BSc Speech and Language Therapy

The unit will provide students with the foundation skills to listen to, transcribe and describe speech. In year 2, the Clinical Phonetics, Voice and Fluency unit will build on these foundational skills, to allow students to transcribe children, and adults with Speech Sound Disorders (SSD).

Students will learn to transcribe typical speech spoken in Greater Manchester, using the IPA chart and Northern English vowel chart, preparing them for the speech they will encounter on clinical placement in the Greater Manchester region. Students will also develop skills in the identification and discrimination of speech sounds considering the Voice, Place and Manner (VPM) of the articulation of individual phones. The status of phones as phonemes, creating contrastive system for encoding language into speech code will be explored. Students will learn the function of diacritics for the further description of phones on the IPA charts. Suprasegmental aspects of phonology including connected speech efficiencies (assimilation, coalescence, consonant deletion etc.), primary word stress, intonation patterns and the role of voice will be transcribed. This unit will be highly practical, with students expected to realise phones in English, and non-English phones made with reference to the vocal tract. 

The unit aims to:

• Equip students with the skills to transcribe spoken Northern English using the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA script).
• Introduce students to the transcription of disordered speech using the extIPA chart.
• Provide a foundation for the transcription of children, young people and adults with Speech Sound Disorders (SSD). 

Students will receive taught lectures and interactive workshops to develop their listening and transcription skills.

Students will have access to a range of interactive learning resources where they can see and hear phones being realised, such as videos of transcription of phones.

Pre-reading and workbooks will be completed to develop ear training and transcription skills.

Small group work to develop practical speech production and transcription skills will be encouraged. Peer-support and practical application of learning is essential to develop speed and accuracy of realisation and description of phones.

Students can check their learning using online quizzes with automatic feedback. 

• Demonstrate understanding of the terminology associated with speech production, including phonetics, phonology, and articulation.
• Understand how change in realisation can affect word meaning.
• Understand the contrastive nature of VPM to create a phonological system.
• Understand the communicative function of suprasegmental speech features such as word stress and intonation. 

• Map knowledge from other units, such as Biomedical Science to identify the name and function of passive and active articulators in the vocal tract.
• Use knowledge from acoustics to explain how phones are created in the vocal tract. 

• Transcription of single phones, words and connected speech using handwritten IPA symbols.
• Ability to hear a phone and provide a VPM description. 

• Listening skills developed through ear-training. 

• Students will be provided with model transcriptions of single words and connected speech.  
• Direction to resources to improve / continue to develop ear training and transcription skills will be provided.
• A mark and cohort level feedback will be provided following the examination
• Throughout the unit verbal tutor feedback will be provided
• Students will have the opportunity to self-evaluate their work against class discussion and through small group activities 

• Knight, R. (2012). Phonetics: A Coursebook. Cambridge University Press.
• Lawson, E., Stuart-Smith, J., Scobbie, J. M., Nakai, S. (2018). Seeing Speech: an articulatory web resource for the study of Phonetics. University of Glasgow. 5th February 2025. https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/