Phonology for Listening

Teaching the stream of speech

Richard Cauldwell

Speech in Action, 2013

Reviewed by Arizio Sweeting

Richard Cauldwell’s award-winning Phonology for Listening sheds light on the intricate
relationship between listening and pronunciation. Using the analogy of a window,
Cauldwell frames the work of the book around the practice of representing unruly
prosodic features (e.g., rhythm and intonation) in written form. This framework
is called the ‘window on speech’, a descriptive system in which teachers use
orthographic and symbolic transcriptions to help learners decode the ‘mushiness’
of sounds in the stream of speech. Whilst the book will interest teachers with an
enthusiasm for pronunciation, its main audience is the listening skills teacher. From
the start of the book, Cauldwell emphasises that listening is a poorly learned skill
and argues that learners require more than a series of listening comprehension
questions for successful listening practice; they require help with coping with speech
dynamics if they are to make sense of familiar words when they hear them in the
stream of speech.
The book contains four main parts, each of which is subdivided into five chapters. In
Part 1, teachers are introduced to the rationale behind the framework of the ‘window
on speech’. In Part 2, a description of spontaneous speech is provided. Part 3 deals
with the concepts of accents, identity and emotion in speech, and Part 4 covers the
teaching of listening. An added bonus of the book is the inclusion of a summary,
references for further reading and language awareness activities at the end of each
chapter. There is also a glossary of terms and four appendices, the latter providing
a comparison of careful speech with spontaneous speech, notes on how to calculate
the speed of speech, a list of examples of word clusters, and guidelines on how to
create an ‘acoustic blur’ (where sounds merge, disappear or change in the stream of

92 English Australia Journal Volume 31 No 1

 speech). Another positive feature of the book is its section on symbols and notation,
essential information for smooth navigation of the book’s content.
Part 1 sets the theoretical basis of the ‘window on speech’ and introduces teachers to
the main differences between the careful speech model and the spontaneous speech
model. Cauldwell also brings teachers’ attention to the fact that speech is dependent
on the speaker’s choice. For instance, using five-column tables, the author compares
various samples of spoken discourse
to show how prominent and non-

PHONOLOGY
prominent syllables behave in real
Richard Cauldwell PHONOLOGY FOR LISTENING

21st century.
speech as opposed to the emulation

FOR LISTENING
model. For me, the most interesting
ening – using
thinking and
speech. It is
ters.
d for the
point made here is the author ’s
they are
Teaching argument against the assumption
nd, North
. the stream that non-prominent syllables are less
ch – for
of speech important than prominent ones. For
Cauldwell, non-prominent syllables, or
nsive book.
syllables which receive less emphasis
mmended.
m.
from the speaker at the time of
pproach.

speaking, should be prioritised in

d.

the listening classroom. Learners

He is widely
ning. His first
004.
need to be made aware of the sound
changes that these syllables undergo
in fast speech. The author calls this
Richard Cauldwell
process ‘squeeze zones’. One example
of these zones is the change in sound
15/03/2013 17:29

we get when we pronounce the word

association in a sentence like ‘It was DONE in association with the SPORT council’
(with secondary and primary stresses highlighted in block letter, respectively). In this
sentence, we might hear ‘so-say-shun’ or ‘show-shay-shun’ instead of the dictionary
model ‘a-SO-ci-A-tion’, as the part of the sentence containing this word is squeezed
and reshaped to accommodate the speed of speech.
In Part 2, Cauldwell continues on the topic of spontaneous speech by paying attention
to various details of ‘the sound substance of speech’. Some of these are the drafting
phenomena (e.g., pauses, fillers, repetitions, vague language and softeners). Other
speech aspects are the speed of speech and soundshapes (the various acoustic
forms which words can take). Perhaps the most controversial aspect of this section
concerns Cauldwell’s views on stress-timing. For Cauldwell, the general notion that
speech occurs at equal intervals is a useful assumption for the field of pronunciation

Volume 31 No 1 English Australia Journal 93

instruction. For listening, however, the author claims that such a belief doesn’t stand
up to research evidence.
The five chapters in Part 3 discuss the role of accent, identity and emotion in speech.
While acknowledging the use of standard accents such as Received Pronunciation
(RP) and General American (GenAm) as the common referential in English language
teaching, Cauldwell suggests that these accents are mainly useful as dictionary
models. As for resolving acoustic blurs in listening practice, learners should be
encouraged to notice sound differences in the speakers’ accents. Cauldwell argues
that what second language learners actually need is more regular exposure to a
vast range of regional accents or dialects (e.g., Irish, Birmingham, Canadian, Global
English accents, etc.). For instance, teachers should give learners practice of hearing a
rhotic /r/ in born uttered by an American English speakers and its /r/-less equivalent
produced by a Standard Southern British English speaker.
Part 3 might also resonate well with EFL/ESL teachers, as it includes a chapter on
how to decode speech sounds produced by speakers of English as a lingua franca
(ELF). Using the examples of five speakers of Global English, Cauldwell illustrates the
significance of non-native speaker norms as a resource for focusing learners on the
sound substance. In this part, the author also shows how the perspectives of the
‘window on speech’ and accent reduction can be used to provide non-native English
speakers with recommendations for speech improvement. This part finishes with
a thought-provoking discussion on the relationship between emotions and speech.
Cauldwell argues that there is no one-to-one relationship between vocal effects
and emotions, and demonstrates this argument by convincingly showing how the
perceived meaning of a speech form can change when it is heard in isolation and
then within the parameters of a social context.
As a teacher and teacher trainer, I read Part 4 closely, as it deals with the practical
aspects of the teaching of listening. It starts with a trenchant critique of current
approaches to listening pedagogy and argues that teachers should stop testing
listening and begin establishing achievable listening goals for learners using samples
from genuine speech. The author provides a range of activities for teaching, one
of which is the use of ‘impromptu dictations’ which target the learners’ perceptual
skills. In this, teachers are recommended to stop the recording during listening
practice and ask the students to take note of the last four words they heard, which
is supposedly the number of words a person’s short memory can normally hold.
By extending the strategy to speech units of different lengths, however, Cauldwell
suggests that teachers will be focusing the learners on the elements which go through
the greatest soundshape changes.

94 English Australia Journal Volume 31 No 1

Phonology for Listening is a masterpiece of its time. The book is user-friendly to both
experienced and less experienced teachers. However, those with prior knowledge of
the literature will have an advantage. Personally, the only difficulty I had with reading
this e-book regards the access to the accompanying sound files. While reading the
book, I had to download the files to a folder in my computer, as the Kindle for PC
reader I was using did not allow me to playback the recordings. All in all, Cauldwell is
to be commended for this outstanding addition to the contemporary literature and
teachers, trainers and academics are encouraged to read such an innovative resource.

Arizio Sweeting is a teacher and teacher trainer at the Institute of

Continuing & TESOL Education at the University of Queensland. He is
undertaking his PhD studies on teacher education and pronunciation
instruction at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

[Link]@[Link]

Twitter: @ariziosweeting

Volume 31 No 1 English Australia Journal 95