120 hr. TEFL Course Module 6-Listening (Pt.3 Systematic v. Impressionistic)

Module 6: Listening

6.1.2    Phonetic transcription

Now that you have seen what phonetic transcription can look like, let’s take a look at the different types of phonetic transcription. Some will be helpful to your students and some will not.

Systematic vs. impressionistic transcription 

As an expert in phonetic symbols, if you were to listen to speech in another language, you would generally be able to chart it out based on English phonetic symbols. Obviously, this is not the best way to handle this since phonetic symbols are going to be different in every language, but you are going to use the knowledge you have. A phonetics expert would instead use a more universal group of phonetic symbols to transcribe the speech. This is called impressionistic transcription because although this is still not perfect the transcriber is charting out the sounds as best as he or she can without knowing the language. Later, experts can take this impressionistic transcription and revise and modify it to more accurately represent the speech. It would be much more difficult if the speech were charted out using more specific English phonetic symbols.

Once experts are able to analyze the speech and get a sense for the sounds of the particular language they are listening to, they are able to revise the transcription into a much more accurate transcription. This is called a systematic transcription or a transcription that more accurately reflects the phonetic structure of the language it is breaking down.

As you may have already determined, a systematic transcription is more helpful for your students, although it could be helpful to have them use their native language to analyze the sounds in an English recording. However, you are more typically going to ask them to create phonetic transcriptions that more accurately reflect the phonetic structure of the English language to ensure they are learning.