Unit 3 Phonology

PHONOLOGY

Phonology is the study of the sounds patterns that occur within languages. (Catford J., 2001) explained that phonology is the study of how sounds are organized into systems and utilized in phonology is to learn the correct pronunciation of the words. The most important subtopics in this unit is phonemes, word stress, sentence stress, and intonation. First, a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound and has a meaning. Also, I learned that phonemes of a language are represented in phonemic symbols (help students to know the right pronunciation of a word) and these symbols we could find in the phonemic chart. It is divided into some groups such as vowels, consonants, diphthongs, voiced and unvoiced sounds. Talking about word and sentences stress I can say that is when we pronounced a word in a sentence with greater energy and the other with less energy. And finally, intonation I could say is the way people change the level of their voice to show meaning or put more emphasis what they are trying to say.

Teaching phonology is going to be the most important part of the process of language learning because it is going to teach them the right pronunciation of the words. However, for students are going to be difficult to learn about phonemic symbols because they sometimes confused the sound at the moment that they are talking. It happens because they try to say something in their mother tongue. To overcome it, we can teach minimal pairs and make them to repeat some words that they have some difficulties at the moment they want to pronounce.

 VIDEO: It is about 3 steps to teaching pronunciation.

VIDEO 2: It is about phonetics

SOURCES:

Spratt M., Pulverness A. & Willians M. (2011). The TKT course.Modules 1,2,3. United Kingdom: Cambridge university Press.

Catford J. (2001). Apractical guide to phonetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

YouTube. (2018). 3 tips for sounding like a native speaker. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/ChZJ1Q3GSuI [Accessed 22 Apr. 2018].

YouTube. (2018). How to sound like a native speaker: THE SECRET. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/sezrHctwOJ0 [Accessed 22 Apr. 2018].