Speech Communication OpenCourseWare: A Free Online MIT Graduate Study Course on Sound Patterns

Published Jan 02, 2009

RSS Feed

Graduate students can learn about sound patterns with the Speech Communication OpenCourseWare at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In this free online course, graduate students will learn about phonetic properties and sound structures with an overview examination of the Speech Chain, the physiology and physics of speaking and listening. The Speech Communication OpenCourseWare is offered through MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and is recommended for graduate students pursuing a Ph.D. in Linguistics.

Speech Communication: Course Specifics

Degree Level Free Audio Video Downloads
Graduate Yes No No Yes

Lectures/Notes Study Materials Tests/Quizzes
Yes Yes No

Speech Communication: Course Description

The 'Speech Communication' OpenCourseWare shows students the organizational properties of speech and sound patterns. The free online course is taught by MIT Professor Kenneth Stevens. Professor Stevens uses examples and assignments from his book, Acoustic Phonetics, that explains his theory of speech-sound generation. The course follows an extensive overview of the four levels of the Speech Chain: the linguistic, physiological, acoustic and auditory stages. The overview also includes examples of a spectrogram and the speech waveform. Professor Stevens discussed lecture topics that include the physiological body processes that produce speech, children's development of speech ability, speech impairments and speech disorders, machine-created speech, machine speech recognition and the anatomical sources of specific linguistic sounds. The 'Speech Communication' OpenCourseWare is recommended for graduate-level Linguistics majors and students in related fields.

This free online course includes lecture note handouts, assignments and study materials, such as lab handouts. If you're interested in taking this free course, visit the speech communication course page.

Featured School Choices: