Things you can do with S4 phonetic text
EFL teaching
This is currently the main focus for S4 phonetics but it has many other applications.It is to be noted that young learners can easily pick up the phonemes of English. Later it is more difficult.
This video shows a young French boy learning.
Accent coaching
Teaching how to:- become aware of non-standard aspects of speech and change
them,
- move between British and American accents,
- pronounce perfectly, for non-native speaker actors and singers.
Academic research
A corpus of transcribed natural speech can be built up and
used for linguistic analytics. S4 is transcribed in a very
rigorous manner using text-to-sound for checking. This makes
it very consistent and suitable for compiling reliable source
material.
Infotainment
Film clips can be sub-titled in S4 to learn English Karaoke-style:Books and plays
Books can be written in S4 phonetic text, for instance, here are first few pages of the Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a PDF file.
There is a wide range of books that could profitably be transcribed in S4 phonetics, from Shakespeare to the latest best-sellers. When you get used to it, reading phonetic material is a rich and enjoyable experience.