SOME EXPERIMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES CONDUCTED DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY UTILIZING PHONETIC ALPHABETS AS TRANSITIONAL MEDIA FOR INITIAL READING INSTRUCTION WERE SURVEYED TO PROVIDE A HISTORY OF THIS ASPECT OF EDUCATION. THE ACTUAL CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING EACH OF THE MAJOR USES OF SUCH TRANSITIONAL MEDIA ARE CONSIDERED IN DETAIL. THE…

This study was designed to compare children and adults on their initial ability to identify and reproduce novel speech sounds and to evaluate their performance after receiving several training sessions in producing these sounds. The novel speech sounds used were two voiceless fricatives which are consonant phonemes in Arabic but which are…

The primary objective of this study was to find out if young (normal-hearing) children could be taught a novel vowel sound by means of visual information alone, that is, without benefit of auditory presentation of the sound or instructions on the shaping of the vocal tract for its production. A second objective was to find out whether the rate and…

A DISCUSSION OF THE LINGUISTIC AND PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF HAUSA (A LANGUAGE OF WEST AFRICA) ACCOMPANIES A TEXT WHICH CONSISTS OF BASIC SENTENCES, NOTES, AND GRAMMATICAL DRILLS. THE BASIC SENTENCES ARE DIALOGS TO BE MEMORIZED, AND THEIR ENGLISH RENDERINGS ARE MEANT TO BE SITUATIONAL EQUIVALENTS, NOT LITERAL TRANSLATIONS. THE NOTES EXPLAIN…

It is shown that a sentence spoken in a foreign language (here, English), though grammatically and lexically correct, may not evoke the proper reaction, because of incorrect intonation. Teaching texts have neglected this field. Some suggestions are given for avoiding misunderstandings caused by faulty intonation. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

A report on a diagnostic study of the Sicilian way of pronouncing the French /y/. On the basis of this study, a quantitative analysis of verbo-tonal methods of correction is made. Some such methods are based on intonation, rhythm, syllabication and combinatory phonetics. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Asserts that the traditional, segmental approach to phonetics in language teaching is faulty, since speech is not segmented in actual pronunciation. A model of a sequential progression of consonants and vowels is proposed, in which the sound system is presented in a dynamic mode. (CHK)

It is proposed that communicative approaches to second language instruction have neglected to provide students with some essential tools of speech, particularly pronunciation skills. The place of remedial phonetics within the new language teaching methods is examined, and a more rigorous approach to pronunciation instruction is recommended. (MSE)

This article provides the results of an investigation of the system of pronunciation faults of English speakers learning French, and describes means of correction based on the verbo-tonal system. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Foreign language teachers must be able to correct pronunciation errors that go beyond the level of the segmental phoneme. Extending a technique used with students, it was found that teachers can deal with a number of problems more efficiently if they separately consider single features or aspects of the continuum. (Author/KM)

The vowel triangle'', devised by Wilhelm Vietor, is a diagram of vowel sounds according to the position of the tongue and jaw during articulation. (DD)