Spanish Phonetics and Phonology
SPAN 312 (Fall 2025)
Course Description
Introduction to Spanish phonetic theory and phonology with extensive practice on syllabification, transcription, production and a review of the Spanish spelling system and accent marks.
Course Overview
This course introduces the theoretical notions and analytical tools necessary to study and classify sounds in Spanish, transcribe sentences, and retrain your mouth to correctly pronounce Spanish sounds that give Americans problems. Therefore, this course is both theoretical and practical. The practical part of the course will help the non-native Spanish speaker (who has completed at least SPAN 211—third semester Spanish) improve their pronunciation in Spanish (that is, minimize their American accent), becoming more aware of the particularities of some Spanish sounds as compared with their English counterparts. This course is also beneficial for Heritage and Native Spanish speakers in helping them understand and know more about the Spanish language and how people in different speech communities use it.
Student Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to: • SLO1: Reduce and preferably eliminate the American accent in spoken Spanish, through verbal dialogues with your professor and fellow students. • SLO2: Describe the sounds of Spanish based upon an understanding of how Spanish is articulated verbally • SLO3: Describe in writing, and verbally, the phonemes and allophones of Spanish. • SLO4: Explain when called upon, the basic Spanish syllabic structure and the Spanish stress system. • SLO5: Produce a graphic representation of Spanish sounds using phonetic symbols. • SLO6: Transcribe Spanish words or sentences using phonetic symbols. • SLO7: Articulate in writing your understanding of significant dialectical variants of the Spanish language.