Last
September saw the publication of English Phonetics and Pronunciation Practice (EPPP),
Routledge. The book is authored by Paul Carley, of the universities of
Bedfordshire and Leicester, Inger Mees, Associate Professor in the Department
of Management, Society and Communication at the Copenhagen Business School, and
Beverley Collins (1938-2014), who held lectureships at the universities of
Lancaster and Leiden and was Visiting Professor at Ghent University.
EPPP is an
excellent resource book for both teachers and students, effectively bridging
the gap between courses in English phonetics and those in English
pronunciation.
My
endorsement, included inside the front cover of the book, together with the words offered
by such eminent scholars as John Wells, Jane Setter, Petr Rösel and Geoff Lindsey, is as follows:
“I’m absolutely delighted to welcome this excellently written book. The coverage and organisation are exceptionally good. The authors are to be congratulated on producing a groundbreaking textbook combining English phonetic theory with copious amounts of material for practice. Anyone studying or teaching English or wishing to understand or speak the language with clarity and accuracy should read this book.”
EPPP provides
an up-to-date description of the pronunciation of a twenty-first-century model
of educated British English, ‘General British’ (GB). Also, it demonstrates the
use of each English phoneme with a selection of high-frequency words, both
alone and in context in sentences, idiomatic phrases and dialogues.
The book is
supported by a fantastic companion website featuring 2,615 audio files,
including full recordings of the examples given in the theory sections, full
recordings of the practice material by a male speaker from Wokingham, Berkshire
(15 hours) and a female speaker from Petersfield, Hampshire (another 15 hours),
and transcriptions of all the practice material. The 30 hours of practice
material recordings are in two versions: one for self-study with only minimal
pauses, and one for the language lab with pauses of different lengths depending
on whether it’s a word, phrase, sentence, etc.
English Phonetics and Pronunciation Practice truly is the
masterpiece that the English phonetics world had been waiting for!
