once you are over the initial struggle of download and installation, all you need to do is remember the codes to type those symbols that just "don't look like regular letters", so to speak.

• Where to download the fonts from:

SIL: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=IPAhome

The IPA: http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipafonts.html

UCL (includes also a phonetic keyboard):  http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/resource/phonetics/

• How to install the fonts

Some of the websites above present the fonts as "packages" which "self-install" the fonts with the only task of downloading and opening the file. Some others, however, require manual installation.

If that is the case, on a Windows computer, these are the usual steps:

1. Download your fonts, and if zipped, unzip them.

2. On the File Explorer, copy them (or select them and click "ctrl + C") as you would do with any file.

3. Open the Control Panel. Double click on "Fonts"

4. Paste your files (or click "ctrl + V")

That should do the trick!

• How to type the symbols

If you use a word processor, for instance, you just need to identify the name of your font and select it on the list of fonts,  in much the same way you change from Arial to Times New Roman, for example. 

The symbols that look like letters, so to speak, are typed directly, and if you need to consult the way of typing in the other "foreign-looking" symbols, you can check the article below:

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/eureka-ipa.doc

(Mind you, there is a "logic" behind the system, with the velar nasal /ŋ/as a capital N (shift + n), the STRUT vowel /ʌ/ as a capital V, the NURSE vowel /ɜ/ by pressing "3", and so on! You'll be up to it in no time!)

Intonation

Regarding intonation, things may be a bit "rough", particularly if you use tonetic marks, unlike the conventions used for ToBI that use letters and some (*%!-+) symbols.
Those keyboard tools that offer diacritics do have tone marks you can use, and the fonts listed above also present a few, particularly the one on intonation at the UCL website.

At times, however, it appears to be more useful to use arrow marks with superscript and subscript formatting options . Some people  use slanted lines \ /, others, following the conventions of Discourse Intonation, place words on different lines to show key/termination variation.
These may be just some ways of coding your transcription for intonation, which will depend on your chosen theoretical framework.

Truth is, marking different levels of key and termination may prove a bit of a struggle. There are a few fonts going round, but as I cannot accurately trace the source, I cannot post them just yet. Should I get permission and a reliable source, I will make them available here, I promise! 

IPA tools: My bag of tricks

As usual, here's my full collection of resources to type IPA symbols.
http://www.scoop.it/t/pronunciation-bites/?tag=ipa+fonts
 The links to some of the resources reviewed here will be found in this collection, as well as many other tools I have not reviewed because of their price, effectiveness or accuracy. You can check them out and tell us about your own experience in the comments box below.

A final word

Being able to transcribe on your PC or your mobile gives you the chance of not only showing the pronunciation of a particular word or phrase on the spot, but also, and more importantly, it gives you the freedom to design your own flashcards, acrostics and other teaching materials on any web platform or piece of software. If you use the typewriters, for instance, you can also embed the symbols on Facebook, Twitter, and your blogs and platforms, allowing us "phonfreaks" to share knowledge or code "secret" messages for other "phon-nerds" worldwide!

Pronunciation and Grammar: The regular simple past inflection -ed

One of the things I try to instill the most on my teacher trainees is that pronunciation can easily be taught alongisde other language areas and skills. I have found this makes many teachers feel relieved and more confident about teaching pronunciation in the EFL classroom, as there are generally many myths and misconceptions regarding the way phonology should be tackled in the lesson (more on this on a future post!).

One of the obvious choices of pronunciation features to teach together with grammar arises when the simple past is taught, specifically the regular past inflections -(e)d.  

The Rules
A brief review of the way the rule goes:

We look at the infinitive form of the verb:

• If the last sound is voiced (except for /d/), we use /d/.
• If the last sound is voiceless, except for /t/, we use /t/.
• If the last sound is /t/ or /d/, we use /ɪd/ (in other accents of English, /əd/ also possible).

This constitutes a great opportunity for students to become familiar with the concepts of "voiced" and "voiceless", to feel the vibration of their vocal folds for voiced sounds by placing their hands on their throats, or covering their ears to feel the "buzz", or sensing the vibration on the top of their heads upon the production of a voiced sound (the contrast /s/ /z/ (the "snake" and the "bee") is generally a great choice!).

Other teachers "shun" the presentation of voiced/voiceless contrasts by teaching this rule by referring to spellings . In my humble opinion, why complicate matters further by engaging the memory in endless lists when in fact voice/voicelessness can be "felt"!

A few warnings!

I feel it is my "moral duty" to make a few observations regarding the pronunciation of regular past tense endings and their teaching:

1. We cannot assume students will know how to pronounce all the infinitive forms of the  verbs they encounter, and they may make mistakes. For example, a Spanish speaking student not yet familiar with the sound /dʒ/ may deem the last sound in the verb "judge" to be a /ʃ/ or a / tʃ/, for instance. So this will result in the wrong choice of -ed pronunciation.

BUT, more importantly....

2. The contrast /t/-/d/, to be honest, is not always kept. Why? Well, simply because in final position before silence, or when followed by a voiceless sound, /d/ will present varying degrees of devoicing [d̥], that is, it will lose vocal fold vibration during the whole or part of its production, and will thus approximate /t/ in its production. There will also be no audible release if followed by  affricates or other plosives, or by silence (optional, according to Tench 2011:66) , or subject to delayed release if a homorganic (a consonant sharing the place of articulation, in this case, alveolar), follows. That is, the final stage of the /t, d/ will not be heard, you will be keeping the release "to yourself", so to speak, till the next plosive is produced. A more technical discussion of this can be found in this blog post by John Wells. Another very interesting and illustrated discussion of these allophones can be read about in Knight (2012).

So what should I be focussing on as a teacher? Primarily, vowel length. Vowels preceding the ending /d/ will be longer; compare: complained [kəmpleːɪnd], complaint [kəmpleˑɪnt]. It has been established by both ELT and ELF pronunciation experts that vowel length may be an important source of confusion and unintelligibility at times, so it is something worth teaching at some point or another.

You could also work on the avoidance of an "exaggerated" ending to work towards a non-audibly released /t/ or /d/ in the contexts where release is not usually heard. However, I know many teachers who would prefer an exaggerated production of the ending as "proof" that the past tense is being produced. And I have to say, it may pay off in oral Language and Grammar exams! Better to be heard producing the past than having to explain (if you are ever given the chance!) that in fact you know your Phonetics theory well!

BUT, even "worse"....

3. When these past forms are followed by other words starting in consonants (except perhaps /h/) resulting in a cluster of three consonants  in which /t/ or /d/ are medial, these past markers can, and sometimes are, elided, as Tench (2011:96), explains. Cruttenden (2014:314) describes the tendency of elision of voiceless continuant + /t/ or voiced continuants + /d/ followed by a consonant at word boundary: finished late /fɪnɪʃt leɪt/ , refused both /rɪfju:zd bəʊθ/. Similarly, elision will apply in combinations of voiceless plosive/affricate + /d/ or voiced plosive/affricate + /t/: , looked like /lʊkt laɪk/, rubbed gently /rʌbd dʒentli/. Cruttenden claims that it is the context that makes up for the lack of the past tense marker in these cases.

Jack Windsor Lewis, however, claims they are generally not elided if followed by an obstruent or nasal (#11 - here) and focuses on the producing of the right non-audibly released allophones instead.

So what do we do?

If we want our teaching of English to be "enabling" and "empowering" for our learners, we need to teach the rule as it is. We may focus on the contrast /t/ - /d/ to different degrees depending on the objectives our class needs to meet, but I personally believe there should be at least a contrast between some sort of [t] sound (be it an attempt to a devoiced [d̥] or other "version" of /t,d/) vs /ɪd/. Students' rendering of past forms often include an overgeneralization of the rule, with varying versions of the /ɪd/ ending produced for all verbs, [wotʃed, wotʃid] even [ɣwotʃid]  for "watched", to mention a very common example. So I claim that there should be at least a contrast between the /ɪd/ ending and some other variant for /t, d/, which you will define according to your students' needs and level.

Truth is, with this basic two or three-sided contrast, we have already got a lot on our plate, as the production of consonant clusters is a huge challenge in itself, and at times, students appear not to produce their past tenses in speech because of the cluster rather than because of lack of knowledge of the past tense in itself, as my colleague Prof Terluk rightly points out.

How do we assess this?

Lists of regular verbs can be used for both perception and production, and different experiments can be carried out by students to check whether the last sound of the infinitive is voiced or not. In my experience, teenagers find this exercise pretty entertaining (Just don't "spoil" it, as I did, by showing videos of the vocal folds in operation....couldn't help myself, I guess!).

The web is also filled with automatic-grading tasks for students to try and identify the right ending (check the collection of resources below) to extend pronunciation work beyond the classroom.

Whenever a written exercise on the simple past tense is checked in class, students may be asked to also pay special attention to their oral rendering of the past verbs. My secondary school students would deem an answer given by a classmate as "wrong" if the past tense was not pronounced correctly, even if the written version was correct. Thus, you can always make the most of a "boring" grammar exercise check to practise pronunciation! (Killing two birds with one stone, that is!)

For a successful grammar-pronunciation integration to take place, the production of the 
-ed ending needs to be monitored and, yes, assessed. A very successful task I tried on my secondary students consisted in their planning and recording a criminal confession (the unit was related to "Crime") in which at least 10 regular past verbs had to be used. They would then have to self-assess their production of past tenses by counting the number of regular past verbs and the number of -ed endings produced correctly in their recording, to give themselves a percentage of correct answers. These percentages would then be "double-checked" by a classmate. This helped me realise that at times students are harder on themselves than we teachers can be with them, feedback-wise!

Resources!

As usual, here's my share of collected resources to practise the application of the -ed rule:  http://www.scoop.it/t/pronunciation-bites/?tag=ed+ending
Enjoy!

***

Hope you have found this post useful, and as usual sorry about having to reveal the "dark side" of a topic which, at first glance, appears to be easy to teach. When you've given it enough thought, you will notice it is indeed simple to teach, and you will, of course, make your own choices and adaptations based on your own groups and courses. Good luck!