WHAT IS PHONOLOGY ?

y Phonology is the study of the sound features

used in a language to communicate meaning.

y In English, these features include phonemes,

word stress, sentence stress and intonation.

Phoneme
y The smallest unit of sound that has meaning

in a language.
y For example: the s in books in English

shows that something is plural, so the sound /s/ has meaning and is a phoneme.

Phonemic Chart

The chart groups the sounds into:

y Vowels

sounds made with a mouth partly open and where the air not stopped by the tongue, lips or teeth.
y Dipthongs

a movement from one vowel sound to another within a single syllable, e.g. the vowel sound in make /me k/ or in so /s /.

y Consonants

the flow of the air is partly blocked by the tongue, lips or teeth when this sounds are made, e.g. /b/. The consonants are arranged in an order according to how and where in the mouth they are pronounced and whether are voiced sounds(spoken using the vibration of our voice) or and voiceless sounds(spoken without using our voice).

y Word Stress

This is the part of the word with say with greater emphasis. Example: pencil, children, important.
y Sentence Stress

Normally one word in the sentence has primary or main stress. This is the word which the speaker thinks is most important to the meaning of the sentence. Examples: She came home late last night. I can t understand a word he says.

y Secondary stress

Not so strong as main stress and falls on words which are no so important to the meaning of the sentence. Example: She came home late last night. I can t understand a word he says.

y Connected speech

Spoken language in which all the words join to make a connected stream of sounds. Some important characteristics of connected speech are: y Contractions don t / haven t
y Weak forms (unstressed forms of words) y Linking

can /k n/

up above / go away

y Intonation

changing the level of our voice to show meaning and also our emotions and attitudes.

Key concepts and the language teaching classroom

y Learners need to understand a wide variety of English

accents. They should listen to speakers from different countries. y Hear and recognise, then produce. y Activities should cover different aspects of pronunciation (word stress, sentence stress, minimal pairs, etc). y Use of the phonemic chart and symbols in the classroom.