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Phonology and Pronunciation is the hardest section to learn in the English language is often neglected in teaching. Phonology is the study, science, and analysis of the physical properties of sounds.
With phonology we must study how we speak. We learn about intonations and the way our voices rise up and fall depending on what we are trying to get across. We need to consider the stresses in the words we do say in order to get our meanings across as well. With stress, we learn how we link the words and certain words drop sounds. However, phonology does not stop there. We also have to consider the phonemic alphabet and how that all works as well.
The phonemic alphabet is a set of symbols that indicate certain sounds that help in articulation of saying words. As native speakers, we rarely think about how a word is separated into individual sounds. However, by focusing on each section of a word we can learn the pronunciation the words much better. Nevertheless, articulation is a big factor. Articulation is the use of the muscles and speech organs and parts of the mouth that aid in speech. We learn that we use each section of the mouth including the lips and teeth in order to create certain sounds.
There are also many ways of articulation to consider, plosive, nasal, lateral, affricate, approximant, and fricative. With plosive the air is blocked and then suddenly released. With fricative the air is forced and the sound is vibrated. Affricate is a combination of both plosive and fricative. Nasal articulation is when the air is forced through the nasal cavity, such as the letter ‘m’. Lateral is when the air escapes around the tongue and used in combination of other articulation methods. Finally, Approximant is the narrowing of the vocal tract and the tongue is placed near to another sound.
If we can teach other students to listen to their intonations, pronunciations, focus on articulation, and learn about the letter sounds and word parts, our students will be very good speakers of English. We, as teachers, must pay attention and help our students be as educated in phonology as possible.
