In September I wrote about how I used accent tag videos to teach phonetic transcription in my online linguistics classes. Since I could not be there in person, the videos provided a stable reference that we could all refer to from our computers around the country. Having two pronunciations to compare drew the students? attention to the differences between them – one of the major reasons phonetic transcription was invented – and the most natural level of detail to include in the answer.

In the Fall of 2015 I was back in the classroom teaching Introduction to Phonology, and I realized that those features – a stable reference and multiple pronunciations of the same word with small differences – were also valuable when we were all in the same room. I used accent tag clips in exercises on transcription and other skills, such as identifying phonetic traits like tongue height and frication.

One of my students, Alice Nkanga, pointed out a feature of YouTube that I wasn’t aware of before: you can adjust the speed of playback down to one-quarter speed, and it auto-corrects the pitch, which can help with transcription.

After reading my previous post another linguist, Jessi Grieser, said that she liked the idea, so I shared some of my clips with her. She used them in her class, including a clip I made contrasting two African American women – one from Chicago and one from New York – saying the word ?oil.?

Grieser reported, ?this went excellently! It really helped hammer home the idea that there isn’t a ‘right’ way to transcribe a word based on its orthography–that what we’re really looking for is a transcription which captures what the speaker did. They really had fun with ‘oil’ since many of them are /AHL/ or /UHL/ speakers themselves. It was a really great discussion starter for our second day of transcription. This is a genius idea.?

It makes me really happy to know that other people find this technique useful in their classrooms, because I was so excited when I came up with it. I would make the clips available to the public, even at no charge, but I?m not sure about the rights because I did not make the original accent tag videos. I hope you?ll all make your own, though – it?s not that hard!

And if you teach sign linguistics in your introductory courses, or are considering it, you might be interested in reading about similar techniques I used for teaching students to analyze and transcribe sign languages!