Introduction to Phonology

ELE3103: ENGLISH FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS

Topic 2   : Introduction to Phonology

Reflection

            From this topic, I have studied about speech organs and the English sounds. I just realize that we have 15 organs speech. There are lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, soft palate, uvular, pharynx, and blade of the tongue, front of the tongue, back of the tongue, epiglottis, wind pipe, food passage, vocal cords and larynx. It is important to take care of our organs speech because without one or more organ speech, we cannot pronoun a word correctly.

            As we know, children learn pronunciation by imitation. A teacher should pronouns the words with correct pronunciation so that the children will pronoun the words correctly. The teacher must master the phonetic which is the study of sounds made by humans when they talk. They also need to know and studied about phonetic script and phonemes.  Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in a language which carries distinctive meaning. For example,

/p/, /g/ and /s/.

There are 3 production processes that will produce speech which are initiation, phonation and articulation. To know more about these processes, I have read the Kuiper et. al. (1996), An Introduction to English Language: Sound, Word and Sentence, page 29-38.

            Then, we learnt about the English sounds which are vowel sounds and consonants. The consonants of English can be described according where they are produced and how they are produced. There are two types of consonants which are voiced consonants and voiceless consonants. Voiced consonants are produce when the vocal cords are held tightly so that the air stream vibrates them. The vibration of the vocal cords can be felt externally by lightly touching the voice box by finger-tip. While, the voiceless consonants are produce when there are no vibration at the vocal cords.

Meanwhile, vowel is a sound without detectable change in quality from beginning to end. The sounds are produced where there is no friction or stoppage of air and the sound are determine to the position of the tongue and the shape of the lips.

There are 2 types of vowels which are simple vowels and diphthongs. It also can be classified as short vowels, reduced or semi–lax vowels and long vowels.

Short vowels	EI, A, AE, UH, AH, OH	PIT, HEN, PAT, CUT, TUB, POT
Reduced or semi–lax vowels	ER	AGO
Long vowels	EE, AR, UU, OO, ER ,AR ,OR	FEE, MOO, TAUGHT

Diphthongs are referring to 2 vowels that merge into one. It means they are represents by two vowel symbols but counted as one unit. They have continually moving tongue shape and changing sound quality. I have problem in mastering the phonemes. I do not know the sound of the phonemes. Fortunately, Madam Ira Sandhu has given us the software of phonetic. From the software, I learn the phonemes better.

From this topic, we are required to perform a Tongue Twister competition. There are four members in a group. After discussing, we have chosen 3 tongue twisters which are short, medial and long. From the comment by Madam Ira Sandhu, we can pronoun the words correctly but the first tongue twister is not so good. We need to practice more to make it perfect.

 To conclude, teachers have to be good role models for pronunciation so that students will learn pronunciation correctly. It is important to pronoun the word correctly because when be pronoun it wrongly, it will make a new meaning or not meaningful at all.