Listening Cherry 02 – ‘and then they’
 | Listening Cherries is a blog where I talk about listening issues - from classroom activities to academic research. Listening Cherry no. 2 features a productive disagreement about a transcription. |
A colleague visited me a short while ago, and we discussed a TED talk that I was working on. The TED talk is by Tom Wujec. I was excited (as I always am) about certain soundshapes that had occurred in his talk.
We listened to this extract (at 1:34 in the recording) in which I was interested in the three underlined words.
We disagreed on whether the word then had occurred. So the issue was, did Tom Wujec say 01 or 02 below?
[The underlined words are in a ‘squeeze zone’ – cf. Phonology for Listening, chapters 2 & 18, and incidentally – assuming that the word then does occur – this speech unit goes at 4.3 syllables per second, with the first three non-prominent syllables going at 9.2 sps and the two prominences going at 2.4 sps]
Here is the speech unit at half speed
Prior to hearing my colleague’s comments, I myself had had no doubts about the transcription – for me, Tom had said the three words and then they – and the TED transcript agreed with me. But I now have my doubts. And if I listen to the non-prominent section of this speech unit on its own, like this (you will hear it at both full and half speed), I hear something different:
Now I believe I hear |ən.eɪ| ‘ann-ey’ and not |ən.n̩.eɪ| ‘ann.en.ey’. So which is right? The three word version with then or the two-word version without then? For me, it is the three syllable version – because I assign priority to what I hear in the full speech unit.
But what I think is in some sense irrelevant, because this type of disagreement/uncertainty presents a wonderful learning/teaching opportunity. And it is essential not to insist that one transcription is right and that the other is wrong.
It is in the nature of spontaneous speech to be indeterminate – for stretches of the stream of speech to feature an in-between-y-ness, not definitely one thing or another. This is a point to be made that can be made through direct explanation in the classroom (e.g. ‘In the jungle, words resemble other words, and it is often difficult to determine with certainty which words have occurred’)
But for the purposes of teaching listening it is more important to get students to relish and savour the different ways in which these words might be said. For example, they can – following the instructions in the table below – savour the different versions of and then they by saying them aloud, as you (the teacher) cue the whole class. Then get them to work in pairs: student A prompts student B by selecting a row by saying ‘Row 1’, student B responds by saying and then they as appropriate for the row. After a minute, students change roles.
| 1 | Say the words slowly and clearly, with slight pauses between them | AND THEN THEY |
| 2 | Join the words together, drop the 'd' of 'and' | AN THEN THEY |
| 3 | Speed up slightly, drop the 'th' of 'then' | AN EN THEY |
| 4 | Speed up some more, and drop the 'th' of 'they' | AN EN EY |
| 5 | Speed up even further, speak more quietly and drop the 'a' of 'and' | N EN EY |
| 6 | At a fast speed, mumble the three syllables, dropping the 'e' of 'en' | N N EY |
For more examples of and then they in TED talks, go here.
