Practical phonetics for the education and training of Speech & Language Therapists:

a first look at standards

Gerry Docherty - University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Janet Beck - Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh.

Barry Heselwood - Leeds Metropolitan University.

Jill House - University College London.

Sara Howard - University of Sheffield.

Introduction

Practical phonetics is taught in a number of different settings and as a component of different types of academic programme. In the UK a major focus for practical phonetics teaching is in the education of Speech & Language Therapists (S&LTs). At any one time, around a thousand students are signed up on programmes which lead to a licence to practice as a S&LT, and around 15-20 specialists in phonetics are involved in delivering practical phonetic skills training to these students (in the UK it is likely that at least as many phonetics specialists are employed to teach on S&LT programmes as are hired to teach on Linguistics programmes). For this group of students, a training in practical phonetics is a key skill, specified as essential in national and international frameworks for professional training.

This paper presents some issues relating to the curriculum and assessment of practical phonetics courses for students on programmes leading to a qualification in S&LT which arose from a comparative evaluation of the practical phonetics provision across five UK Universities (the authors’ own departments). As well as seeking to learn from good practice at other institutions, two other factors that constitute an important backdrop to this exercise are: (a) a steady move to competence-based curricula for the education of health professionals, with learning objectives defined in terms of constellations of knowledge/skills/attitudes -- practical phonetics is overtly a skill-oriented part of the curriculum for S&LTs (indeed, is one of the defining skills of that professional group), and in this study we were interested in exploring the balance between skills and knowledge within this part of the curriculum and the link between practical phonetics and other aspects of phonetics teaching; (b) a move (largely inspired by UK government agencies) to define standards of achievement in higher education -- the authors of this study were interested in looking in particular at the suggestion that teachers of particular subjects should define a threshold standard which sets out the portfolio of skills/knowledge/competencies required to justify the granting of an award in a particular subject at a particular level.

One further factor which motivated this comparative exercise is the fact that provision of practical phonetics on UK clinical programmes is usually the responsibility of a single member of staff working as part of a multi-disciplinary team. This means that any attempt to calibrate provision within an institution is quite difficult. This situation has been recognised for a number of years, and phoneticians falling in to this category have been at the forefront of organising very successful supporting networks to enable a sharing of best practice (e.g. NETPhon, the SOCRATES Thematic Network in Speech Communication Sciences, and SiPhtra, which sponsored this PTLC meeting).

Method

The exercise centred around a half-day meeting of the authors of this paper, all of whom are responsible for delivering practical phonetics teaching to students (at undergraduate, and in some cases, also at taught masters level) on programmes leading to S&LT qualification. Each member of the group circulated in advance of the meeting the aims and objectives of their practical teaching, and the assessment schedule which they apply for each year in which practical phonetics is taught.

The half-day was largely spent in discussion of one another’s documentation and of a number of issues (detailed below) that turned out to be of common concern. The afternoon was rounded off with an evaluation exercise for which members of the group were circulated with marked practical tests by two students who were performing on the pass-fail borderline in their final practical phonetics assessment (the tests and marking were not from real students but were constructed specifically for this exercise). The aim of the evaluation task was to investigate the extent to which members of the group felt that either student had demonstrated adequate ability to be allowed to proceed (this marking task is not described further in this paper although it did lead to some interesting debate).

Findings arising from the factual material

The three most striking outcomes of our consideration of the factual material were:

1. There is very diverse provision across the five institutions in terms of the timing of practical phonetics teaching (e.g. 1^st year only in one case, years 1, 2, and 3 in another), and, partially related to this of course, quite a range of variation in the quantity of practical phonetics teaching received by students on these programmes. It is important to note though that it is not absolutely straightforward to make these comparisons since sites varied in terms of the amount of self-directed study in this area demanded of students, and also in the size of groups to which practical phonetics is taught – there is a sense in which, for some aspects of practical phonetics, a smaller number of hours in a small group may be just as beneficial as a larger number of hours in a large group.
2. There was a good deal of similarity in the aims and objectives that were expressed in the course documentation that was circulated in advance. This was encouraging, but it did beg the question of how we could be achieving something so similar when what we are providing is so diverse.
3. There was considerable variation in the mode and timing of the assessment of practical phonetics skills, and in the extent to which practical assessment is embedded in other types of assessment (and therefore explicitly something that has to be passed in order to progress or graduate).

Points that arose from our discussion of the factual material

Our discussion of the factual material was wide-ranging, but the following points are the most salient:

There was a strong consensus that practical phonetics is best taught as one component of an integrated course/module which seeks to give students a deep understanding of speech production. All of the authors were concerned that students should not come to see transcription as an end in itself and divorced from what they are taught in other aspects of their phonetics courses. It was recognised that avoiding this pitfall is enormously dependent on the structure of the course/module and on the stance taken by the lecturer on the relative importance of different parts of the course/module. Of course this is not to say that students should not be able to transcribe speech, but rather that, first and foremost, students need to have a thorough understanding of the nature of sound production by the vocal tract, and that, as part of that, they need to be able to reliably identify sounds and make use of established conventions for transcribing them. Figure 1 shows the conceptual model (the "phonetics square") which is used in practical phonetics teaching at Leeds Metropolitan University. At LMU, phonetic knowledge of a sound is considered to consist of 4 aspects (knowing the symbol, understanding its articulatory classification, being able to produce the sound, and being able to recognise the sound). Knowing the symbol is not enough. Although it is extremely useful to be able to represent sounds accurately, and is vital in a lot of clinical work, the most important knowledge in practical phonetics is to understand the nature of sounds – their component parts and their production – and be able to recognise and identify them.

Figure 1 also highlights the role of ‘production’ as a practical skill. The factual material which we gathered showed that this is generally focused on to a much lesser extent than perceptual skills, but there was general agreement that this should be a key component of any practical phonetics provision and that it is enormously valuable in developing students’ understanding of speech production. It does, however, impose difficulties for sites which do not have adequate staff for teaching large numbers of small groups.

Figure 1: The "phonetics square": a conceptual map of the practical phonetics module at Leeds Metropolitan University

The group recognised that not only was there a danger for transcription to be compartmentalised in students’ minds vis-à-vis other aspects of phonetics, but, just as importantly, there was a concern about the whole of the phonetics provision being disconnected from clinical areas in the curriculum. This points to the need to achieve integration of clinical and non-clinical material wherever possible, both in terms of how material is taught and how it is assessed. The meeting discussed a number of ways in which this is being explored within the authors’ departments.

It was recognised that time limitations are a major factor in determining realistic levels of achievement for students, and that objectives had to be set in the context of the other demands being placed on students and the overall aims and objectives of the students’ programme of study. With regard to this latter point, there was some discussion about what level of practical skills a newly-qualified S&LT should be expected to demonstrate. We come back to this point in the next section below.

The availability and quality of teaching resources was a concern for the group. It was noted that there is varying provision of self-study resources (and just as importantly the means for students to make use of these) across the different sites. There is also considerable concern about how to overcome the ethical questions surrounding the use of real clinical material to give students real-life situations on which to practise their phonetic skills.

In considering the sorts of skills that could be targeted in practical phonetics provision for future S&LTs, it was felt that, as well as looking at segmental transcription skills, it would be valuable to work on students’ abilities to produce accurate phonetically informed commentaries on samples of speech. Such commentaries may supplement or even replace detailed segmental transcriptions in appropriate circumstances. This might help address the view that some students have that practical phonetics is something that may be peripheral to them once they are practising clinicians. Almost all clinicians will use their phonetic listening skills as part of what they do in forming initial general impressions of a client’s speech (regardless of whether they subsequently carry out a more detailed phonetic assessment).

Establishing and setting a threshold

The group agreed that it was desirable that S&LT students should be required to demonstrate adequate practical phonetic skills as part of judging their fitness for practice (as well as fitness for award). Our discussion centred on when such a threshold might be set and on what we understood by ‘adequate’.

With regard to the timing issue, the two options seemed to be (a) at the current final assessment point for practical phonetics itself (very early in some cases; e.g. at the end of the 1^st year of a 4-year programme); (b) at the exit point (i.e. at or close to the point at which a student graduates from a programme). The relative merits and disadvantages of both of these options were discussed. The group felt there might be value in expressing a pre-clinical threshold at a relatively early point in the programme (e.g. immediately following an initial introductory course in phonetics, and (b) a clinical threshold which would be positioned at the latter stages of a programme for which students would have to demonstrate their ability to apply their phonetics skills in a clinical context.

With regard to what constitutes an ‘adequate’ skills profile the group found it harder to reach hard and fast conclusions. Whilst there is a good deal of convergence in the aims and objectives across the five sites, there is (as already mentioned) considerable diversity in how these are addressed, with different emphases being applied on different courses (often attributable to historical or unavoidable operational factors). It is important to say that the group felt very strongly that this diversity should be seen as a strength rather than as a problem, and that there was no case for devising a national curriculum in this area, on the grounds that there is a richness in the existing diversity.

There was greater convergence in respect of the difficulty of defining the pass-fail threshold for S&LT students; specifically all of the group were concerned about students who could amass enough marks to technically pass a particular assignment but who, in the process, show significant gaps in their knowledge or skills. It was agreed that one of the key strategies that could be adopted in addressing this was to ensure that the nature of the assessment was well-tuned to the objectives of the course/module and of the programme as a whole. In this context the group identified two particular approaches to assessment which might be particularly useful: (a) use of a short viva as a means of testing deep understanding of phonetics issues as opposed to simply probing transcription abilities; (b) the possibility of basing the final threshold hurdle on some form of case-based assessment (this would be ‘reality-based’, and would fit well with a viva format, and with the fact that many programmes are now making use of unseen cases for final clinical assessment).

Conclusion

In summary, the group was strongly supportive of the view that practical skills (as taught and assessed) are best seen as one part of the deeper knowledge about speech production and perception that we hope to instil in our students. We agreed that it is important to get this message over to students, colleagues, supervisors, RCLST, and to ensure that our focus is not narrowly placed on transcription. In turn, there is a need for those providing teaching in this area to design modules and assessment procedures, and to develop thresholds for progress and graduation which reflect this broader view of practical phonetics teaching.