Tema 9.

- DESCRIPCIÓN DEL SISTEMA FONOLÓGICO DE LA LENGUA INGLESA.

- MODELOS Y TÉCNICAS DE APRENDIZAJE.

- PERCEPCIÓN, DISCRIMINACIÓN Y EMISIÓN DE SONIDOS,

ENTONACIONES, RITMOS Y ACENTOS.

- LA CORRECCIÓN FONÉTICA.

In order to master a language, we need to understand their native speakers and also

to make ourselves understood. To do so, it is essential to discriminate and produce

properly the sounds of the FL. Pronunciation is the first and most important aspect that

native speakers notice during a conversation. Knowing grammar and vocabulary is

important but useless if the speaker is unable to pronounce those structures or words

correctly.

Based on this view, the present essay aims to study the English phonological system.

In order to do so, I will divide this topic into four main sections. In the first part, I will

clarify the difference between Phonetics and Phonology. Then in the second part, I will

describe the English phonological system, paying attention to both segmental (vowel and

consonant system) and suprasegmental (stress, rhythm and intonation) features. In the

third part, I will deal with first with the importance of choosing an appropriate model of

pronunciation and then with the teaching and learning of pronunciation, considering, on
the one hand, perception and discrimination and, on the other, production and assessment.

Finally, I will concentrate on phonetic correction, analysing the main problems for Spanish

speakers and the correction techniques that must be used by the English teacher.

We deal with an essential topic since correct pronunciation contributes to efficient

communication and, consequently, to the acquisition of C.C. which is the main goal of FLT

IN Primary Education established by The Organic Law of Improvement on Education

8/2013 (LOMCE) passed on December 9th In addition, the FL Curriculum for Primary

Education highlights the significance of this topic by including in its objectives, blocks of

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contents and assessment criteria the identification and production of both segmental and

suprasegmental features of language.

FIRST
To begin with, I will clarify the difference between Phonetics and Phonology.

Both Phonetics and Phonology are concerned with the study of how speech happens. On

the one hand, phonetics studies the physical aspects of speech processes, that is, the

articulation, reception and transmission of sounds. The unit of Phonetics is the sound.
On the other hand, phonology focuses on how sounds are combined in a language in

order to express meanings and it also deals with prosodic features . The unit of Phonology
is the phoneme which can be defined as the smallest contrastive unit in speech that

might produce a change in meaning. The English language has forty-four phonemes.
In order to understand better the differences between these two sciences, it could be

said that from a phonetic point of view, vowels and consonants are distinguished by the

articulation and the acoustic energy whereas from a phonological point of view, we

distinguish them in terms of how these units are used in the structure of spoken

language. As the author Pike states, “Phonetics gathers raw material whereas phonology

cooks it”

SECOND
After having defined the concepts of Phonetics of Phonology, I will concentrate now on

the description of the English Phonological system. Linguists distinguish two areas of

phonology: segmental phonology and suprasegmental phonology. In order to develop the

segmental features, I will examine the vowel and consonant systems. Next, the

suprasegmental features will be analysed taking into account the concepts of stress,

rhythm and intonation.

Roughly speaking, segmental phonology refers to “what you say”. It is concerned with

the fundamental building blocks of sound structure, that is, phonemes and their

distinctive features. As I said before, the segmental features are the vowels and the

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consonants. In English, we can distinguish a total of 44 phonemes, of which 12 are vowels,

8 are diphthongs and 24 are consonants.

Regarding vowels, they differ from consonants in that there is no obstruction to the

flow of air as it passes from the larynx to the lips during their production. All vowels are

voiced and they are determined by changes in position of the lips, tongue and palate.

These changes can be very slight and difficult to detect. In general terms, vowels follow

a pulmonic eggressive air stream, which means that air goes from lungs to the mouth in

one single direction. They are described with reference to four criteria:

1. The height of the tongue: They can be high - “skull” (when the tongue is up in

the mouth), low - “car” (when the tongue is lowered in the mouth) or mid vowels “red”

(tongue remains in its middle position).

2. The part of the tongue that is raised: They can be front- “piece” (the tip of

the tongue moves towards the hard palate), central -“then” (tongue remains in its

position) or back -“dog” (the back of the tongue is raised to the hard palate).

3. The shape of the lips: They can be rounded as in the word “lord” (lips are

protruded forward) or spread as in the word “cheese” (the corners of the lips move

away from each other as for a smile).

4. The length: This is the most important criteria to classify vowels since vowel

length changes the meaning of words. Depending on length, vowels can be long or

short. As I said before, there are 12 vowels in English, of which 7 are short and 5 are
long.

The short vowels are: The long vowels are:

/I/ as in “tip” /I:/ as in “piece”

/e/ as in “ten” / / as in “bird”

/ / as in “cat” / / as in “door”

/ / as in “than” / / as in “palm”

/ / as in “dog” / / as in “would”

/ / as in “cut”

/ / as in “could”

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 A vowel sound whose quality does not change over the duration of the vowel is called a

monopthong or “pure vowel”. In English, these pure vowels can glide into one another to

form diphthongs. There are 8 diphthongs in English, of which 5 are closing and 3 are

central dipthongs:

- On the one hand, we find closing diphthongs: / / as in “pay”; / / as in “price”; / /

as in “choice”; / / as in “mouth”; / / as in “goat”

- On the other hand, we find central diphthongs: / / as in “square”; / / as in “near”;

/ / as in “poor”

After having examined the vowel system, I will concentrate on the consonant system.

Consonants are created when the flow of air is obstructed, so that air cannot escape

without creating friction that can be heard. They can be described according to three

different criteria, which are the action of the vocal cords, the manner of articulation and

the place of articulation.

 Regarding Action of the vocal cords, consonants can be voiced or voiceless: if the

vocal cords are apart, then air can escape unimpeded: sounds produced in this way are

said to be voiceless, as in the initial sound of “head”. However, if the vocal cords are very

close, the air will blow them apart which makes the cords vibrate, producing a voiced

sound as in the initial sound of the word “root”

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  Manner of articulation: This feature describes the nature and extent of the
obstruction involved. According to the manner of articulation, consonants may be:

- Plosive: when the air is completely blocked and then released so that a slight explosion

is heard as in the initial sound of “pie”, “key”, “tie”, “boat”, “dog”, “go”.

- Fricative: when there is a narrowing of the air passage such as to cause audible

friction as in the initial sound of “ fat”, “van”, “hit”, “this”, “thought”, “shop”,

“measure”, “zoo”.

- Affricate: when the air is completely blocked and then released slowly so that friction

is heard as in the initial sound of “church” and “judge”.

- Nasal: when the air passes through the nose as in “no”, “mother” and “sing”.

- Lateral: when the air is channelled down the sides of the tongue while the front of the

tongue make some kind of contact with the passive articulators as the initial sound of

“lip”.

- Approximant: when the tongue is curled back as in the initial sound of “red”.

- Glide or semivowels: when the consonant adopts the position of a neighbouring sound

as in the initial sound of “yes”.

 The place of articulation: Consonants are produced by obstructing the air flow
through the vocal tract. There are a number of places where these obstructions can take

place. Therefore, depending on the place of articulation, consonants can be:

- Bilabial: when both lips are pressed together as in the initial sound of “pit”, “bit”, “my”

and “we”.

- Labio-dental: when the upper teeth touch the lower lip as in the initial sound of “van”

or “fan”.

- Dental: when the tongue touches the teeth as in the words “bath” and “bathe”.

- Palatal: when the tongue touches the palate as in the initial sound of “yes”.

- Velar: when the tongue touches the velum as in the words “key”, “go”, “ring” and “loch”.

- Glottal: when the glottis is narrowed or closed and there is no active movement of the

tongue as in the initial sound of “head”.

- Alveolar: the tongue tip touches the bony prominence behind the top teeth as in the

initial sound of “tip” “did” “see” “zoo” “night” “light” and “right”.

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 - Post-alveolar: the tongue adjoins the hard palate as in the words “she” and “measure”.

After having developed the segmental features, I will focus now on suprasegmental

features. Roughly speaking, if segmental phonology referred to “ what you say”,

suprasegmental phonology refers to “how you say what you say”.

Suprasegmental phonology involves phenomena such as stress, rhythm and intonation in

speech, which affect all the segments of a unit of speech whether a syllable, word,

phrase or clause. Next, I will develop these features in detail:

 Stress: It is the degree of prominence associated to a word or syllable . From an

articulatory point of view, it is the degree of “breath effort” with which a syllable is

uttered. From an auditory point of view it is the degree of “loudness”. In Bloomfield´s

words “stress means speaking one of the syllables in a word louder than the others”.

There are 3 types of stress in English, which are: Primary stress, when the stressed

syllable is much more prominent as in the words “intrepid” / / and “earnest” / /

and it is marked with a high stroke; Secondary stress, the syllable that carries it is said

with less effort than those that carry a Primary stress as in the word “disbelief” /

/, it is marked with a low stroke; Unstressed syllables, which are the syllables that don´t

carry any stress at all, as the words “the” / / or “lot” / /.

 Rhythm: It can be defined as the pattern based on the relation between stressed

and unstressed syllables. It is detectable in the regular occurrence of stressed syllables.

English, unlike other languages, has what Pike termed as a “stressed-timed rhythm”. It

means that stressed syllables are produced at roughly regular intervals of time. In other

words, the time between stressed syllables tends to be the same, regardless of the

number of intervening syllables in an utterance. As a consequence, unstressed syllables

tend to be quickened and are said faster than stressed syllables. On the contrary,

languages as Spanish or French have a syllable-timed rhythm which means that the time

between stressed syllables would be shorter or longer in proportion to the number of

intervening syllables in an utterance.

 Intonation: It refers to the rises and falls in the pitch of a speaker´s voice used to

convey or alter meaning in an utterance. Theses rises and falls work together to give

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certain syllables prominence over the others. The concept of intonation is closely related

to that of stress, the only difference being that stress is concerned with individual

words, whereas intonation extends over a whole utterance.

There are five main intonation patterns used in English: level, falling, rising, fall-rise and

rise-fall intonation. I will next describe the ones that students must know to begin with:

- Falling intonation: used in statements, question tags, commands and wh-questions.

- Rising intonation: used in yes/no questions, polite requests and utterances containing an

element of protest or surprise.

- Falling-rising intonation: used in sentences where something is left unspoken: contrast, to

denote warning or threat,

Moreover, intonation performs a wide range of functions, such as the following:

- Attitudinal: intonation enables us to express emotions and attitudes as we speak.

- Grammatical: the listener is able to recognise the verbs, nouns adjectives, etc. because

of the intonation used by the speaker.

THIRD
Once the segmental and suprasegmental features of speech have been considered, I will

go on to develop the third part of the topic, that is, the choice of a model of pronunciation

of the English language and the teaching of pronunciation.

There are two main basic models: British Received Pronunciation or British RP and

American. European countries tend to teach British RP, while in Asia and South America
the American model is preferred. In the early stages it is advisable to teach students a

good model of English such as British RP. As they gain confidence in oral production, they

can be exposed to other types, like American English.

The teacher’s own pronunciation must reach the highest level possible because as

Grimson states:“young pupils will imitate a bad pronunciation as exactly as they will a

good one”. The teacher must speak clearly, facing the students so they can see his/her
mouth and facial expression.

Regarding the teaching of pronunciation, according to Hubbard, “pronunciation must be

an integral part of an English teaching programme from the early stages, just like the
teaching of structures and vocabulary”. Following on this idea, I will next deal with the

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teaching of pronunciation in the FL class by pointing out the concepts of perception and

discrimination, and afterwards, production and assessment.

At the listening stage, students must perceive and discriminate sounds, stress, rhythm

and intonation. First, the teacher must devise ear-training activities, since the students

must be taught to listen. Following on from recognition and discrimination, the teacher will

devise productive exercises. At the beginning, they will be based on repetition. Turning

repetition into a fun activity can be done in a variety of ways: playing with volume,

experimenting with tone and speed, playing with rhyme ... Now we are going to suggest some
activities that can be used to teach and learn the segmental and suprasegmental features

of language. In order to do so, I will fist deal with the teaching of sounds, then I will

concentrate on stress and rhythm and finally, I will analyse intonation. Although they are

classified into categories, exercises in which all the features are integrated are

desirable.

SOUNDS

Firstly, in order to work on the perception and discrimination of sounds, the teacher can:

 prepare a list of minimal pairs. S/he reads one pair or says the same word twice, and

asks the students whether the two words are the same or different. Younger pupils can

draw the word they hear.

 Another activity is odd man out; the teacher reads a list of four words, all except

one containing the same sound, and students say which the different word is.

The next stage is the production of sounds. First of all, the teacher will demonstrate

the way in which the sounds are made, showing what must be happening to the lips, tongue

and teeth. Students listen and repeat the model. This can be done through:

 different types of drills. Raps, songs, chants and tongue twisters which are very

useful to practise pronunciation of sounds in context and in a highly motivating way.

STRESS

Secondly, in order to work on the perception and discrimination of stress, students can:

 clap hands, which is a simple way to demonstrate the perception and

discrimination of stressed syllables in words or sentences.

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  Mark stressed syllables using symbols, for example large circles for stressed
syllables and small circles for unstressed syllables.

 Use newspaper headlines which are particularly useful to work on stressed and
unstressed words, since they are created by reducing the message of a sentence to the

key words, which are the stressed ones. Contrasting a headline with its complete message

highlights the stress patterns of English.

RHYTHM

Thirdly, in order to work on the perception and discrimination of rhythm, students can:

 clap the beats in songs and rhymes. Then, they can be asked to clap the beats in a
sentence, adding more and more syllables between claps. For example:

“ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR / ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR / ONE and then
TWO and then THREE and then FOUR”
 read out loud familiar dialogues highlighting the words which they think are the most
important parts of communication. Drills, raps, songs, chants and tongue twisters once
students are familiar with stress patterns in English.

INTONATION

Finally, in order to demonstrate the perception and discrimination of intonation

students can:

 move their arms from high to low to indicate the falling intonation or vice-versa for
the rise.

 draw arrows to indicate the direction of the intonation pattern.

 compare different intonations and think about the changes in meaning.

Imitation of intonation patterns can go together with body movements or gestures.

Teachers can suggest a role-play in which children adopt a role (Mr. Happy or Mr. Sad) and

act out a short sketch, emphasising their mood through intonation.

 Finally, children can be asked to say hello to different people changing the intonation

according to the interlocutor: a baby, a neighbour they don’t like, a friend they have not
seen in three years...

FOURTH

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 Once I have dealt with the teaching and learning of pronunciation, I will consider the

last part of the topic, the phonetic correction. When learning a FL, we tend to transfer

our own sound system and produce sounds which we use in our native language. Thus,

pronunciation of a FL is inhibited by our own articulatory habits. As soon as we realize this,

we see that learning a FL does not merely imply learning a set of words different from our

own, but also a new set of sounds, not to mention the peculiar native rhythm, stress and

intonation. Some of the most remarkable differences between pronunciation in English and

Spanish languages are:

 Being a Germanic language, English has a more complicated vowel system than

Spanish. English uses 12 vowel phonemes against 5 in Spanish.

 English has 24 consonant phonemes, Spanish has 20.

 We are not used to accentuate 3 or 4 syllable words on their first syllables.

 Rhythm in Spanish is roughly syllable-timed, and so there is none of the variation

in length which result in English from the grouping of syllables into rhythm units.

 We Spanish speakers tend to use a very narrow pitch range.

Regarding the students´ pronunciation mistakes, we should correct them at the

presentation and the practice stage, where accuracy is more important than fluency. We

can use various techniques to indicate that students have made a mistake, for instance

asking the student to repeat what he said, asking the student whether what he said is

correct or telling the student about the mistake and asking him to repeat it.

At the production stage, we will make note of the mistakes and use them as the basis of

feedback. Teachers should not correct students very often at this stage so as not to

discourage them and make them lose self-confidence. Finally, we should encourage self-

correction and student-student correction (Autonomy BBCC)

CONCLUSION (PAUSA)

To conclude, I would like to remark that, as I have proven in this topic, the emphasis on

teaching the phonological features of English has traditionally been on the accurate

pronunciation of vowels and consonants, that is, the segmental features of language.

Fortunately, a new approach has extended in FLT contexts and the suprasegmental

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features of language, such as stress, rhythm and intonation are now considered to be very

important at both comprehension and production stages. ( Optional) In addition, as Hubbard

states: “pronunciation must be an integral part of an English teaching programme from the

early stages, just like the teaching of structures and vocabulary”

We have started to develop this topic by distinguishing between Phonetics and Phonology.

Then we have described the segmental and suprasegmental features of the English

phonological system. Then we have concentrated on the teaching of pronunciation, focusing

on the main models to learn pronunciation and some activities to work on it. Finally we have

dealt with the main pronunciation problems for Spanish speakers and the correction

techniques that teachers must use.

In order to develop this topic, the following BIBLIOGRAPHY has been used:

ANN BAKER (1985): “Ship or sheep?” CUP Cambridge

BREWSTER, J. et al. (2003): The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. Penguin English.

HARMER, J. (2003): The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman.

LARSEN-FREEMAN, D. (2003): Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching . Oxford

University Press.

VARELA, R. et al. (2003): All About Teaching English. Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces

LEGAL FRAMEWORK

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