Unit 3: PHONOLOGY
The TKT book (Spratt, M., Pulverness, A.,
&Williams, M. 2011) describes phonology as the study of sounds, phonemes,
word stress, sentence stress, and intonation. A phoneme is the smallest unit of
sound, and each sound has a symbol represented in a phonetic chart. Sounds vary
in each language. Anderson S. (2001) says that in a language, some
phonemes have meanings and others not. Some sounds are voiceless, and others
voiced. That is the case of consonants. That is because the mouth blocks them
partially when pronouncing some of them.
We can understand that this is one
of the reasons that people pronounce a word in different rhythms. But there are
other reasons. In English, there are some words with have to stress. It means
that people raise their tone of voice. Henry M. (2014) mentions the word class
that should have the primary
stress when speaking as adverbs, nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Those
are content words. Generally, speaking structural words like pronouns or
determiners are less stressed. But, when any of those words get stressed is contrastive stress.
However, the speaker can decide
which word stress. It depends on what the speaker wants to emphasize. So, the
meaning of a sentence will vary depending on the word stressed. But it does not
mean that one word should sound the most in a speech. The less important ones
have secondary stress
or any stress.
In this way, a connected speech
maintains rhythm. But that is not all. Linking words, contractions, and
weak forms help to keep this balance too. Bruce M. (2003) explains that linking words are
made up when a word ends in a consonant, and the other one starts with another.
Also, he states that weak
forms occur because some sounds change when they join to another
one, so it sounds weak.
Another essential feature is intonation. That
determines the meaning of what is said. That is because people use different
patterns depending on the function used. So, a sad person sounds different from
a happy one and so on.
To sum up this information, it is important to
ask ourselves what did we learn in this unit?
We learned that some phonemes do not have
meanings in some languages. Also, that phonology plays an important role when
speaking. That is because the way someone says something depends on what the
receptor interprets. Speaker decides which part of the speech wants to
emphasize to demonstrate the meaning of the ideas. Additionally, it is
essential to keep a good rhythm and intonation when speaking. To achieve that
is important to be aware of linking words, weak words, and contractions in our
connected speech.
Also, as teachers, we should take into
consideration some points to improve our oral lesson so, there are some
suggestion we can apply like:
Ø Using a phonetic
chart is an excellent way learners practice pronunciation. Teachers should pay
more attention to the hardest phonemes to pronounce for students. For example,
some diphthongs are difficult for students to pronounce for learners.
Ø Asking students to
look for minimal pairs is a useful way to develop their pronunciation and
listening skill. In that way, they won’t get confused with those words. For
example, students get confused with the words sea and see.
Bibliography:
Anderson,
S. (2001). Phonology. Retrieved October 24, 2020, from https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/02982-X
Bruce M.
(2003). Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences. Retrieved October 24, 2020,
from https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-12-226870-9/01376-9
Henry M.
(2014). Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences (Second Edition). Retrieved
October 24, 2020, from https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-385157-4.00472-3
Spratt,
M., Pulverness, A., &Williams, M. (2011). The TKT Course Modules 1,2 and 3
(Second) Cambridge: Cambridge Univertity Press.
https://doig,org/10.1017/CBO9781139062398.003
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