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Brandon Cooper
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Mara Haslam
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Dear readers,
With this most recent edition of As We Speak, we ring in a new year (one in which our AI overlords have launched the first offensive in replacing us all with Large Language Models), and we look ahead to the countless conversations at our upcoming convention that will, no doubt, be centered on the implications of the impending takeover of GenerativeAI. What will not change, however, is that we will continue to look for ways to bring added value to the learning experiences that we design. And it is with this in mind, that we are pleased to present our readership with the latest installment of our newsletter - affectionately known around these parts as the prosody issue.
In this edition, we give you the first of a two-part piece by John Levis regarding the basics of teaching intonation. Part one of John’s offering deals with the essential role that prominence plays in intelligible speech and offers some tips about how teachers can target this feature of prosody.
Those who are interested in going deep down the prosody rabbit hole will appreciate Nigel Ward’s brief overview of the recently released graduate-level tutorial on speech prosody that he produced with Gina-Anne Levow. In his write-up, Ward focuses readers’ attention on key lectures that are likely to be of interest to language educators.
Added to these, this issue also features two lesson plan descriptions from first-time contributors. William Kirchmann and Leland Rieks bring us lessons on phonetic linking in connected speech - a consequence (if not also a facilitator) of English prosodic output. And Ava Deitrich, Sydney Coloff, and Myriam Carrillo share a unit plan targeting lexical stress and prominence through an exploration of cultural holidays.
We thank these authors for their wonderful contributions, and invite you to join them by submitting a paper for publication in the next edition of As We Speak. Your contributions can take the form of a traditional article, book or technology review (ahem, review of ChatGPT as an instructional tool, ahem), lesson or unit plan, etc. We ask that these submissions be submitted by May 15 for consideration in a newsletter that we expect to publish in July.
We also extend thanks to the SPLIS leadership team for soliciting submissions and to Camila Espinosa for her editorial assistance.
Hoping to see you all in Portland!
With warmest regards,
Mara and Brandon
(GPTZero Average Perplexity Score: 174.500; Burstiness Score: 218.005)
Brandon Cooper is Assistant Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Texas A&M University. His team has worked to create interventions designed to improve cross-linguistic interaction, digital tools for second language pronunciation, and, most recently, an algorithm designed to effortlessly match hundreds of students for weekly, casual conversation.
Mara Haslam works as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Language Education at Stockholm University, Sweden. Mara received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Utah in 2011. Her research interests include second language phonology, including using laboratory methods to identify priorities for pronunciation teaching. | 
