Graduate Studies

Graduate Teaching:We are recruiting now for these programmes:

MRes Speech, Langugage & Cognition

The MRes in Speech, Language & cognition is a one-year graduate-level taught programme that provides tailored training for students with a first degree in linguistics, speech science, psychology or related disciplines wishing to undertake future PhD research. More details>>

Research Projects

UCL Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences is internationally recognised for its excellent research into the perception and production of speech. For more details about our latest research see our webpages More>>

Speech Science Forum Talks

The Research Department of Speech, Hearning and Phonetic Sciences host Speech Science Forums in Chandler House More>>

News and Events

For all the latest news and event details within the Faculty of Psychology and Language Sciences follow this link. More>>

Summer Course in English Phonetics

Summer Course in English Phonetics 12 - 23 August 2013

Study Phonetics in London! Come and spend two weeks in London this summer, studying English Phonetics at University College London (UCL).
  • Whether you're a teacher or student of EFL, you can brush up your knowledge of the theoretical side of phonetics and bring yourself up-to-date on new developments; or you may want the opportunity to do some ear-training and listening practice under the guidance of specialist tutors; or you may just want to improve your own English pronunciation. You can do it on the UCL Summer Course in English Phonetics
At UCL we are enthusiastic about the study of pronunciation and how to teach it. For a century, we have been the world's leading university department for English Phonetics—our tradition was established by Daniel Jones, and continued by A.C.Gimson, and J.C.Wells, all scholars with a world-wide reputation. We are also a leading centre for teaching and learning innovations in phonetics, and host the biennial international Phonetics Teaching and Learning Conference (PTLC). Details here

The Course covers all the main aspects of English phonetics:

  • phonemic system (vowels and consonants)
  • segmental analysis (allophonic processes)
  • word stress
  • weakening and coarticulation processes
  • sentence stress (accent, tonal stress)
  • intonation and meaning
These topics will be investigated both in lectures and in practical classes. We deal with both speaking and listening. You will get plenty of practice in pronunciation performance (sounds in isolation and, more importantly, in connected speech) and in auditory discrimination (ear-training).
Practical groups will be kept small (not more than about ten people), and will be streamed according to students' level of ability. We expect to have separate groups at various levels for
  • teachers of English as a foreign language
  • undergraduate students of English
  • university academics and postgraduates
In the main strand followed by most participants we pay particular attention to the difficulties of English pronunciation for learners of EFL. We focus especially on the phonetic characteristics of connected speech, analysing the ways in which the pronunciation of words in discourse typically differs from their pronunciation in isolation. We look at stress and intonation particularly from the point of view of pragmatics and discourse function. The theory, ear-training and practice materials relate to English phonetics rather than to general phonetics. But alongside this in most years we also run an IPA Examination strand.
0900-0945 Lecture (starts at 0915 on the first day)
0955-1045 Practical class
1115-1200 Lecture
1210-1300 Practical class
1400-1450 Ear-training

Page last modified on 22 dec 12 23:23 by Michael G Ashby