本書特色：
凝聚全國英語專業教學指導委員會主任何其莘教授數十年教學、科研及教材編寫經驗，是何其莘教授的又一次自我超越。
國界：彙集眾多中美名家的經驗與智慧，吸收國際先進理念，旨在提升本土教學水平。
傳統：打破以功能為主的傳統教材編寫模式，充分考慮當前教學實踐，創新教學方法和手段，突破文化特征，培養學生人文素養和文化意識。

本書繫統介紹英語語音和音位的理論與知識，每一個術語或觀點都用實例來演示。每個章節之後附有練習和閱讀書目，用以加強語音訓練和鞏固理論知識。本書通俗易懂，側重語音實踐，具有很強的可教性與可學性。

何其莘博士，北京外國語大學教授，博士生導師。1994年-2005年任北外副校長，現為中國人民大學外國語學院院長、教育部高校英語專業教學指導委員會主任、全國翻譯碩士專業學位教育指導委員會副主任、全國英語文學學會會長、全國有突出貢獻的中青年專家。
楊孝明博士，教授。畢業於西安外國語大學，後獲英國諾丁漢大學英語碩士學位、美國鮑陵格林州立大學英語博士學位。現為新澤西州海洋郡學院英語繫終身教授。

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1.1 Speech perception
1.1.1 Definition ofspeech perception
Speech perception refers to the study of the way speech sounds are analyzed and identified by ears and brain. When we hear sounds， we hear them either as speech or non-speech. No matter how hard we try， we cannot hear speech as a series of acoustic hisses and buzzes， but only as a sequence of speech sounds.
The development of speech perception precedes the development of speech production. There are two reasons for this phenomenon. One is that although the human ear is almost completely formed when the fetus is 7 months old， the oral cavity of a baby at birth is very different from that of an adult. The second reason is that in order to produce the sounds of a given language， a child must be exposed to the relevant linguistic input， that is， the speech produced by the people around him or her.
Speech may be processed at the auditory， phonetic， or phonological levels. At the auditory level， the signal is represented in terms of its frequency， intensi阡， and temporal attributes. The auditory level is characteristic of the way all sounds are perceived. At the phonetic level， we identify individual phones by a combination of acoustic cues， such as formant transitions. The phonetic level is assumed to be specific to speech. At the phonological level， the phonetic segment is converted into a phoneme， and phonological rules are applied to the sound sequence. The phonological level is specific to a particular language. In other words， we first discriminate auditory signals from other sensory signals and make sure that the stimulus is something that we have heard. Then we identify the particular properties that qualify it as speech， later recognize it as the meaningful speech of a particular language.
Even after years of research， the process of speech perception is little understood. The difficulty is that the link between speech and listener's perception cannot be studied in a direct manner. The movements within the ear and auditory nerve cannot be easily observed. There are still some problems remained to be solved. For example， when several people are talking at once in a crowded room， we are able to “tune in” to one speaker and to ignore the others. However， if we hear our names spoken nearby， we readily tune in to that conversation， at the risk ofignoring the person we are supposed to be listening to. This is termed as “cocktail-party phenomenon”.How does the brain select auditory information so impressively？
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