Dr Nicole Whitworth, Head of Subject

Dr Nicole Whitworth

Head of Subject

Dr Nicole Whitworth is the Head of International & Global Studies in the Carnegie School of Education. Her academic background is Linguistics and Phonetics. She specialises in language acquisition of speech and the teaching of phonetics and pronunciation.

Nicole has taught Linguistics and Phonetics at several local universities, including York, Sheffield, and Leeds University. Since joining Leeds Beckett, she has worked in various areas across the university. She has published and presented on teaching methodology in clinical phonetics and linguistics and the acquisition of speech.

Nicole has successfully worked with external academic groups on strategy development. She is the treasurer of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians.

Current Teaching

  • Research Methods
  • Dissertation
  • Language Acquisition

Research Interests

Nicole's research looks at the acquisition of speech by children and adults. She is particularly interested in the acquisition of speech timing and vowels. She is currently working on a project that looks at the realisation of pre-vocalic boundaries in the speech of German, Italian and Arabic Speakers of L2 English. She is also interested in how accents affect the way people are perceived by others.

Dr Nicole Whitworth, Head of Subject

Ask Me About

  1. Phonetics
  2. Linguistics
  3. Accents
  4. Language Acquisition
  5. Speaking
  6. Languages
  7. Speech and Language Therapy

Selected Outputs

  • Knight RA; Whitworth N (2014) Introduction: The Place of Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics in the SLT Curriculum. In: Whitworth N; Knight RA ed. Methods in Teaching Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics.. J&R Press, pp. 1-22.

  • Whitworth N (2014) Acoustic Phonetics. In: Whitworth N; Knight R-A ed. Methods in Teaching Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics. J&R Press, pp. 47-71.

  • Whitworth N (2013) SLT Students’ Attitudes towards Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics. In: 4th Colloquium of the British Association of Clinical Linguistics (BACL), 13 May 2013 - 14 May 2013, Newcastle.

  • Whitworth N; Knight R (2012) The Effect of Perceived Self-Efficacy in Phonetic Ability. In: Colloquium of the British Association of Academic Phoneticians (BAAP), 26 March 2012 - 28 March 2012, The University of Leeds.

  • Whitworth N (2011) SLT students’ perception of IPA sounds: An update on vowels. In: 3rd Colloquium of the British Association of Clinical Linguists (BACL), 11 April 2011 - 12 April 2011, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK.

  • Bray M; Whitworth N (2011) Investigating Babbling in Babies with Down Syndrome. In: 3rd Colloquium of the British Association of Clinical Linguists (BACL), 11 April 2011 - 12 April 2011, Leeds Metropolitan University.

  • Whitworth N; Bray M (2015) Emergence of the vowel space in very young children with Down syndrome: An exploratory case study.

  • Whitworth N (2003) Pre-vocalic boundaries in the speech of German-English bilinguals.

  • eds. Whitworth N; Knight RA (2014) Methods in Teaching Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics. J & R Press.