Week 5: Listening Exercise / Tech talk at the NY Times

Tech Talk at the NY Times

You will listen to a segment of a Tech Talk report by New York Times reporters J. D. Biersdorfer and Pedro Rafael Rosado.  Below you are provided with a set of questions, so please give a brief but direct answer to each of them. Don’t forget to print a copy of this exercise and bring it to class to be checked.

1	What’s the main objective of the social media available? A/
2	Why is it that Google + is not as popular as Facebook? A/
3	Was Google + open to anyone that wanted to join at the beginning? A/
4	What seems to be the reason that Google + traffic dropped by 60% according to advertising networks and research firms? A/
5	Why was the metaphor better than sliced bread used when describing Google +? What does it mean? A/
6	What’s the explanation regarding Google +’s sudden increase and rapid decrease in popularity? A/
7	What are the two theories about why Google + is lagging in the social media? A/ a)     b)
8	What’s the male reporter’s bottom line about Google + and the lack of the “fun factor” or “sticky quality?” A/
9	Compared to Facebook, how user-friendly is Google +? A/
10	What’s the new relationship between Facebook and iPad? A/
11	What are the most important features of the new Facebook app? A/
12	TRANSCRIPTIONS: a)   connected /kǝ’nɛktɪd/ b)  Google Plus c)   apparently d)  increase e)   temporary f)    theories g)  supply h)  stand out i)     features j)    sticky quality k)   the bottom line l)     complicated

Taken and adapted for educational purposes only, from NYTimes.com Podcasts at http://www.nytimes.com/pages/podcasts/index.html

Take a look at the exercise right here.

Get a copy of the exercise here.

And what about the answers?

Week 5: Contrastive Words Practice

Consonant Contrasts

The following chart contains words with fricative sounds. Read each word carefully and producing each sound according to its internal features.

List 1: /f/ vs. /v/

fan	van
ferry	very
fault	vault
few	view
rifle	rival
safer	saver
half	have
leaf	leave

List 2: /t/ vs. /ϴ/

taught	thought
team	theme
tree	three
true	through
tent	tenth
debt	death
boot	booth
mat	math

List 3: /s/ vs. /z/

sink	zinc
sip	zip
deceased	diseased
racing	raising
niece	knees
ice	eyes
place	plays
price	prize

List 4: /s/ vs. /ʃ/

sip	ship
sew	show
classes	clashes
class	clash
bass	bash
Rus	rush

Week 5: The Fricative Sounds

The Fricative Sounds

Fricatives in English are the most important group of consonants since we have 9 members in this group. These consonant phonemes are characterized by the friction they produce when the airstream is coming out of the mouth. It is the tongue and its several positions the one responsible in the production of all these sounds.

How can fricatives be described or defined? They are consonants produced by forcing the breath stream through a constriction by articulators in the vocal tract.

Fricatives are divided into 5 different sub-categories:

1. labiodental fricatives,

2. interdental fricatives,

3. alveolar fricatives,

4. palatal fricatives, and

5. a glottal fricative.

As can be noticed in the chart below, we have sister sounds, except for the glottal phoneme, which happens to be by itself.

This chart can also help us see the similarities and differences across the two languages we get to use at the university.

Phoneme	Spanish	English
/f/	voiceless-labiodental	voiceless-labiodental
/v/	(It doesn’t exist.)	voiced-labiodental
/ϴ/	(It doesn’t exist.)	voiceless-interdental
/ð/	(It is an allophone.)	voiced-interdental
/s/	voiceless-alveolar	voiceless-alveolar
/z/	(It doesn’t exist.)	voiced-alveolar
/ʃ/	(It doesn’t exist.)	voiceless-palatal
/ʒ/	(It doesn’t exist.)	voiced-palatal
/h/	voiceless-glottal	voiceless-glottal

As you may have noticed five of the fricative phonemes in English do not exist in Spanish spoken in the Americas. The other one exists in Spanish, but it is an allophonic difference for another phoneme.

Week 5: Transcription by Thematic Units 5

Transcriptions by Thematic Units 5:

Fruits

Guava

The following exercise requires that you listen to the following words and transcribe them in class. Listen to the words on the Google translation service at http://translate.google.co.cr/#. Then transcribe each of the words or phrases.

Passion Fruit

Fruit	Transcription
apple	/’æpǝl/
orange
starfruit
papaya
banana
pineapple
grapes
water melon
peach
cherry
passion fruit
guava

Starfruit

Water Melon