Transcript OBJECTIVES - tesoldip2014 / ACE TESOL Diploma

OBJECTIVES
You will understand:
1. The scope of the field of phonology;
2. The relevance of phonology to language teaching.
You will be able to:
1. Integrate the principles of phonology into your teaching of
pronunciation
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
Phonology is the study and description of the distinctive sound units of
a language and their relationship with one another. In some countries,
phonology is also known as phonemics.
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. Human language exhibits a
wide variety, but finite number, of sounds called phones, segments or
speech sounds. Phonetics includes:
 physiological phonetics (the anatomical, neurological and
physiological basis of speech production)
 articulatory phonetics (the actions and movements of the speech
organs to produce speech)
 acoustic phonetics (the sound waves that transmit speech)
 auditory phonetics (how the ears receive speech)
 perceptual phonetics (how the brain processes speech information)
Pronunciation is how a sound or sounds are produced and is thus the
practical language classroom application of the information obtained
from phonology and phonetics.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
THE INTERNATIONAL PHONEMIC ALPHABET
The International Phonemic Alphabet (also known as the
International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA) refers to a set of symbols
used to represent the sounds of a language. There is a one-toone relationship between each sound and the corresponding
symbol in the IPA.
Many symbols used to represent consonant sounds are familiar
because they come from the Roman alphabet. Phonemic symbols
are enclosed in brackets / / or [ ] to indicate that the
transcription is phonemic and not representational of the
spelling of a language.
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THE INTERNATIONAL PHONEMIC ALPHABET
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The Role of the IPA
The IPA is important when discussing the English language
because English does not have simple sound-symbol
correspondence: one letter of the English alphabet does not
represent one symbol from the IPA.
In fact, one letter does not represent the same sound all of the
time, nor is a specific sound always represented by only one
letter in the alphabet.
This discrepancy makes spelling and pronunciation difficult for
English language students. A working knowledge of IPA,
generated through the work of phonologists, may then help
students with their pronunciation and spelling.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
DETERMINING THE SOUNDS OF A LANGUAGE
How did phonologists decide which sounds belong to the English
IPA and which don’t? They have to complete what is called a
‘sound inventory’ or a ‘phoneme inventory’.
To do this, phonologists look at a set of sound data from a
language, usually in the form of transcriptions into phonetic
symbols. They then determine which symbols represent
phonemes, units of sound with meaning, and sounds with no
meaning.
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ALLOPHONES
An allophone is a variation on a phoneme that is not distinct enough to
be a phoneme on its own. For example, the phoneme /t/ is pronounced
two different ways in the words ‘today’ and ‘bottle’. However the
sounds are not considered to be separate phonemes but are considered
to fall within the range of sound covered by the phoneme /t/. They are
therefore allophones.
Consider the aspirated and unaspirated sounds /p/, /t/ and /k/ in the
words ‘pin’, ‘tin’ and ‘kin’ versus ‘spin’, ‘stink’, and ‘skin’. You should
notice that there is no longer a short burst of air after the starting
consonants in this second set of words; these sounds are unaspirated.
Both the aspirated and unaspirated versions of the phonemes are
therefore allophones.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
THE ROLE OF PHONOLOGY IN LANGUAGE TEACHING
Why do English language teachers need to know
about phonemes, allophones, and the phonemic
alphabet?
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute

Many of your students will know this information and will ask
you about it. You will lose face with them if you are not
conversant in the topic.
 Knowledge of phonology will help you more deeply understand
the sound characteristics and features of the language you are
teaching. This assists in specific identification and explanation
of student errors with sound production.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
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Complete Task Journal questions 1 and 3 in class.
Task Journal question 2 can be submitted via email to
[email protected] (preferred) or printed and handed in.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute