Lycée

In France, secondary education is divided into two schools:
- the collège (IPA: ) (somewhat comparable to U.S. junior high school) for the first four years directly following primary school;
- the lycée (IPA: ) (comparable to a U.S. high school) for the next three years. The completion of secondary studies leads to the baccalauréat (IPA: ) (baccalaureate, also coloquially known as bac). The baccalauréat can lead to higher education studies or directly to professional life.

Organization & Progress

French students usually spend seven years in French secondary schools, from age 11 to age 18. Both schools are usually in different buildings. A French school year starts in early-September and ends in mid-June. Holidays are scheduled by the Ministry of Education. The country is divided into three zones (A through C) to prevent holidayers from crowding in major tourist spots such as the Mediterranean coastline and ski resorts. For example, Paris and Bordeaux are in zone C while Lyon is in zone A and Marseille in zone B. Contrary to Anglo-Saxon systems that use increasing numerical grade names, the French secondary school system uses decreasing numerical grade names, which can lead anglophones to confusion. Therefore, grades go from sixième (the first year of collège) to terminale (the final year of lycée). Another difference is the way students are called. In the French language the word for student (étudiant) is usually reserved for university-level persons. In collège and lycée therefore students are referred to as élèves, or in an English translation pupils. The curricula in collège and lycée (referred to as le programme officiel) are standardized in all French public institutions. Changes to the programme are made year after year by the French Ministry of Education and are published in the Ministry's Bulletin Officiel de l'Éducation Nationale (BO), the official reference for educators.

Collège

The collège is the first level of secondary education in the French educational system. It is very different and should therefore not be mistaken for or compared with Anglo-Saxon colleges. A student attending collège is termed collégien or collégienne, in the feminine form. Teachers at the collège and lycée level are called professeur -- note there is no official feminine form in France. Entry in sixième occurs directly after the last year of primary school, called cours moyen deuxième année (or CM2). There is no entry exam into collège but administrators have established a comprehensive test for students starting sixième. The purpose of the examination is to evaluate the student's level coming out of primary school.

Curriculum

The curriculum is detailed in the table to the right. Along with 3 to 4 hours of physical education every week, a typical week clocks in at about 26 school hours. French language and literature takes the most allocated time with 4 to 5 hours per week, followed by mathematics with 4 hours/week. The other subjects use between 1 and 3.5 hours every week. The curriculum is devised by the French Ministry of National Education and applies for all public collèges in France and also for AEFE-dependent institutions. Académies and individual schools have very little lattitude in terms of curriculum customisation. Teachers make their syllabi following these precise government regulations and choose textbooks accordingly. Every major French editing house has an education-oriented branch. [http://www.cndp.fr/secondaire/ Find official program references on the Centre national de documentation pédagogique website]

Process & Purpose

Each subject is usually taught by a different teacher and most professeurs teach different grade levels. Collège students sit with the same group of students throughout the year and in every subject (except in optional classes such as foreign languages, where students from several groups are often mixed). Students are therefore divided into as many groups (termed classe) as necessary in each grade. Class size varies from school to school but is usually between 20 and 35 students. Each classe has a head teacher (professeur principal) who acts as the link between the faculty, the administration and the students. Early in the school year, the students elect two student representatives (délégués) and two substitutes (suppléants) from their own classe. Their role is to represent the students at class council and to act as a link between the students and the head teacher. Teachers, administrators and the student representatives of each grade meet three times a year in a class council (conseil de classe). In these meetings are discussed the level of each student individually and of the class as a whole as well as matters of logistics and discipline inherent to the group of students. Ultimately, the role of the collège is to prepare students for the advanced subjects of the lycée. At the end of troisième, students sit for le diplôme national du Brevet, an end-of-collège exam. Contrary to popular belief, the brevet is not required to enter the lycée nor does its passing guarantee a pupil will go on to the higher-level school. During the last conseil de classe of the year (occurring normally in June) the teachers and administrators decide whether a student can move on to the following grade. In their decision, they evaluate the student's skills, participation and behaviour. Three outcomes are possible: # the student can move on to the next grade; # he/she can be required to start the grade over (redoublement); # he/she can, in very specific cases, be offered to skip one grade and move directly two grades up. A student asked to repeat a grade can go into an appeal process where the decision may be reviewed. The appeals council's decision is final.

Carte scolaire

appeal] French parents are not free to choose the public school that they their children will attend; these, unless they have special needs, will have to attend the school allocated to them by the school map (carte scolaire). Reasons for going to other public schools include taking an elective (say, some rare foreign language) that is not available in the local school. Many parents consider their allocated school inadequate for a variety of reasons, most notably the "bad frequentation" of the school. This is especially the case in poorer neighbourhoods with immigrant populations. In a given city, there exists typically some "better" highschools that parents would prefer to use (typically built in the 19th century and located in the city center). The two main methods used in such circumstances are:
- paying for partly subsidized private schooling;
- having the child choose an elective (rare foreign language, ancient Greek, etc.) only available in one of the "better" schools. A similar trick can be used in case there are "better" classes inside a given schools: for the sake of ease of organization, students with certain electives will be grouped into some special classes, which may be attractive. Such elective choices typically include German as a first foreign language, and ancient Greek.

Lycée

The lycée is the second and last level of secondary education in the French educational system. Graduating from a lycée leads to the baccalauréat degree. The lycée can be compared to an Anglo-Saxon high school. One major difference between the two systems is the degree of freedom students have in choosing their courses. While in the U.S. or in Canada, students can virtually select courses à la carte, French students have to follow a certain number of core courses, with some additional electives. Lycées are divided between lycée général, which leads towards more than two years of post-baccalaureate studies, the lycée technologique, which leads towards short studies, and lycée professionel, which leads directly towards professional life. General and technological streams are given at 'standard' lycées while professional streams are provided at separate professional lycées. Famous lycées in Paris include: Lycée Henri IV and Lycée Louis-le-Grand.

Lycée général & technologique

In France, the lycée général is the usual stepping stone to university degrees. Seconde is a link-year during which students finalize their choice of stream (called a série) for the final two years. During seconde, all students have mostly the same courses even though they have different skills and interests. The year is therefore usually deemed easier than première and terminale.

General Streams

After seconde, most French students chose a general stream. In all streams some subjects have more hours in the student's timetable than others. The baccalauréat exam is different for all three séries and its subjects are weighed according to the student's stream. According to 2003-2004 [ftp://trf.education.gouv.fr/pub/edutel/dpd/rers2004/chap4_12.pdf official statistics], 33% of students chose série S, 19% série ES while 11% picked série L. In all streams, students have philosophy courses in terminale while French language classes end in première, except in série L where they become French literature classes. There is also a required option for further specialization in all séries, although it is restricted to the chosen stream. For example, a student in série S can choose to specialize in mathematics but not in philosophy. Specialization adds a two-hour, separate class every week in the chosen discipline; it also increases the weight of said subject at the baccalauréat. The syllabus in the specialization class has no relation with the material learned in the common class. Specialization is an important step when choosing a post-secondary career or subject at university and especially for admission to a classe préparatoire (CPGE).

Technological Streams

The lycée includes eight other streams, called séries technologiques:
- sciences et technologies tertiaires (Service Sciences and Technologies, STT)
- sciences et technologies industrielles (Industrial Science and Technolgies, STI)
- sciences et technologies de laboratoire (Laboratory Science and Technologies, STL)
- sciences médico-sociales (Health and Social Sciences, SMS)
- sciences et technologies du produit agroalimentaire (Food Science and Technologies, STPA)
- sciences et technologies de l'agronomie et de l'environnement (Agronomy and Environment Science and Technologies, STAE)
- techniques de la musique et de la danse (Music and Dance Techniques, TMD)
- hôtellerie The STPA stream is only available in lycées agricoles, specialty schools for agricultural sciences.

Lycée professionel

The Lycée Professionnel leads to several different professional diplomas in all fields. The students enrolled here are not planning on getting a higher education. It is based on vocational training and internships in companies and with craftsmen. It is a good track for those students more interested in a 'hands on' approach than in academic learning. The first diploma, the CAP is prepared duraing 2 years. It usually prepares a student for a very specific job : carpentar, childcare provider, seamstress... It is the easiest diploma to obtain, hence the weakest students follow this track. The second diploma, the BEP is prepared during 3 years after the college. It leads to a professional qualification in a specific field, such as 'restaurant industry', 'metallurgy',tec. It is more difficult than a CAP. Some students who have a CAP choose to continue on with a BEP. The final diploma is the Baccalaureat Professionnel. It is the highest professional qualification available. It can be prepared during 3 years after the college, but most students get a BEP first and then continue to a Bac Professionnel. The main problem is while there are many tracks to choose from some are more popular than others. There is a selection process at the entrance and the weakest students often are assigned to a track that they did not choose.

French Secondary Education Outside France

Main article: Agence pour l'Enseignement Français à l'Etranger

External links

- [http://www.education.gouv.fr/index.php French Ministry of Education (in French)]
- [http://www.education.gouv.fr/bo/default.htm Bulletin Officiel (in French)] Category:Education in France Category:Education in France France

International Phonetic Alphabet

: "IPA" redirects here. For other uses, see IPA (disambiguation). The NATO phonetic alphabet has also informally been called the International Phonetic Alphabet. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. It is intended as a notational standard for the phonemic and phonetic representation of all spoken languages. For a treatment of the English language using the IPA, see International Phonetic Alphabet for English, for a brief chart, see IPA chart for English.
History

Description
The general principle of the IPA is to provide a separate symbol for each speech segment, avoiding letter combinations (digraphs) such as sh and th in English orthography, and avoiding ambiguity such as that of c in English.
The principle of formation
The IPA is what MacMahon (1996) has termed a "selective" phonetic alphabet. It aims to provide a separate symbol for every contrastive (that is, phonemic) sound occurring in human language. For instance, a flap and a tap are two different articulations, but since no language has (yet) been found to make a phonemic distinction between them, the IPA does not provide them with dedicated symbols. Instead, it provides a single symbol, , that covers both. For non-contrastive (that is, phonetic or subphonemic) details of these sounds, the IPA relies on diacritics, which are optional. Thus there is a certain level of flexibility in representing a language with the IPA.
The principles behind the used symbols
The letters chosen for the IPA are generally drawn from the Latin and Greek alphabets, or are modifications of Latin or Greek letters. There are also a few letters derived from Latin punctuation, such as the glottal stop (originally an apostrophe, but later given the form of a "gelded" question mark to have the visual impact of the other consonants), and one, , although Latin in form, was inspired by Arabic ﻉ. In contrast, the old Latin-derived symbols for the clicks have been abandoned in favor of the iconic Khoisanist symbols, such as . The sound-values of the consonants from the Latin alphabet correspond to usage in French and Italian, which are close to those of most other European languages as well: , , , (hard) , , , , , (unvoiced) , , , . English values are used for , , and , The vowels from the Latin alphabet (, , , , ) correspond to the vowels of Spanish and are similar to Italian. is like the vowel in piece, like rule, etc. The other symbols from the Latin alphabet (, , , , , and ) correspond to sounds these letters represent in other languages. has the Germanic value, English y in yoke. has the Scandinavian and Old English value (Finnish y, German y or ü, French u, Dutch u). Letters that share a particular modification sometimes correspond to a similar type of sound. For example, all the retroflex consonants have the same symbol as the equivalent alveolar consonant, with the addition of a rightward pointing hook at the bottom. Although there is some correspondence between modified letters, generally the IPA does not have a systematic "featural" relationship between graphic shape and articulation. For instance, there is not a consistent relationship between lowercase letters and their small capital counterparts, nor are all labial consonants linked through a common character design. Diacritic marks can be combined with IPA letters to transcribe modified phonetic values or secondary articulations. There are also special symbols for suprasegmental features such as stress and tone.
Types of transcriptions
The International Phonetic Association recommends that a phonetic transcription should be enclosed in square brackets ("[ ]"). A transcription that specifically denotes only phonological contrasts may be enclosed in slashes ("/ /") instead. If one is in doubt, it is best to use brackets, for by setting off a transcription with slashes one makes a theoretical claim that every symbol within is phonemically contrastive for the language being transcribed. Phonetic transcriptions try to objectively capture the actual pronunciation of a word, whereas phonemic transcriptions are model dependent. For example, Noam Chomsky transcribed the English word night phonemically as /nixt/. In his model, the phoneme /x/ is often silent, but shows its presence by “lengthening” the preceding vowel. The preceding vowel in this case is the phoneme /i/, which is pronounced [aj] when long. So phonemic /nixt/ is equivalent to phonetic [najt], but only if you share Chomsky's belief that historical sounds such as the gh in night may remain in a word long after they have ceased to be pronounced. For phonetic transcriptions, there is flexibility in how closely sounds may be transcribed. A transcription that gives only a basic idea of the sounds of a language in the broadest terms is called a "broad transcription"; in some cases this may be equivalent to a phonemic transcription (only without any theoretical claims). A close transcription, indicating precise details of the sounds, is called a "narrow transcription". These are not binary choices, but the ends of a continuum, with many possibilities in between. All are enclosed in brackets. For example, in some dialects the English word pretzel in a narrow transcription would be , which notes several phonetic features that may not be evident even to a native speaker. An example of a broader transcription is , which only indicates some of the easier to hear features. A yet broader transcription would be . Here every symbol represents an unambiguous speech sound, but without making any claims as to their status in the language. There are also several possibilities in how to transcribe this word phonemically, but here the differences are not of precision, but of analysis. For example, pretzel could be or . The special symbol for English r is not used, for it is not meaningful to distinguish it from a rolled r. The differences in the letter e reflect claims as to what the essential difference is between the vowels of pretzel and pray; there are half a dozen ideas in the literature as to what this may be. The second transcription claims that there are two vowels in the word, even if they can't both be heard, while the first claims there is only one. Occasionally a transcription will be enclosed in pipes ("| |"). This goes beyond phonology into morphological analysis. For example, the words pets and beds could be transcribed phonetically as and (in a fairly narrow transcription), and phonemically as and . Because /s/ and /z/ are separate phonemes in English (unlike Spanish, for example), they receive separate symbols in the phonemic analysis. However, you probably recognize that underneath this, they represent the same plural ending. This can be indicated with the pipe notation. If you believe the plural ending is essentially an s, as English spelling would suggest, the words can be transcribed and . If, as most linguists would probably suggest, it is essentially a z, these would be and . To avoid confusion with IPA symbols, it may be desirable to specify when native orthography is being used, so that, for example, the English word jet is not read as "yet". This is done with angle brackets or chevrons: . It is also common to italicize such words, but the chevrons indicate specifically that they are in the original language's orthography, and not in English transliteration.
Consonants (pulmonic)

Single articulation
Closeup of the main pulmonic consonant section of the IPA chart The pulmonic consonant table, which includes most consonants, is arranged in rows that designate manner of articulation and columns that designate place of articulation. The main chart only includes consonants with a single place of articulation. Notes:
- Asterisks (
- ) mark reported sounds that do not (yet) have official IPA symbols. See the articles for ad hoc symbols found in the literature.
- Daggers (†) mark IPA symbols that do not yet have official Unicode support. Since May 2005, this is the case of the labiodental flap, symbolized by a right-hook v: labiodental flap ([http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/N2945.pdf Proposal to add this symbol to Unicode])
- In rows where some symbols appear in pairs (the obstruents), the symbol to the right represents a voiced consonant (except for breathy-voiced ). However, cannot be voiced. In the other rows (the sonorants), the single symbol represents a voiced consonant.
- Although there is a single symbol for the coronal places of articulation for all consonants but fricatives, when dealing with a particular language, the symbols are treated as specifically alveolar, post-alveolar, etc., as appropriate for that language.
- Shaded areas indicate articulations judged to be impossible.
- The symbols represent either voiced fricatives or approximants.
- It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives , , and .
- The labiodental nasal is not known to exist as a phoneme in any language.
Coarticulation
Closeup of the co-articulated consonant section of the IPA chart
Notes:
- is described as a "simultaneous and ". However, this analysis is disputed. See the article for discussion.
- To be complete, this chart should also include the semi-palatalized postalveolar (palato-alveolar) fricatives and .
- The miscellaneous portion of the chart, as published by the IPA, includes additional symbols that would have been included in the main consonant chart were it not for difficulties in typesetting on a printed page. In this article, which does not suffer from such problems, they have been included in the main chart above.
Consonants (non-pulmonic)
Closeup of the non-pulmonic consonant section of the IPA chart Notes:
- All clicks are doubly articulated and require two symbols: a velar or uvular stop, plus a symbol for the release: , etc. When the dorsal articulation is omitted, a may usually be assumed.
- Symbols for the voiceless implosives are no longer supported by the IPA. Instead, the voiced equivalent is used with a voiceless diacritic: , etc.
- Although not confirmed from any language, and therefore not "explicitly recognized" by the IPA, a retroflex implosive, , is supported in the Unicode Phonetic Extensions Supplement, added in version 4.1 of the Unicode Standard, or can be created as a composite .
- The ejective symbol is often seen for glottalized but pulmonic sonorants, such as , but these are more properly transcribed as creaky ().
Vowels
Closeup of the vowel chart of the IPA Notes:
- Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel, as does (at least prototypically). All others are unrounded.
- is not confirmed as a distinct phoneme in any language.
- is officially a front vowel, but there is little distinction between front and central open vowels, and is frequently used for an open central vowel.
Affricates and double articulation
Affricates and doubly articulated stops are represented by two symbols joined by a tie bar, either above or below the symbols. The six commonest affricates are optionally represented by ligatures, though this is no longer official IPA usage, due to the great number of ligatures that would be required to represent all affricates this way. A third affricate transcription sometimes seen uses the superscript notation for a consonant release, for example for , paralleling ~ . The symbols for the palatal plosives, are often used as a convenience for or similar affricates, even in official IPA publications, so they must be interpreted with care. Image of the six common affricate ligatures and their official IPA equivalents Note:
- If your browser uses Arial Unicode MS to display IPA characters, the following incorrectly formed sequences may look better due to a bug in that font: .
Extended IPA
The Extended IPA was designed for disordered speech. However, some of the symbols (especially diacritics, below) are occasionally used for transcribing normal speech as well. View a pdf file [http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ExtIPAChart97.pdf here]. The last symbol may be used with the alveolar click for , a combined alveolar and sublaminal click or "cluck-click".
Suprasegmentals
Closeup of the suprasegmental section of the IPA chart
Intonation

Tone
IPA allows for the use of either tone diacritics or tone letters to indicate tones. Note:
- With regard to tone diacritics, Unicode encodes marks for some contour tones, but not all. In Unicode version 4.1, only hacek (rising) and circumflex (falling) diacritics were encoded. Subsequent versions may also include six additional diacritics for contour tones, such as the macron-acute and the grave-acute-grave ligatures. (See an image here.) Note that contour tone diacritics are not encoded as sequences of level tone diacritics in Unicode.
- With regard to tone letters, Unicode does not have separate encodings for contour tones. Instead, sequences of level tone letters are used, with proper display dependent on the font, usually by means of OpenType font rendition: or . (These are probably not displaying correctly in your browser. See the image for a sample of how they should appear.) Since few fonts support combination tone letters (see the external links for one that is free), a common solution is to use the old system of superscript numerals from '1' to '5', for example [e⁵³, e³¹²]. However, this depends on local linguistic tradition, with '5' generally being high and '1' being low for Asian languages, but '1' being high and '5' low for African languages. An old IPA convention sometimes still seen is to use sub-diacritics for low contour tones: for low-falling and low-rising.
- The upstep and downstep modifiers are superscript arrows. Unicode version 4.1 does not encode these, though subsequent versions will. The arrows for upstep and downstep should not be confused with the full-height arrows, which are used to indicate airflow direction.
Diacritics
Closeup of the diacritic section of the IPA chart
Sub-diacritics may be placed above a symbol with a descender, i.e. . The dotless i, <ı>, is used when the dot would interfere with the diacritic. Other IPA symbols may appear as diacritics to represent phonetic detail: (fricative release), (breathy voice), (glottal onset), (epenthetic schwa), o (diphthongization). Notes: #Some linguists restrict this breathy-voice diacritic to sonorants, and transcribe obstruents as . #With aspirated voiced consonants, the aspiration is also voiced. Many linguists prefer one of the diacritics dedicated to breathy voice. The state of the glottis can be finely transcribed with diacritics. A series of alveolar plosives ranging from an open to a closed glottis phonation are:
Extended IPA diacritics
The letters and diacritics of the ExtIPA The ExtIPA has widened the use of some of the regular IPA diacritics, such as for pre-aspiration, or for a linguolabial sibilant, as well as adding some new ones. Some of the ExtIPA diacritics can be used for non-disordered speech as well, for example for the unusual airstream mechanisms of Damin. One modification is the use of subscript parentheses around the phonation diacritics to indicate partial phonation; a single parenthesis at the left or right of the voicing indicates that it is partially phonated at the beginning or end of the segment. For example, is a partially voiced [s], shows partial initial voicing, and partial final voicing; also is a partially devoiced [z], shows partial initial devoicing, and partial final devoicing. These conventions may be convenient for representing various voice onset times. Phonation diacritics may also be prefixed or suffixed rather than placed directly under the segment to represent relative timing. For instance, is a pre-voiced [z], a post-voiced [z], and is an [a] with a creaky offglide. Other ExtIPA diacritics are, In addition to these symbols, a subscript < or > indicates that an articulation is laterally offset to the left or right, and a double exclamation mark indicates 'ventricular' phonation, though it is not clear how this differs from 'harsh' phonation.
Prosodic notation
The ExtIPA also makes use of musical notation for the tempo and dynamics of connected speech. These are subscripted on the insides of a notation that indicates that they are comments on the prosody. Pauses are indicated with periods or numbers inside parentheses.
Obsolete and nonstandard symbols

How to transcribe sounds that don't have symbols in the IPA charts
The remaining blank cells on the IPA chart can be filled without too much difficulty if the need arises. Some ad hoc symbols have appeared in the literature, for example for the lateral flaps and voiceless lateral fricatives, the epiglottal trill, and the labiodental plosives. Diacritics can supply much of the remainder, which would indeed be appropriate if the sounds were allophones. For example, the Spanish bilabial approximant is commonly written as a lowered fricative, . Similarly, voiced lateral fricatives would be written as raised lateral approximants, . A few languages such as Banda have a bilabial flap as the preferred allophone of what is elsewhere a labiodental flap. It has been suggested that this be written with the labiodental flap symbol and the advanced diacritic, . Similarly, a labiodental trill would be written (bilabial trill and the dental sign). Palatal and uvular taps, if they exist, and the epiglottal tap could be written as extra-short plosives, . A retroflex trill can be written as a retracted , just as retroflex fricatives sometimes are. The remaining consonants, the uvular laterals and the palatal trill, while not strictly impossible, are very difficult to pronounce and are unlikely to occur even as allophones in the world's languages. The vowels are similary manageable by using diacritics for raising, lowering, fronting, backing, centering, and mid-centering. For example, the unrounded equivalent of can be transcribed as mid-centered , and the rounded equivalent of [æ] as raised . True mid vowels are lowered , while centered are near-close and open central vowels, respectively. The vowels that aren't representable in this scheme are the compressed vowels, which would require a dedicated diacritic.
Names of the symbols
It is often desirable to distinguish an IPA symbol from the sound it is intended to represent, since there is not a one-to-one correspondance between symbol and sound in broad transcription. The symbol's names and phonetic descriptions are described in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. The symbols also have nonce names in the Unicode standard. In some cases, the Unicode names and the IPA names do not agree. For example, IPA calls "epsilon", but Unicode calls it "small letter open E".
The letters
The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are used for unmodified symbols. In Unicode, some of the symbols of Greek origin have Latin forms for use in IPA; the others use the symbols from the Greek section. Examples: Note #The Latin "upsilon" is frequently called "horseshoe u" in order to distinguish it from the Greek upsilon. Historically, it derives from a Latin small capital U. The IPA standard includes some small capital letters, such as , although it is common to refer to these symbols as simply "capital" or "cap" letters, because the IPA standard does not include any full-size capital letters. A few letters have the forms of cursive or script letters. Examples: Note #The "looptail G" 10 px is not strictly an IPA character, but is an acceptable alternative. #In form and origin, but not in name, this is the Greek upsilon. Ligatures are called precisely that, although some have alternate names. Examples: Many letters are turned, or rotated 180 degrees. Examples: The symbol can be described as a turned cee, but it is almost always referred to as open o, which described both its articulation and its shape. The symbol is often also called "caret" or "wedge" for it similarity to that diacritic. A few letters are reversed (flipped on a vertical axis): reversed E, reversed epsilon, reversed glottal stop [often called by its Arabic name, ayin]. One letter is inverted (flipped on a horizontal axis): inverted R. ( could also be called an inverted double-u, but turned double-u is more common.) When a horizontal stroke is added, it is called a bar: barred H, barred o, reversed barred glottal stop or barred ayin, barred dotless J or barred gelded J [apparently never 'turned F'], double-barred pipe, etc. One letter instead has a slash through it: slashed O. The implosives have hook tops: hook-top B, as does hook-top H. Such an extension at the bottom of a letter is called a tail. It may be specified as left or right depending on which direction it turns: right-tail N, right-tail turned R, left-tail N [note that has its own traditional name, engma], left-tail em, tail Z [or just retroflex Z], etc. When the tail loops over itself, it's called curly: curly-tail jay, curly-tail C. There are also a few unique modifications: belted L, closed reversed epsilon [there was once also a closed omega], right-leg turned M, turned long-leg R [there was once also a long-leg R], double pipe, and the obsolete stretched C. Several non-English letters have traditional names: C cedilla, eth (also spelled edh), engma, schwa, exclamation mark, pipe. Other symbols are unique to the IPA, and have developed their own quirky names: fish-hook R, ram's horns, bull's eye, esh [apparently never 'stretched ess'], ezh [sometimes also yogh], hook-top heng. The is usually called by the sound it represents, glottal stop. This is not normally a problem, because this symbol is seldom used to represent anything else. However, to specify the symbol itself, it is sometimes called a gelded question mark.
The diacritic marks
Diacritics with traditional names: : acute, macron, grave, circumflex, caron, wedge, or háček, diaeresis or umlaut, breve, (superscript) tilde, plus variants such as subscript tilde, superimposed tilde, etc. Non-traditional diacritics: : seagull, hook, over-cross, corner, bridge, inverted bridge, square, under-ring, over-ring, left half-ring, right half-ring, plus, under-bar, arch, subscript wedge, up tack, down tack, left tack, right tack, tie bar, under-dot, under-stroke. Diacritics are alternately named after their function: The bridge is also called the dental sign, the under-stroke the syllabicity sign, etc.
Comparison to other phonetic notation
The IPA is not the only phonetic transcription system in use. The other common Latin-based system is the Americanist phonetic notation, devised for representing American languages, but used by some US linguists as an alternate to the IPA. There are also sets of symbols specific to Slavic, Indic, Finno-Ugric, and Caucasian linguistics, as well as other regional specialies. The differences between these alphabets and IPA are relatively small, although often the special characters of the IPA are abandoned in favour of diacritics or digraphs. Other alphabets, such as Hangul, may have their own phonetic extensions. There also exist featural phonetic transcription systems, such as Alexander Bell's Visible Speech and its derivatives. There is an extended version of the IPA for disordered speech (extIPA), which has been included in this article, and another set of symbols used for voice quality (VoQS). There are also many personal or idiosyncratic extensions, such as Luciano Canepari's ^canIPA. Since the IPA uses symbols that are outside the ASCII character set, several systems have been developed that map the IPA symbols to ASCII characters. Two notable systems are Kirshenbaum and SAMPA (or X-SAMPA). These systems are often used in electronic media, although their usage has been declining with the development of computer technology, specifically because of spreading support for Unicode. See also: Unicode and HTML
See also

- International Phonetic Alphabet for English explains those IPA symbols used to represent the phonemes of English.
- IPA chart for English: simplifed version.
- TIPA provides IPA support for LaTeX.
- SAMPA, X-SAMPA and Kirshenbaum are other methods of mapping IPA designations into ASCII.
- List of phonetics topics
- Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA)
External links

- [http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html Official home page of the IPA]
Free IPA font downloads

- [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=DoulosSILfont Doulos SIL], a Times IPA font that supports tone letters, the new labiodental flap, and many non-standard phonetic symbols, but only in roman typeface.
- [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=Gentium Gentium], a highly legible international (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic) font in roman and italic typefaces that includes the IPA, but not yet tone letters or the new labiodental flap.
- [http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Test_IPA.html Test page] for installed fonts. Includes alternate variants and tone letters.
Keyboards

- [http://www.linguiste.org/phonetics/ipa/chart/keyboard/ Online keyboard]
- [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=ipa-sil_keyboard IPA-SIL keyboard layout for Mac OS X] for Unicode IPA input
- [http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Tipa WikiTeX] supports editing IPA sequences directly in Wiki articles.
Sound files

- [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index.html Peter Ladefoged's Course in Phonetics (with sound files)]
- [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/chapter1.html Pronounceable IPA chart]
- [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/contents.html An introduction to the sounds of languages]
- [http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/ipa-lab.htm IPA Lab] Chart with sound files at University of Victoria. (Works with QuickTime.)
- [http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html Flash version of IPA charts, with sound samples]
- [http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/ Another set of IPA sound samples]
Charts

- [http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.html IPA chart source]
- [http://www.linguiste.org/phonetics/ipa/chart/ IPA Chart] in Unicode and XHTML/CSS ----
- [http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPANumberChart96.pdf IPA number chart], at University of Victoria.
Unicode
Official Unicode PDF files:
- [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0250.pdf Unicode chart for main IPA letters]
- [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U02B0.pdf Unicode chart for IPA modifier letters]
- [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0300.pdf Unicode chart including IPA diacritics] ----
- [http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-unicode.htm International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode]
- [http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/ipachart.html Unicode-HTML codes for IPA symbols:] Tables of symbol names and HTML codes at PennState.
Personal extensions of the IPA

- [http://venus.unive.it/canipa/ ^canIPA] : Luciano Canepari's system (500 base symbols)
References

- Albright, Robert W. (1958). The International Phonetic Alphabet: Its background and development. International journal of American linguistics (Vol. 24, No. 1, Part 3); Indiana University research center in anthropology, folklore, and linguistics, publ. 7. Baltimore. (Doctoral dissertation, Standford University, 1953).
- Ball, Martin J.; Esling, John H.; & Dickson, B. Craig. (1995). The VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality. Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet, 25 (2), 71-80.
- Canepari, Luciano. (2005a). "A Handbook of Phonetics: ‹Natural› Phonetics." München: Lincom Europa, pp. 518. [https://ssl.kundenserver.de/s83009615.einsundeinsshop.de/sess/utn1541a7584d7471b/shopdata/0002_New+titles/product_details.shopscript ISBN 3-8958-480-3] (hb).
- Canepari, Luciano. (2005b) "A Handbook of Pronunciation: English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Esperanto." München: Lincom Europa, pp. 436. [https://ssl.kundenserver.de/s83009615.einsundeinsshop.de/sess/utn1541a7584d7471b/shopdata/0002_New+titles/product_details.shopscript ISBN 3-89586-481-1] (hb).
- Duckworth, M.; Allen, G.; Hardca

Primary school

Primary or elementary education consist of the first years of formal, structured education that occurs during childhood. In most countries, it is compulsory for children to receive primary education (though in many jurisdictions it is permissible for parents to provide it). Primary education generally begins when children are four to seven years of age. The division between primary and secondary education is somewhat arbitrary, but it generally occurs at about twelve years of age (adolescence); some educational systems have separate middle schools for that period. Primary and secondary education together are sometimes (in particular, in Canada and the United States) referred to as "K-12" education, (K is for kindergarten, 12 is for twelfth grade), while in the United Kingdom schools teaching primary education are simply referred to as Primary schools.

General information

Typically, primary education is provided in schools, where (in the absence of parental movement or other intervening factors) the child will stay, in steadily advancing classes, until they complete it and move on to secondary schooling. Children are usually placed in classes with one teacher who will be primarily responsible for their education and welfare for that year. This teacher may be assisted to varying degrees by specialist teachers in certain subject areas, often music or physical education. The continuity with a single teacher and the opportunity to build up a close relationship with the class is a notable feature of the primary education system. Over the past few decades, schools have been testing various arrangements which break from the one-teacher, one-class mold. Multi-age programs, where children in different grades (e.g. Kindergarten through second grade) share the same classroom and teachers, is one increasingly popular alternative to traditional elementary instruction. The major goals of primary education are achieving basic literacy and numeracy amongst all their students, as well as establishing foundations in science, geography, history and other social sciences. The relative priority of various areas, and the methods used to teach them, are an area of considerable political debate. Traditionally, various forms of corporal punishment have been an integral part of early education. Recently this practice has come under attack, and in many cases been outlawed, in Western countries at least.

Primary, Prep or Elementary schools

A school teaching primary education usually consists of the first seven years of school, that is, the years spent in school through the first to the 5th or 6th, as well as a preliminary year of school before the first year (or "grade" in US terminology):

Reception, Kindergarten, Prep or Primary

The preliminary year of school before the first year or (or grade in the US and Canada) has a number of different names in different regions:
- In the United Kingdom and Australia as Reception
- In the United States and Germany as kindergarten - The term originated from Germany, the "kinder" being German for "children" and "garten" being "garden"
- In Victoria, Australia as Prep
- In Nova Scotia, Canada as Primary. Originally, in the 19th century, it was studied after primary school.

The rest

Primary education schools are referred to by a number of different names in different regions:
- In the United Kingdom as Primary school
- In the United States, Elementary school or sometimes Grammar school
- In Canada, Grade school It is a major segment of compulsory education. Until the latter third of the 20th century, however these schools included grades 1 through 8. After leaving this school, one usually begins Secondary education. In many districts, grades 5-8 or 5-9 are called "middle school", or further separated into "intermediate school", "middle school", and/or "junior high school".

External links

- [http://elementary-school.blogspot.com/ Elementary School Blog]
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-2/elementary.html Differentiation of Instruction in the Elementary Grades]
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-2/recess.html Recess in Elementary School: What Does the Research Say?]
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/1999-2/literature.htm Multicultural Children's Literature in the Elementary Classroom]
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-927/grouping.htm Ability Grouping in Elementary Schools]
- [http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-927/learning.htm Cognitive Learning in the Environment: Elementary Students] Category:Educational stages Primary School Category:Education ms:Pendidikan rendah ja:初等教育

International Phonetic Alphabet