UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DEL ECUADOR

Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias de la Educación

Carrera de Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros – INGLÉS
CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS
MSc. Pablo Mejía Maldonado, Esp.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tutorial Video Report – Essay Nº 1

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Full Name (s): Last names Díaz Ortiz First names Carlos Class: UCE- 3rd “B”
Date: 21/11/2019 Group Nº:

INSTRUCTIONS: Write an essay on all unit videos. Check paragraph organization, sentence structure, spelling,
mechanics, linker use. Use proof markers to check paragraph writing.

It’s easy to suppose that during the learning of a foreign language the most part of
communicative fact turns into a complex process language interpretation , that is because when the
sounds from a mother tongue are compared with which there are in the foreign language learning
on, there are two important aspects that we can conclude from this analysis. The first one is about to
how to understand the oral utterance of sounds from a foreign language, if there is a lot of
differences between both languages at the pronunciation of their own sounds (allophones), and the
second one is related to how these new sounds can be included in their own individual language
registration, through along into a conversation in a foreign language.

At this point, it’s necessary to say that there two types of languages from phonetic
perspective, it means, there is a phonetic and non-phonetic language. The first one covers all
languages in the world in which its writing and pronunciation are very similar. It can be said that,
the people which use a phonetic language, basically speak the language as the same way they write
it. And the second one refers to the languages whose pronunciation and writing are in the mostly
cases completely different. As a consequence of the above, a very important topic takes place, the
language inconsistences. It refers to all characteristics of a specific non- phonetic language that
influence in the way what it is writing and pronounce.

According to the previous ideas, and following a contrastive phonology analysis, it's easy to
realize that there's a big difference between the learning process of a non-phonetic language with a
phonetic one. Thus, it is identified two different learning ways, the first one comes from learning a
phonetic language towards a non-phonetic one, and the second, by means of its reciprocal relation,
or vice versa.

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 UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DEL ECUADOR
Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias de la Educación
Carrera de Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros – INGLÉS
CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS
MSc. Pablo Mejía Maldonado, Esp.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Throughout this paper, different aspects will be addressed related with the process
learning which comes from a phonetic language (Spanish) to a non-phonetic one (English). Then,
let’s begin with the fact that in a non-phonetic language such as English, we can realize that, many
words from this language are writing, in mostly cases, in a different way as they are pronounced,
due to phonological reasons. As a consequence of it, the people who are learning English language
have a lot of issues related with the pronunciation of sounds regarding their writing. For instance,
<tear> /tɛr/ as a noun/verb and <tear> /tɪr/ as a verb. To illustrate this reality, we can see more
examples in “The Chaos of English Pronunciation” video by Gerard Nolst [ CITATION Tre12 \l
12298 ]. In this video, the author refers to a large number of examples of language inconsistencies
found in the English language as explained above.

Another fact that we can notice in English language is about its accents as the same way in
Spanish. For instance, supposed we can isolate a random conversation group from each English-
speaking country to notice the differences in English accents that come from each own mother
tongue, as a result of this experiment we would realize the idiomatic variations that exist in the
English language as the same way they are being on Spanish. The above ideas are collected in the
video "Accents in English - Additional lesson on the pronunciation of vowel sounds" by Jennifer
Recio Lebedev [ CITATION Leb11 \l 12298 ]. In this video the author tries to show how the
way in which American people talk is different faced New Zealander and British speech, just as
occurs on Spanish language with Ecuadorian and Venezuelan speech.

Despite the idiomatic variations that exist in the English language, in order to establish
patterns that allow establishing similarities, phonology, as a science in charge of studying the sound
system of the language in general, indicates a “cluster “as a group of the same or similar elements
gathered or occurring closely together [ CITATION Mal13 \l 12298 ]. There two types of
clusters, vowels and consonants clusters, the second type represents a problem for the students,
because in their mother tongue they do not have these consonant combinations. In the same way it
occurs with /s/ sound in initial position. For instance, in Spanish does not exist “s” in initial
position, so when a Spanish speaker speaks words like <street> and <Spain> they add a /es/ sound
instead of /s/. As a consequence, the possible combinations with /s/ sound like /sl/, /st/, /sk/, etc., do
not exist in Spanish language. On the video “S Consonant Clusters - American English
Pronunciation”, published on YouTube web platform by Rachel’s English Channel [ CITATION
Eng13 \l 12298 ], the reasons why this occurs are mentioned in more detail.

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 UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DEL ECUADOR
Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias de la Educación
Carrera de Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros – INGLÉS
CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS
MSc. Pablo Mejía Maldonado, Esp.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The similarities between common clusters sounds allow to identify English rhythm
patterns which are used to improve the pronunciation of the language, at the same time its
developed the listening skill, it means, the English learning as a foreign language becomes in a
systematically and organized process using phonological cognitive structures like epistemological
bases of language teaching. The above ideas are showing up on the video "Master Spoken English -
Rhythm Patterns and Consonant Clusters - Bd Pt Bz Ps -" [ CITATION Pha14 \l 12298 ], by
Khuong Pham Channel on YouTube web platform, where through short paragraphs, it is
appreciated the common sound clusters in the words which make it up.

The above ideas allow to introduce a basic notion about what transcription is, and what is
the utility that we can retrieve of it, that is, there is a system notation that represents utterances or
partial utterances of a language pronounced by people in general as said in [ CITATION Mal13 \l
12298 ]. Nevertheless, when we refer to transcription as a tool inside to contrastive phonology
through which the learners from English as a foreign language can improve their communicative
skills as listening, writing, reading and speaking. This last one, is the most important part of it,
because the English oral expression means a huge linguistic background knowledges not only from
mother tongue, because, the basics grammar structures, can be applied in most languages at the
world. But, there is a specifically aspect that we can notice, the transcription depends on the level of
detail abstraction and as consequence appears two kinds of transcription: Phonemic or Broad
Transcription and Phonetic or Narrow Transcription. The first one, do not considerer details, that is,
Broad Transcription is the notation that represents utterances of a language by indicating only the
significant and underlying sounds that make up a word. On the other hand, Narrow Transcription
captures as many as possible details which are represented buy the diacritics provided in the IPA.

According to the development achieved so far, a turn is required to go inside through

along narrow and broad transcription objectives, it means, from this point the transcription becomes
a fundamental tool in the learning a foreign language, English in this case. Eventually the people do
not think about how the other people speak their language as well as they want, but that is it because
the same people do not ask themselves how they can do that using their mother tongue.

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 UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DEL ECUADOR
Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias de la Educación
Carrera de Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros – INGLÉS
CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS
MSc. Pablo Mejía Maldonado, Esp.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In order to board on the last-mentioned idea, a vowels topic takes place due to the
relevance of it in the learning a foreign language. Generally, the whole languages in the world use
two written symbols which means, the first one as consonant and the other as vowel. The last one,
refers to sounds which people make in a voiced way. We can notice that there some differences
between Spanish vowels sounds and English vowels sounds due to these languages (Spanish has 5
vowels sounds while English the number of vowels sounds easily exceeds 15), from phonetic
perspective, are a phonetic language as in Spanish case and non-phonetic as English. So, vowels can
be represented as a chart which set patterns of utterances vowels sounds as Spanish and English.
The contrastive linguistic allows it, so there are three vowel types in function of the position of the
articulatory organs in production of vowels (front, central and back vowels).

However as said in the above paragraph, the first vowel sounds referred are the front
vowels, these are for Spanish: <i>, <e>, and for English case are: <iy>, <I>, <ey>, <Ɛ>, <æ>. Now,
in order to focus it towards English learning as a foreign language, these English vowels sounds do
not exist in Spanish, or at least doesn’t exist as simple sound, so the Spanish speakers transfers their
known Spanish vowel sounds in order to deal with this new vowel sounds. Furthermore, as a
contrastive analysis, there are vowel qualities which allow to identify English vowel sounds from
the Spanish vowel sounds, it deals with muscle tension, it means, from a contrastive linguistics
analysis, the Spanish vowels sounds are tense, which refers how the face muscles works on the
pronounce the sound, as well in English whole vowel sounds are lax.

As the same way, the central vowel sounds that we can advertise between Spanish and
English languages are: <a>, <ə>, as voiced, simple, low-central and lax English vowel sound, but
there is a difference with lip shape to pronounce the vowel sounds, the contrast is about if the
sound is pronounced with rounded or neutral lip shape. So, for Spanish the only central vowel is:
<a>, and as it was said before this vowel sound characterizes by neutral lip shape and tense muscle
tension faced at neutral lip shape and lax muscle tension from central English vowels.

The last vowel sounds that we are going to explain is related with back vowels sounds. In
English the back vowels sound which exist are: <uw>, <ow> and <ɔ>. As the same way in the
previous contrast those English back vowel sounds have a concrete difference concerns Spanish
back vowel sounds. The contrast dimensions that we can notice on it are related firstly with the type

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 UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DEL ECUADOR
Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias de la Educación
Carrera de Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros – INGLÉS
CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS
MSc. Pablo Mejía Maldonado, Esp.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
of sound, simple as <ɔ> or complex as <uw> and after that it is abled to see the other contrast
dimensions about muscle tension and lip shape. So, the idea can be built about this analysis is, all
Spanish vowel sounds are tense due to muscle tension what are pronounced while English vowel
sounds are lax and most of cases complex as this back vowel sounds <uw>. Finally, it’s worth to
say that the linguistic contrastive analysis opens many possibilities through along teaching and
learning process of a language, where teachers must use it as main tool over English teaching as
foreign language in their classes, in order to improve the most important aspects from a
communicative fact, that deals with: listening, writing, reading and speaking skills.

The vowel sounds that we can see such as English and as Spanish lingual record can be mix
among them in order to form diphthongs, which means combinations of two vowel sounds as well
in English and Spanish, these combinations refers a two kind of them only in Spanish, that is, rising
diphthongs and falling diphthongs. A rising diphthong is formed by a closed vowel sound added
open vowel sound as <io>, <ia>, <ie>. On the other hand, the falling diphthongs are formed by the
reciprocal manner of the former idea, it means, opened vowel sound added closed vowel sound as
mentioned above. Nevertheless, the Spanish diphthongs can be identified as vowel clusters on
English, for instance, /ey/ English vowel sound it’s formed by opened vowel sound /e/ added closed
vowel sound as /i/ whose phonemic notation changes according to the language transcription
necessities. Finally, English only has five Diphthongs which are: /ey/, /ow/, /ay/, /aw/, /ɔy/.

As a conclusion of all this analysis about contrastive linguistic, the main idea is related how
people can add to their own language record the sounds which being from another language, in
order to learn it. So, I think the correct way through which English teaching must developed, should
considerer the phonological aspects, just notice that the children spend six years at school and other
six at high school but when they finish the basic education and expect for entering into a university,
along their curriculum they need a language sufficiency as a requirement and at this moment they
realice that all of their knowledges related English are not enough for taking an exemption exam.
Thus, as summary we can see how it has been wasted twelve years learning a language.

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 UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DEL ECUADOR
Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Ciencias de la Educación
Carrera de Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros – INGLÉS
CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS
MSc. Pablo Mejía Maldonado, Esp.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bibliography
English, R. (2013, January 23). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2NDsQgbL-Y
Lebedev, J. R. (2011, March 27). English Accents - Bonus Lesson on the Pronunciation of Vowel
Sounds. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRLpHsN6RL0
Maldonado, P. M. (2013). Contrastive Phonology. Quito: CLASSROOM Publishing.
Pham, K. (2014, September 10). Master Spoken English - Rhythm Patterns and Consonant Clusters
- Bd Pt Bz Ps -. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Mi1Bfe45M
Trenité, G. N. (2012, April 5). The Chaos of English Pronunciation. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1edPxKqiptw

Carlos Díaz Ortiz

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Professor Scholar