Spanish 306 - Spanish Pronunciation

This course offers a comprehensive review of the pronunciation of Spanish. The sound system of Spanish is introduced in a simple and concise manner in order to better understand how Spanish sounds are produced, how they fall into patterns, and how they change in different environments. Major attention is devoted to practice with corrective exercises, introductory training in phonetic transcription and, to a lesser extent, the problems of teaching pronunciation. Throughout the course we will focus on the contrast between Spanish and English sound patterns, an aspect intended to help students understand the major phonetic differences between both languages and at the same time improve their Spanish pronunciation. Attention will be paid both to segmental sounds as well as the intonational system of Spanish. Students will learn to use the software Praat for visual feedback to improve pronunciation. Finally, we will discuss some of the salient dialectal differences in pronunciation from around the Spanish-speaking world.