WHAT IS PHONETICS?

Linguistics : the study of speech sounds

Merriam Webster, 2015

BAHCESEHIR UNIVERSITY Savas Geylanioglu, 2014-15

AWARENESS of PHONETICS in ELT• The most distinctive feature of a language that

makes it different from another language is it’s ‘sound scheme’.

• It offers the means to develop good pronunciation through enhanced awareness of relevant aspects of speech.

• Comparing with most European languages, English is not a phonetic language because words can have structural vowel letters and pronounced in different ways. Inherently, studying pronunciation may be difficult, but if we reduce everything which is difficult we may end up doing very little with language learning!!!

PHONETIC OR NOT PHONETIC

GERMAN – PHONETIC (MOST PART) NATIVE AMERICAN - PHONETICCHINESE – PICTOGRAPHIC INDIAN – PHONETIC JAPANESE- PICTOGRAPHIC TURKISH – PHONETIC

IN ENGLISH THOUGH; non-phonetic• Some words can have the same spelling but

different pronunciation, for example:I like to read [ri:d].I have read [red] that book.

• Some words have different spelling but the same pronunciation, for example:

I have read [red] that book.My favourite colour is red [red].

Think only about the sound of the words.

Students sometimes ask: "Why is English so difficult to pronounce?" This is really the wrong question. The right question would be: "Why is English so difficult to spell?"

• All languages are spoken first and written second. If you only speak English, it is very easy to pronounce. The difficulty comes when you write English and then try to speak it the same way as you write it. When you practice pronunciation, try to forget about written English.

• To illustrate this point, we say that the spelling "ough"

can be pronounced with Seven -7- different sounds. But this is the wrong way to put it. It would be better to say that the seven different sounds can be represented in writing by the same spelling. So you see that it cannot help at all to think about "ough". It's much more helpful to think about the seven sounds:

though (like o in go) /ðoʊ/ through (like oo in too) /θruː/ cough (like off in offer) /kɒf / rough (like uff in suffer) /rʌf/ plough (like ow in flower) /plaʊ/ ought (like aw in saw) /ˈɔːt / borough (like a in above) /ˈbʌrə /

LENIS & FORTIS SOUNDS

1- Large and detailed vowel system including complex process of length succession and weakening ( compete, competitive and competition) LENIS : Pronounced with relatively weak muscular tension and breath pressure,resulting in weak sound effect: in stressed or unstressed position, ( b, d, g, j, v, th̸-, z and zh̸) are lenis in English, as compared with ( p, t, k,ch̸, f, th̸, s, and sh̸), which are fortis.

2- A consonant system that includes dental fricatives - unusual sounds – and voiced consonants, which cause problems for learners:

/ð/ Lenis * VoicedArticulation: The same for the fortis

dental fricative, with less muscular tension and weaker friction. Sometimes the vocal cords vibrate.

Spelling:

Regularly represented by (th), as in th̸is. Note that this is also true of /θ/ Voiceless Examples: Think /θink / Mother /mʌθə/ Then /ðen/ Soothe /su:θ/ The /ði, ðə/ That /ðæt/ 

Word stress placement. The syllable or syllables that are stressed can vary depending on the structure andfunction of a word. The first language speakers can usually predict accurately to put the stress correctly.

However, it can be very difficult for second language learners. For example:• Economy • Record (v) * Produce (v) • Economic • Record (n) * Produce (n)

In the word economy, the stress goes on the third last syllable unlike in economic the stress goes on the secondlast syllable.

The Intonation system

Rising intonation;1. Do you like your new teacher? Yes, I do.2. Are your classmates friendly? No, th̸ey’re not.

Falling intonation;1. What’s your new teacher like? He’s friendly and outgoing.2. Where do you live? I live around h̸ere.

This means that there is rising tone and falling tone when you ask questions. The former is used in a question that is answerable with ‘’yes’’ or ‘’no’’ while the latter is used in a question that is not answerable with ‘’yes’’ or ‘’no’’ but is answerable by a simple sentence or statement:

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is the ability to attend thesound structure of language as distinct from it’s meaning. It is teachable and promoted by paying attention toinstructional variables (Smith, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 1998). Students are exposed to the sound structure of thelanguage and teach them to recognize, identify and manipulate in three stages as syllables; building blocks of words, prosody; rhythm, stress, and intonation of sound, phoneme; smallest unit of sound.

That means the ability to focus on and manipulate phonemes in the spoken word (Ehri, Nunes, Willows, & Schuster, 2001).

Importance of Phonemic Awareness

The ability to hear and manipulate phonemes plays a causal role in the acquisition of beginning reading skills(Smith, Simmons, & Kame'enui, 1998).

Phonemic awareness is a major factor to learning to read in an alphabetic writing system, because letters represent sounds or phonemes.

A, B, C, D........... /EI / BEE / SI: / DI:

The best predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first gradeis the inability to segment words and syllables into constituent sound units (phonemic awareness)" (Lyon, 1995)

FFFFFFFFFAAAAAAASSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTT...

If a child cannot hear that "dark" and "dog" begin with the same sound or cannot blend the sounds /fffaaaaassssttt/ into the word "fast", he or she may have great difficulty connecting sounds with their written symbols to make a word.

Therefore, phonemic awareness requires readers to notice how letters represent sounds!

Then, it makes readers productive for print. There is respectable confirmation that the primary difference between good and poor readers lies in the good readers’ phonological processing ability.

THE CURE: Reading and phonemic awareness. THEY are mutually reinforcing: Phonemic awareness is necessary for reading, and reading, in turn, improves phonemic awareness still further.

Examples of Phonemic Awareness Skills

• Blending: What word am I trying to say? Lllllllll...oooooo...t.

• Segmentation (first sound isolation): What is the first sound in lot? /l/

• Segmentation (last sound isolation): What is the last sound in lot? /t/

• Segmentation (complete): What are all the sounds you hear in lot? /l/ /o/ /t/

Children lacking Phonemic Awareness Skills cannot:

• group words with similar and dissimilar sounds (mat, mug, sun)

• blend and split syllables (f oot) • blend sounds into words (m_a_n) • segment a word as a sequence of sounds (e.g., fish

is made up of three phonemes, /f/ , /i/, /sh/)• detect and manipulate sounds within words

(change r in run to s).

(Kame'enui, et. al., 1997)

THE ALLOPHONES OF «A»

HOW MANY PHONIC SOUNDS CAN WE GET IN THE LETTER

«A» ?

/eɪ/

IPA – PHONETIC ALPHABET

7

ALLOPHONES OF «A» ( sub-members )

Cat --- /æ/Ago --- /ə/Car ---/ɑ:/

Care --- /eə/Saw --- /ɔː/Day --- /eɪ/Want --- /ɒ/

THE ACTIVITY

 

Trap Bald Ranch Take Car Say Arise

 

HatWalkie

s Watch Pale Bar Again Around

 Rapid Water Laugh Gain Far Said Career

 Marry Board Waffle

Radiu

s Bath Any Address

 Laugh Warm Wall Lake Par Many Cathedral

/æ/ /ɔ/ /ɒ//

eɪ/

/ɑ:/ /e/ / ə /

Teaching intonation in discourse usingspeech visualization technology

Intonation, long thought to be a key to effectiveness in spoken language, is more and more commonly addressed in English language teaching through the use of speech visualization technology.

such teaching can be further enhanced by connecting technology to an understanding of how intonation functions in discourse.

Early pedagogical materials based on Pike (1945) and OConnor and Arnold (1973) for example, argued that a speakers attitude was especially tied to intonation, and that skillful use of intonation was necessary to communicate effectively.

Research on discourse intonation has led to the recognition that there are consistent, systematic differences between the way intonation functions in discourse and how it functions in isolated phrases and sentences. / Segment – Supra-segment /

This means that there is also a growing recognition that traditional sentence- level approaches may not be able to meet the needs of language teachers and learners, who need to develop awarenesses of explicit connections between intonational choices and the meanings communicated by those choices (Levis, 1999).

• A promising way to address the teaching of intonation has been through the use of speech-visualizing technology.

• Programs such as WASP (Huckvale, 2003) and PRAAT (Boersma and Weenink, 2004) are freely downloadable, while other pedagogically oriented programs such as VisiPitch (Kay Elemetrics Corporation, 2004) and SpeechViewer (IBM, 2004) are commercially available.

• Unfortunately, the use of computer technology has furthered the dominance of sentence-level practice rather than promoting the use of discourse intonation.

• The results suggested that instructional programs benefit from the inclusion of speech visualization technology.

• Learners who received audio–visual feedback demonstrated improved perception and production of intonation patterns in the L2 and an increased sensitivity to pitch movement.

• The technology also fostered the use of positive learning behaviors by encouraging learners to repeat target sentences more often and to self-correct.

• The application of speech visualization technology to language learning environments dates from the 1960s when pitch analyzers were used for teaching the deaf and then for work in second language learning of intonation (Abberton and Fourcin, 1975; Leon and Martin, 1972; Vardanian, 1964, J. Levis, L. Pickering) .

• Prosodic aspects of an utterance were quickly recognized.

• It is extremely difficult to penetrate this system [of intonation] unless one has an excellent ‘‘ear’’ and ‘good linguistic training’. The visual presentation of intonation has permitted us to transpose a specific auditory gesture common to a closed linguistic community into a visual gesture capable of being decoded by a universal semiotic community (Leon and Martin, 1972, p. 143).

Speech̸ visualizition tech̸nology

‘Now our SECOND major computer is Zecron’.

----- ‘So I WAIted in LINE and WAITed and WAITed’.

CONCLUSION ...

• The use of visualization technology has made intonation practice reliably available..

• However, • There is another obstacle, perhaps more important, which

remains. Without an explicit understanding of the functions of intonational choices, students are in danger of practicing the forms without learning their meanings or uses and without perceiving the real shape of pitch patterns in discourse.

• The availability of commercially available discourse oriented intonation materials (e.g., Cauldwell, 2001) also means that teachers are not limited to sentence-level practice. Most importantly, our increased understanding of the form and function of intonation in discourse gives teachers the knowledge they need to help their students use intonation for real communication, making it increasingly possible that learners will understand and learn to use intonation for their real communicative needs.

What do you need to know when you teach pronunciation?

• You need to know how our mouths produce the various sounds of the language.• You need to know how stress, rhythm, connected speech, and intonation work.• You need to understand problems that your students might have with pronunciation.• You need to know how to teach these things to your students and help them practice effectively.• You need to choose how much you’ll teach your students. You can’t tell them all the details that you know. It would be too much. You need to decide what to include and what to leave out.

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING...