A Course in Phonetics (with CD-ROM) 6th Edition

This is the book my linguistics professor assigned for my Phonetics and Phonology class for my TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) M.A. program. Peter Ladefoged and Keith Johnson are important authors in Phonetics. The preface says that this is the sixth edition and "Through five editions, this book has been an almost ideal tool for teaching phonetics." This is the first publication after Ladefoged's death, and it comes with a CD-ROM. The CD-ROM does not work as well as it should. Instead of popping up as its own program, it plays through Windows Media Player. It's definitely a technical book with lots of charts and graphs and terminology. If you are interested in Phonetics, then it's worth the read, but it is a challenging field for the layman.

The book itself is one that comes from research forming empirical data on phonetics. Any time you can learn from a text written by pioneers in the field, you are going to be strengthening your foundation of book knowledge. This book is from everyone studying in the field of Speech-Language, Audiology, or Linguistics.

The textbook was easy to understand and the glossary was helpful. The CD was a little harder to use but, that might have just been my fault (I'm not great with tech). My only regret is that I only rented and instead of buying it.

The title is very misleading and inaccurate. The title clearly states “with CD-ROM” but if you look at the fine print you will see that they then back track on this promise. Don’t make a claim like this in the title if many of these do no contain the CD.. mine did not contain the CD (obviously) hence the negative review.

If you want to learn more about phonetics this is an excellent and authoritative work.The style of this book is such that it covers complex contents in a readable way.Welcome to Keith Johnson, the second author. His contributions blend seamlessly with the whole work.

This textbook is really helpful, mostly if it includes a CD. The CD goes along with the book quite well but the CD runs as a Webpage rather than an actual executable rom. Overall its good for Phonetics.

This is an expensive, shoddy product; the book has typos, it has omissions, and it has contradictions. For example, an exercise at the end of Chapter 3 refers to something in the chapter that's apparently been changed from the previous edition. Another example: the application called WaveSurfer for analyzing sound waves is supposed to be included on the accompanying CD. It's not (you can find it on the internet, but it's not on the disc). On page 14 it says that the velum is lowered to produce a nasal; on page 76 it states the opposite. In the first three chapters (as far as I've gotten so far) I've found about a dozen typos.I'm guessing that the coverage of the subject is okay, but I've found the explanations not that good. It's like someone who knows a lot about something but can't explain it to you. It might be a good reference text in a classroom with an instructor, but I'm trying to learn this on my own, and it's not very good for that.

The exercises at the end of the chapters are so hard. The book has some good information, but it needs more to be able to answer the questions at the end of each chapter.