Module 3, Task 3a: Learner’s Corpus

Building the Learner’s Corpus (45-60 minutes) - Pair Work

Your skills in phonetic transcription analysis can be applied in actual teaching to
diagnose sounds produced by your students in English that may possibly yield
intelligibility or comprehensibility problems. Below is the transcript for this activity:

Transcript
1. Perry, a fat pink fairy, who lives in Fantasyland, and his pet Paul, a pig
that is frighteningly full of fur, went to visit Perry’s paternal
grandfather fairy.

2. A lazy Thursday at the zoo found the zebras grazing on zinnias, posing
for pictures and teasing the zookeeper, whose nose was bronzed by the
sun.

3. Sam, a surly sergeant from Cisco, Texas, saw a sailor sit silently on a
small seat reserved for youngsters.

4. When revising his visitor's version of a plan for a very well-paved

avenue, the VIP was advised to reveal none of his motives.

5. They apologized for sending only a thousand thirty-three

thermometers rather than a thousand thirty-six and promised to
replace the thick thermometers with thin thermometers

6. Hello, my name is (nickname of the student). I'm taking American Accent

Training. There's a lot to learn, but I hope to make it as enjoyable as
possible. I should pick up on the American intonation pattern pretty
easily, although the only way to get it is to practice all of the time. I use
the up and down, or peaks and valleys, intonation more than I used to.
I've been paying attention to pitch, too. It's like walking down a
staircase. I've been talking to a lot of Americans lately, and they tell me
that I'm easier to understand. Anyway, I could go on and on, but the
important thing is to listen well and sound good. Well, what do you
think? Do I?