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SPPA 2040 Syllabus

SPPA 2040: Phonetics

I. Text
MacKay, I. (1991). Phonetics: The Science of Speech Production (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.On reserve in the Learning Resource Center.

II. Grading
You will receive two separate grades for this course: one grade for the three-credit SPPA 2040 and a separate grade for the one-credit lab section, which is devoted to phonetic transcription.

  1. SPPA 2040:Your grade[1] for SPPA 2040 will be based on three exams:

Exam 1 (30%), Exam 2 (30%), Exam 3 (40%)

Exams.Exams will be a combination of short answer, short essay, multiple choice, matching, phonetic transcription, and making and/or labeling drawings. The dates for exams 1 and 2 will be announced at least a week in advance. The final exam will be comprehensive, but with greater emphasis on the new material since exam 2. The date for the final is available online (do a web search for ‘WMU final exam schedule fall 2013’, or whatever year it happens to be).

  1. Lab Section:In the lab section there will be a transcription quiz almost every week. The first quiz will be evaluated pass/fail, but the remainder will be graded in the usual way. Your grade for the lab section will be the average of these quizzes. The transcription quizzes will examine your knowledge of the phonetic alphabet. The quizzes are done live voice, so if you are not in class on the day of a quiz, there will be no way to make the quiz up. If you do not miss any quizzes, your lowest quiz grade will be dropped and your grade for the lab section will be the average of the remaining quizzes. Otherwise, your grade for the lab section will be the average of however many quizzes are taken.Everyone will be allowed one unexcused absence from lab. After that, a grade of 40 will be entered for any missed quiz. If you have a good reason for missing lab, let the lab instructor know. You may be asked to provide documentation.
  1. Letter grades

Assignment of letter grades to scores will occur using something fairly close to the scheme shown below. Adjustments might be made to this scheme depending on the exact distribution of grades in the class.

93–100:A
88- 92:BA
83- 87:B
78 -82:CB
70-77:C

66 -69:D

below 66:E

III. Attendance

I will not take attendance in the lecture part of the course (SPPA 2040) unless there appears to be a widespread problem. However, experience has shown that even fairly minor attendance problems can create major problems in this course for some students. If you are unable to make a particular class meeting, you do not need to call or email to let me know.

IV. Assignments

There will be a fairly small number of assignments that will be announced in class. The assignments need to be turned in on time. Due dates will be announced in class. The assignments will be graded pass/fail. If a good-faith effort has been made, you will have one opportunity to fix any errors and resubmit. (There may be some exceptions to this; if so, the exceptions will be described in the write-up.) Assignments (and resubmissions) are due at the start of class. Hand-written assignments are fine, but they need to be legible. This is sometimes a problem. Two points will be deducted from your final grade if an assignment is not turned in (or not turned in on time) or if any problems with an assignment are not fixed on the next submission. Resubmitted assignments need to be turned in at the next class meeting. If you cannot be in class for any reason on the day the assignment (or resubmission) is due, you will need to make arrangements to get it to me at the start of class. Unless you make arrangements with me (or your grad assistant) email submissions are not acceptable. Last point: You need to do your own work. There is nothing wrong with discussing general concepts with another student, but the work that you submit needs to be your own.Submitting an assignment that is not entirely your own work is academic misconduct. Final point: unless I specifically tell you that it is okay to do so, I do not want you to use web searches to complete the assignments.

V. Miscellaneous
Office:CHHS 4468

Phone:387-8066
Office Hours:T,Th2:00-3:00, or by appointment, or just stop by. More often than not,

I’m able to stop what I’m doing to answer questions.

Web page:homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr

Email: (I’m happy to answer questions sent via email

if the question can be answered briefly. If the answer requires an essay I’ll

ask you to stop by my office.)

Grad asst:Your graduate assistant is Stacy Lewis ()

VI. Advice

Most of you will not find this to be an unusually difficult course, but if experience is any guide there will probably be a small but important minority of students who will struggle. There are several things that you can do to avoid trouble.

  1. Pay attention in class and take good notes. This sounds like a very simple thing because it is, but a fair number of students do not do it. This is the single most important thing you can do. When you leave the lecture hall you should have a decent understanding of most of the material that has been taught. This is far more valuable than spending long hours preparing for exams.The importance of this simple idea is illustrated by an experiment that I unintentionally carried out a little while ago.

The parable of the vestibular system. To illustrate how important this point is, I’ll describe the most important accidental experiment of my career. This happened a few years ago in Hearing Science. We had an exam coming up and I was taking questions about the exam. The last topic we had covered was a short lecture on the vestibular system, and I was asked if that material would be on the exam. Ordinarily this material is included, but I made a last-minute decision to save the vestibular system material for the next exam. However, I accidentally printed off a version of the exam with six questions (12 points) about the vestibular system. It was not until the end of the exam session that a student pointed this out to me. So, I did the obvious thing and announced that I would not count the vestibular system questions that should not have been on the exam. (Important Note: None of these questions were difficult. I only spend about 40 minutes on this topic, and the six questions that should not have been there covered only the basics.) So far, all we have is a story about a teacher who is a jelly brain, which is not newsworthy. But here’s the revealing part of the story. I graded the vestibular system questions, though I did not include them when calculating exam scores. But now, for each student, I had a score for the vestibular system questions and a separate score – the real one – based on everything except the vestibular-system questions. What I thought I noticed was that students who did well on the vestibular system questions seemed to be doing well on the remainder of the exam. I checked this in a simple way: I sorted the scores based on performance on the vestibular system questions, then split the class into a top half and a bottom half based only on the vestibular-system scores. The average exam score (with the vestibular questionstossed out) for students in the top half was a 91, and the average for the bottom half was a 74. These two averages are night and day, and there is only one way to explain the difference. The students with the average of 91 did not know the vestibular system material because they had studied it. No one had studied that material. So how did they know this material so well? Easy: these students must have learned the concepts right then and there on the day this material was discussed in class, and/or they learned it from the readings (almost certainly some of both). More importantly, since they did so well on the remainder of the exam,they must take this learn-concepts-as-they-are-taught approach to everything. On the other hand, students in the bottom half, whether they are consciously aware of it or not (and my guess is that usually they are not), must tend to let things slide, forcing them to rely heavily on long hours of study prior to exams; i.e., cramming. This accidental experiment shows very clearly that the cramming strategy does not work well. It also shows that learning things as they are taught, rather than a great fury of studying in the last few days before an exam, is not only far more effective, it is the lazy way to do things. Students who keep up with things put much less time into their school work than crammers do. When exam time rolls around, slow-and-steady students do not have all the much to do. So, there you have it. Take the lazy way out and learn things as they are taught.

  1. Don't miss class, especially in the beginning of the course.If you have to miss class for some reason, study the notes from a student or students whose work habits you trust. (This will not necessarily be your best buddy.)
  1. Keep up with things. If you wait until a day or two before the exam to study, it can sometimes be very difficult to put things together. Taking good notes, keeping up with the readings, and reviewing your notes between classes are the most important things that you can do. A modest amount of time invested in these ways is far more important than many hours of cramming for exams. If you find yourself putting in long hours preparing for exams it’s pretty well certain that you’re doing something wrong. This is true of all your classes, in my opinion.
  1. I’ve developed quite a few computer exercises designed to help you learn phonetic transcription. The software that runs the exercises is called Alvin. When the time comes I’ll show you how to install and run Alvin (it’s quite easy). More about that later. For now, here are the important things:
  1. The software runs on a Windows PC only. If you don’t have access to a Windows computer, or if you can’t get the software to run for any reason, you can run the exercises on the computers in the Learning Resource Center (LRC – near the café at the south end of the building). If that option fails for any reason, see me. You can do the exercises on one of my lab computers. Also, some of the exercises do not run properly under Windows Vista. There is also an articulatory synthesis assignment that does not run properly under Vista. This assignment does not use the Alvin software at all. Once again, you can run the software for this assignment on the computers in the LRC. Alvin and the articulatory synthesis software should be installed on the LRC machines. If for some reason they are not, you’ll have to install the software before doing the exercises. The installation procedures are simple and pretty quick. On my web page for this course ( look for: “MiniAlvin for SPPA 2040” or “Vocal tract synthesis demo”. The installer links are right below these headings. See me if you have problems installing the software. It wouldn’t be the 1st time.

BIG IMPORTANT THING:Be sure to install Alvin from my 2040 web page, not from my main homepage. Every semester a few students install Alvin from my homepage (), not from my 2040 page(). You’ll experience nothing but grief if you do not install Alvin from my page for this course.

  1. Once will usually be enough, but not always. You can repeat each exercise as many times as you like.
  1. Alvin will display your results after you complete each exercise. Print this file (File>Print) and keep the hard copyin a notebook or something. I may ask to see these hard copies. There will be a half-letter grade penalty if you haven’t been keeping up with the exercises.If you do not have a printer connected to your computer when you run the exercise, there are several ways to save your results files for later printing.

(1)Copy the text and paste it into a Word document. Things will only line up right if you stick with the Courier font (select all, then change the font to Courier).

(2)Students have told me that Alvin sometimes displays a blank results file. I saw this once and found that I got a proper results file just by clicking the ‘View results’ button on the bottom of the screen.

(3)Open MS Word and read in any results files that are missing. You can find out where these files are stored in a document on my 2040 web page( Look for:

How to find Alvin results files

(4)If you know how to “print” to a pdf file, you can choose this option from the Print command. You can then print the pdf file anytime you feel like it.

(5)If all else fails, do a screen dump (Alt/print screen) and paste the screen shot into a Word document.

I know that’s a lot of screwing around, but don’t worry about it. Chances are very good that you won’t have to do any of it, except maybe method (1), which is pretty easy.

  1. The software will tell you how you are doing on each exercise. If you are not doing well on the exercises, there’s something wrong. Seeme and we’ll try to get you back on track.
  1. Several of the exercises give you the option to re-do trials that you missed. Quite a few students have told me that Alvin does not always keep track of your performance accuratelywhen you use this option. One of these days I’ll find the time to fix this, but in the meantime if Alvin tells you something crazy about your performance, just ignore it. Alvin gives you feedback on each trial. This information is accurate, so you can rely on that.
  1. I am available to provide help outside of class and am very willing to spend time with you.
  1. Focus on understanding the material. Your exam grades will take care of themselves.

VI. Email

I will often have announcements and other information that I will get to you via email. The email list that I will use is maintained by the Registrar’s office. Two important points: (1) you will need to check your email regularly, and (2) you will need to use whatever address you provided to the Registrar as your preferred email account, usually your official WMU account. I do not have any way to substitute some other account.

VII. Final exam date

The date for the final exam is listed in the schedule of classes. It is also available online. Do a Google search for something likeWMU final exam schedule fall 2016(or whatever the current year is).

VIII.Reviewing your exams: We will go over exams thoroughly in class on the day that they are returned to you.There will be plenty of time to ask questions, and I will dismiss class a little bit early so that you can ask questions about grading. The exams then need to be returned to me. For a very long time I left the keys to exams 1 and 2 with our administrative assistant so that students could review them. This was done until it was discovered that some students were using their cellphones to copy the keys, which then shared with students who took the course in the following year(s). Since we do not have a good way to police this, the exam keys will not be made available.

IX. Academic honesty, diversity, religious observance, and student disabilities

You are responsible for making yourself aware of and understanding the policies and procedures in the Undergraduate and Graduate Catalogs that pertain to Academic Honesty. These policies include cheating, fabrication, falsification and forgery, multiple submission, plagiarism, complicity and computer misuse. [The policies can be found at under Academic Policies, Student Rights and Responsibilities.] If there is reason to believe you have been involved in academic dishonesty, you will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct. You will be given the opportunity to review the charge(s). If you believe you are not responsible, you will have the opportunity for a hearing. You should consult with your instructor if you are uncertain about an issue of academic honesty prior to the submission of an assignment or test.

For information on the Code of Honor, and general academic policies on such issues as diversity, religious observance, and student disabilities, see and

SPPA 2040: Course Outline

I. Phonetics and the Structure of Language

  1. Areas of study within phonetics
  2. Grammar: universal vs. language-specific, descriptive vs. prescriptive
  3. Linguistic modules: semantics, syntax, lexicon, morphology, phonology, and phonetics
  4. Dialect and Style/Register

Reading: Chapters 1 and 2, Grammar Puss (available on my 2040 web page; read this around the time we’re talking about dialect)