HG2003 PHONETICS & PHONOLOGY (3.0 AU)

Year Taken: AY 19/20, Sem 2

2 online quizzes (open-book) (MCQ): 25% each
2 take-home assignments: 20% each Individual
class participation: 10%
One lecture + one tutorial per week

One of the core lms mods for y1s2. I remembered when I walked out of the second lecture, I felt like I was in a daze. I had no idea what was going on. Managed to only somewhat catch up after recess week when someone suggested to me to read the textbook (yeah I really deserved it lmao). The assignments are quite easy to score for this mod though. The quizzes, however, will take some effort. The first assignment was a transcription of a self-sourced Singlish audio recording into IPA. The second assignment was an analysis of some patterns of an unknown language. Some may find the first assignment tougher than the second, some may find the second assignment tougher than the first. YMMV.

Anyways, as this is a mod solely about the IPA chart, don’t be a goondu like me who panicked at the start for not knowing the IPA chart. Even if you are a complete beginner in this mod, it is possible to do well as long as you consistently do the readings and tutorials. The tutors and lecturers for this mod are very approachable so do try to clarify your doubts with them if possible.

This review was published with the kind permission of Pressing Realities. Originally published at https://pressingrealities.wordpress.com/2020/06/04/ntu-modules-review-for-ay19-20-y1s2/

Year Taken: AY 17/18, Sem 2

Ah, the bane of all LMS students. You would be so overwhelmed in the first lecture and tutorial as most of you go what the heck!? at the IPA symbols. What Prof. Scott did was to throw all the concepts at us and then slowly guided us through the weekly lectures. If you were a science student before, you have an upper hand. If you were not a science student like me, fret not as I did well despite coming from a combined science background in secondary school. My advice is to go for your lectures, study the slides (he only tested from the slides in my opinion) and do the readings for understanding. The first half of the semester was on Phonetics while the second half was on Phonology.

25% Quiz
20% Assignment 1
20% Assignment 2
25% Quiz
5% Tutorial Participation
5% Singlish Transcription

The first quiz tested on physics, IPA symbols and the anatomy of the human vocal system. As long as you memorize the details, you are good.

Due to Prof. Scott’s lenient marking nature, a lot of people would do well for the assignments. The first assignment was about transcribing a real person’s speech with IPA symbols. The second assignment was pretty tough in my opinion. We were given words and IPA symbols for an unknown language and we had to figure out the phonological rules based on what we had. I did badly for the second assignment.

The final quiz was on both phonetics and phonology. A lot of my peers did badly due to the phonology-based questions. My advice is keep up with the tutorials and make sure you know how to solve basic phonological puzzles. No matter what kind of wordings Prof. Scott used in the quiz, he was merely looking for those few concepts at the end of the day.

Also, 5% of the coursework would be recording somebody’s Singlish speech and then transcribing it. This was very similar to the Assignment 1. I sent in mine relatively early. I am pretty sure even when the semester ended, some of my peers probably forgot about it and missed out on a good 5% though. Please get this out of the way as soon as possible to get your 5%.

This module was pretty tough at first glance but as long as you keep up with classes, it should be manageable. Nevertheless, a lot of people did badly because this is one of those modules with the “snowball effect”; the moment you are not catching up, you won’t be able to understand the subsequent classes.

This review was published with the kind permission of aLMSstudent. Originally published at https://ntulmsmods.wordpress.com/2018/07/06/ntu-lms-2017-2018-semester-2/