Phonetic Coding & Sound Discrimination Flashcards

In the MLAT phonetic script, the symbol 'ð' represents which English sound?

Answer: The 'th' in 'this'

The symbol 'ð' (eth) represents the voiced 'th' sound as heard in 'this,' 'that,' and 'them.'

Which pair of English words illustrates a minimal pair based solely on vowel length?

Answer: ship / sheep

Ship /ɪ/ and sheep /iː/ differ only in vowel length and tenseness, making them a classic minimal pair for vowel discrimination.

A learner consistently confuses /r/ and /l/ sounds when learning English. This difficulty most likely reflects a deficit in which MLAT subskill?

Answer: Phonetic coding ability

Phonetic coding ability is the capacity to identify, encode, and remember foreign sounds, and difficulty distinguishing /r/ from /l/ directly tests this skill.

If a spoken syllable has a high pitch that falls sharply, which suprasegmental feature is being described?

Answer: Tone

Tone refers to the use of pitch variation at the syllable level to distinguish meaning, as found in tonal languages like Mandarin.

In MLAT-style phonetic tasks, a written nonsense word is read aloud and then presented again later. This tests the learner's ability to:

Answer: Associate sounds with written symbols

The task measures the ability to encode an unfamiliar sound sequence into a written symbol system and recognize it again — core phonetic coding.

Which of the following is an example of a voiced consonant?

Answer: /v/

The sound /v/ is voiced because the vocal cords vibrate during its production, unlike its voiceless counterpart /f/.

When two words differ by only one phoneme and that change alters meaning (e.g., 'pan' vs. 'ban'), these words are called:

Answer: Minimal pairs

Minimal pairs are word pairs that differ by exactly one phoneme, demonstrating that the contrasting sounds are functionally distinct in that language.