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Reading Report

This document summarizes key concepts about teaching pronunciation in English, including the articulators involved in speech sound production. It discusses the differences between phonetics, phonology, and phonemes. Phonetics describes speech sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that can distinguish words. Phonology examines how sounds are produced in context. The articulators like the larynx, lungs, tongue, and lips are explained. Vowels are classified by tongue position (close, open, front, back). English has regional accents and is considered a "lax" language compared to Spanish. A thorough understanding of phonetics and phonology is important for teaching pronunciation to

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
74 views6 pages

Reading Report

This document summarizes key concepts about teaching pronunciation in English, including the articulators involved in speech sound production. It discusses the differences between phonetics, phonology, and phonemes. Phonetics describes speech sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that can distinguish words. Phonology examines how sounds are produced in context. The articulators like the larynx, lungs, tongue, and lips are explained. Vowels are classified by tongue position (close, open, front, back). English has regional accents and is considered a "lax" language compared to Spanish. A thorough understanding of phonetics and phonology is important for teaching pronunciation to

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ElizabehReyes
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© © All Rights Reserved
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READING REPORT “PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGY”

Many language teachers wonder if they should teach pronunciation in the


classroom or not, and how to teach it. According to some methodologists,
pronunciation has an important place in language teaching but the main problem is
that few teachers are trained to teach phonology. This subject is divided into
two units, the first part of the subject will have to deal with the sound
system of En g l i sh , a n a l ys i n g and d e sc ri b i n g segmental and
su p ra se g me n ta l features, and the articulators themselves. The
second part of the subject looks separately at the issue of how to
teach pronunciation. This reading includes only the first part of the
subject.
This is divided into three main sub topics. The first topic includes
general concepts such as where this language come from, what
foreign influences does it have, how phonetics is related with
Orthography, what are the differences in pronunciation, depending on the
region, definitions of terms such as phonetics, phonology and phonemes, as well
as the difference between them. The second topic it´s about the Articulators
involved in the production of Speech sound, those Articulators are larynx, lungs,
tongue, mouth, nose and glottis, all these organs are part of the respiratory system
and intervene in the production of the voice.
The third and last topic includes some explication about the sound of consonant
and vowels used in the English Language.

English is an hybrid language, based originally on a dialect of West


Germanic spoken somewhere around the area of Holland that we now
call Frisia, This arose thanks to subsequent invasions from further
Germanic tribes and later, Scandinavians. Between 450 A.D. and
1066, the various dialects of Angles, Jutes and Saxons merged with
the related languages of the Scandinavians whose invasions took
place from 737 and the Angles, contributed with their name to the
language now known as English. It ha s ne ve r h ad a ce n tra l
' A ca d e my' , only it had a prescriptive grammarians.
Many Spanish students of English think that English has no rules, or that rules
are so esoteric that even their teacher cannot explain them. But that is a
mistake because English has rules for grammar and beside has a word
'Orthoepy' which means “The science of correct pronunciation”. English
spelling is quite seriously unrelated to pronunciation, while Written English
has been static since the invention of printing, spoken English has changed
repeatedly because of Loanwords or 'borrowings' as they are now called, that
have been adopted from languages with different spelling systems. For
example, the phoneme /f/ can be represented by a number of spellings, for
example /f/ (firm) gh (rough) ff (offer) ph (philosophy); and letter 'h' can be
silent (honour) or fully pronounced as in (house).
English sound is not the same at every place, ' Bri ta i n ' , ha s an
a ston i shi n g nu mb e r o f re g io n a l accents at each region. Inclusive
American English changes from the west to the North, because of, this the
pronunciation RP (formal English) is disappearing. Such variety suggests
that it is unlikely that all native English speakers will be RP speakers,
producing the same sounds as the phonemic symbols in the
textbooks they bring to class for their students as conclusion we can
see that there is no proven one-to-one relationship between what
learners hear and what th ey subseque ntly prod uce .

Three important terms at this reading are Phonetics, Phonology and


Phonemes. Teach 'Phonetics’ is to teach the science or study of the
s o u n d s o f sp e e c h , P h o n e t i c s describes the study of sounds using as
its tool the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).In this Phonetic
there are two types of transcription that they can do: the first is called a
“Phonetic transcription” which draws on the total resources of the IPA, to
mark minute distinctions in sound and places symbols in square
brackets. It has a dental symbol, called “diacritic”,it is similar to
Spanish ‘t', but it is more alveolar’. The other type of transcription is
the more likely candidate, that is to say the Phonemic Transcription. If the
teacher is using the a forementioned chart or students pay attention to
symbols in their textbooks, then they are probably referring to phonemic
information and their transcriptions will be 'broad transcriptions',
because the information is less exact. The phoneme is a fundamental
component of a certain type of linguistic description and cannot be
confused with the intentions of another type of linguistic description.
T h e p h o n e m e i s the smallest Unit of sound in a language, which can
distinguish two words. English has 44 phonemes, and its phoneme
inventory, as it is called, consists of 24 consonants and 20 vowels. The
sounds or phones that the regional speaker produces are referred to as
'allophones’ and they probably have to use diacritics, and our analysis
would necessarily become phonetic. Finally, the last term considered
is 'Phonology', which concerned with those same sounds in actual
productive contexts. If you produce a word (own) in isolation, you will
pronounce it /Own/. But of course, in the flow of real speech, the vowel
of the pronoun is almost n e v e r p r o n o u n c e d i n t h i s w a y .

A f t e r k n o w i n g P h o n o l o g y a n d p h o n e t i c s , i t i s i m p o r t a n t t o t a ke i n
consideration the Articulators, w h i ch are the responsible of
p ro d u c t i o n o f t h e s p e e c h so u n d , a ll th e so und s we ma ke when we
spe ak a re the resu lt of muscle s co ntra cting . The muscles in the chest
that we use for breathing produce the flow of air that is needed for almost
all speech sounds. After that, we can say that as the air moves up
through the larynx, up into the vocal tract. We have a large and
complex set of muscles that can produce changes in the shape of the
tract which further modify the sounds that eventually escape into the air
through the mouth and nostrils. Different languages use different muscle
settings in the vocal tract, and different languages also differ with
respect to matters such as volume and pitch. It is important to say that
in many ways, the mastering of the sounds of a foreign language
requires the learner to change many of the configurations that he or
she has picked up naturally from birth. The most important muscles for
produce sound are the next: * The larynx: is larger and more prominent in
men and consists of cartilage which forms a type of 'box', inside of which
are the vocal folds ,when they are apart we refer to the opening as the
glottis, when the folds are touching each other lightly, it is because the
air pushed up from the lungs has opened them slightly, causing
vibration and consequently sound. If we increase the flow form the
lungs, the pitch will change
*The pharynx is a sort of tube, above the larynx, divided into two -one
part is the back of the mouth and the other the beginning of what is
called the nasal cavity.
*The velum (or soft palate) is important in that it allows air to pass
through the nose or through the mouth.
*The alveolar ridge is something you can feel with your tongue
*The tongue is a very important articulator many sounds are
moderated by the tongue being in contact with these side teeth
*The lips are can be pressed together to form /pi and lb
Considering lips, there are two kinds of sound, when the lips are in
contact we call the sounds bilabial and with the lips and teeth in
contact we refer to them as labiodental.
.
The last topic considered in this reading is the sound of Vowels . The
terms close, open, front and back are crucial to an understanding of
vowel production. Close and Open refer exclusively to the distance of the
tongue from the roof of the mouth. The sound 'aaaah' is referred to as open
- The sound, approximating to cardinal vowel 1, is therefore close. Front and
Rack T terms refer not to the mouth but to the tongue. Another important
variable in vowel production is that of lip posture or position. There are three
positions, rounded, spread and neutral. Rounded lips produce sounds like
cardinal vowel O,U, Spread lips, like a big smile, produce sounds like
cardinal I . Neutral lips, not a posture much used by Spanish speakers
produce A, E with soft sound. Beside, there are 5 long vowels in the
English phoneme inventory, all written with two dots after them to
indicate acoustic length,the diphthongs are classed as long vowels,
but they are written as a combination of two phonemes.

Considering all this information, I can say that Spanish language requires
more consistent pulmonic energy than English. English is called a 'lax'
language.
Weakness in English is also connected to the theme of phonology. word
in isolation can be very different from the sound produced during the flow
of speech. To speak English fluently don’t depend only of memorize and
practice phonetics chart or study phonology, it considers the position of
the body and physical characteristics of the person.
I think this is a very interesting topic but for me was difficult to
understand, I had to watch four different videos about the topic and
finally I finished my report and I have still some dudes. I think is very
important to teach this kind of subject because, this material can help
students to get a better pronunciation.

Bibliography
Anthology IEXPRO:” Teaching Pronunciation”
Chapter [1] : The Special Nature of English Pronunciation
Lesson [1.1]: Foreign Influence
Lesson [1.2]: Ortography
Lesson [1.3]: Regional differences
Lesson [1.4]: Phonetics, Phonology and Phonemes
Chapter [2] : The Articulators
Lesson [2.1]: The Production of Speech Sound
Lesson [2.2]: The Laryns
Lesson [2.3]: Articulatyors above de Laryns
Lesson [2.4]: Respiration and Voicing
Chapter [3] : The Vowel System
Lesson [3.1]: Vowels
Lesson [3.2]: The Concept of Weakness in English

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