A Comparison of Phonetics Courses between before and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This paper describes a challenge in an elective course of English Phonetics which has been conducted for eight years at a womenʼs university in Japan. Studentsʼ strengths and weaknesses in learning phonetics will be discussed, particularly focusing on phonemes such as vowels and consonants in listening to minimal pairs and discriminating phonetic symbols in reading. Nowadays people wear masks including the teacher and students. Teaching strategies should be paid attention to and renewed with some ingenious devices. It is possible to teach face-to-face with CALL (computer-assisted language learning) on campus in combination with some online tools which were developed as an outcome of remote teaching. Consequently, there must be tendencies before and after the pandemic. Some previous studies including Kido (2019) could be compared with this investigation. Similarities and differences between before and after the pandemic will be discovered. This paper would be profitable as research on actual conditions and an aid to improve studentsʼ proficiency for the future.