J. Hillenbrand, Fall 2010 SPPA 2040: Phonetics I. Text MacKay, I. (1991). Phonetics: The Science of Speech Production (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. 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. A. SPPA 2040: Your grade1 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 published in the schedule of classes. B. 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. 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 the average of however many quizzes are taken. C. 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 65 -69: D below 65: E 1 Final grade= (exam1 x 0.3) + (exam2 x 0.3) +(exam3 x 0.4)SPPA 2040 Syllabus Page 2 III. Attendance I will not take attendance unless there appears to be a widespread problem. However, experience has shown that even fairly minor attendance problems can sometimes create major problems in this course. If you are unable to make a particular class meeting, you do not need to call to let me know. IV. Miscellaneous Office: CHHS 4468 Phone: 387-8066 Office Hours: T,Th 3:15-4:30, 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: [email protected] (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.) V. 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 notes. 2. Don't miss class, especially in the beginning of the course. 3. 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. 4. 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: a. 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 (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. b. Once will usually be enough, but not always. You can repeat each exercise as many times as you like.SPPA 2040 Syllabus Page 3 c. Alvin will display your results after you complete each exercise. Print this file (File>Print) and keep the hard copy in a notebook or something. (If you don’t have a printer attached there’s a way to print the results out later. See me.) 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. d. 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. See me and we’ll try to get you back on track. 5. I am available to provide help outside of class and am very willing to spend time with you. 6. 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 your official WMU email account since this is the one that the Registrar provides to me. I don’t have any way to substitute an account such as gmail or yahoo. VII. 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 http://catalog.wmich.edu 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