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Unit 13 covered the topics of pronunciation and phonology. Phonology is the study, science, analysis and classification of the physical properties of sound. In this section, stress, rhythm and intonation and the International Phonetic Alphabet were covered. Intonation is the variation in volume and pitch in an entire sentence. Intonation clarifies the message in a sentence such as questioning, agreeing, disagreeing or confirming statements. Techniques for teaching intonation include nonsense words, gestures, humming/singing, or marks on a whiteboard using symbols to emphasize the point being made.
Stress helps us to interpret the sentence in context. Only one syllable in a word has stress.; so there are more syllables in a sentence or word that are unstressed than stressed. Techniques for teaching stress include contrastive stress, by gesture, choral work, the whiteboard and stress marks. Sound joining occurs when sounds are lined together in English. They include linking, sound dropping sound changes and extra lettering. Linked speech are words in a sentence or question that are pronounced differently than they are written.
The International Phonemic Alphabet is that which is used when looking up a word in the dictionary. Immediately following the traditional spelling of the word, this alphabet is used to spell the word phonetically. The phonemic spelling would be the same in every language.
Articulation is the use of the tongue (tip: alveolar), larynx, glottis, vocal chords, lips (labial), alveolar ridge, teeth, hard palate (palatal) and soft palate (velar) to make sounds. There are many different manners of articulation. Plosive sounds are made with the lips like and "explosion" of air. Sounds make with the upper teeth and lower lip are called Fricatives and cause "friction". Nasal sounds are produced by only letting air escape through the nasal passage. Lateral sounds are produced with the air escaping on the side of the tongue rather than on the front. A release of a Fricative and Plosive at the same time creates and Affricate such as the sound /D3/ in judge or /tf/ in the word church. An Approximant is a sound produced by narrowing the vocal tract by placing the tongue near another part of the vocal tract.
Teaching techniques for the pronunciation of individual sounds include peer dictation, example by the teacher, phonemes, tongue twisters and visuals. Pronunciation can be taught as a whole lesson, lesson slots or when otherwise required.
