CRITICAL BOOK REVIEW

“VOWEL SOUND”

Lecturer : Yani Lubis

Arranged By :

Nisya Rahmaini Marpaung

NIM :

Program Study : Pronunciation

Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teaching Training

State Islamic University of North Sumatera

2019

PREFACE

First at all, thank to Allah SWT. So give me chance to the writer for finishing
assignment entittled “”. And never forget shalawat and salam to our prophet Muhammad
Saw. Who has given us from the stupidity to the cleverness. And I would like to say”
thanks’’to my beloved lecturer, Yani Lubis as lecturer in Intensive Reading because that
always teaches us and give much knowledge about how to practice English well.

We as a student in State Islamic University Of North Sumatra can work more

professional by using English as the second language whatever we done. So that to
achieve it we must to study more that every time we can do it. The last, I hope this is can
be benefits for us. Thank you.

1. INTRODUCTION

A. Books Identity

Title : Better English Pronunciation.

Author(s) : J.D.O’Cornnor

Publisher : Willey Publishing, Inc.

Year : First published 1967 Second edition 1980

Language : English

ISBN : 223-478890-221
 BACKGROUND

 About this book :

Each of the 14 chapters begins with one or more paragraphs which are intended
to tell briefly the content of the chapter. Each ends with a summary, which briefly
reviews the content of the chapter and also tries to show the im- portance of
what has been treated, or to describe some problems in analyzing not taken up
within the chapter. The last section, called Notes, suggests readings in other
books for those who want to extend their exploration of these topics.
Linguistics, like every academic discipline, has its own technical terms, and
some of them are used in this book. These terms are in bold print when they are
first introduced. Some of the terms, such as suffix, may already be familiar to
you; some, like allophone, are likely to be new; and some will probably be
familiar to you but you will find that they are used here in a more special- ized
way; accent, assimilation, and stop are examples. The Glossary provides
definitions or explanations, with examples.
Description of pronunciations also requires the use of special symbols, which are
introduced from chapter 2 on. As with technical terms, several of these symbols
will be unfamiliar to you and some – ordinary letters of the Roman alphabet –
you will already know. But every symbol will consistently have a specific value,
always representing the same speech sound or phoneme. Keep in mind that we
are dealing with speech, not spelling, and that English spelling does not
consistently represent what people pronounce. When a symbol – one or two
letters – appears between slant lines, it represents an English phoneme; for
example, /k/ represents the phoneme that occurs at the beginning of the words
cat and kitten and in the middle of second, chicken, token, and liquor. Symbols in
square brackets represent speech sounds or phones; cold and scold both have
the phoneme /k/ but the phoneme is pronounced with aspiration, [kh], in cold but
without aspiration, [k], in scold. A tick (l) is used to mark the stressed syllable of a
word (the syllable following the tick); for example, lorigin, olriginal, origilnality.
Other special signs are explained as they are introduced
Each chapter contains some exercises. These have different names but the
names always appear in small capitals, like this. Most exercises have just one
answer for each question or task; in some cases there is more than one correct
 answer; and in other cases the questions asked are mainly intended to introduce
a discussion. Each exercise is followed by a feedback, sometimes right after the
exercise, sometimes at the end of the chapter. Try to do each exercise by
yourself before looking at the feedback.
If you are a native speaker of English, you may find that some of the de- scriptive
statements and some of the illustrative utterances do not agree with what you
say. This is inevitable. There is a limit to the variation that can be dealt with in a
single book. While we cannot deal in detail with every variety of the language, we
hope to provide a basis for understanding what kinds of variation exist.

Chapter 5, page 79

Vowels are made by voiced air passing through different mouth-

shapes; the differences in the shape of the mouth are caused by different

positions of the tongue and of the lips. It is easy to see and to feel the

lip diffeiences, but it is very dificule to see or to feel the tongue

differences, and that is why a detailed description of the tongue position

for a certain vowel does not really help us to pronounce it well.

Vowels must be learned by listening and imitating: I could tell you

that the English vowel />:/ as in saw is made by rounding the lips and

by placing the back of the tongue in a position mid-way between the

highest possible and the lowest possible position, but it would be much

more heipful ifl could simply say the sound for you and get you to

imitate me. Since I cannot do this I must leave the listening and

imitating to you. So spend some of your listening time on the vowels.

AsI said at the beginning of chapter 3 English speakers vary quite a

lot in their vowel sounds; the vowek used by an Australian, an Ameri-

can and a Scotsman in the word see are all different, but they are all

recognized quite casily as /i:/. So the actual sounds that you use for the

English vowels are not so important as the differences that you make

between them. There must be differences between the vowels, and that is

what we will concentrate on

5.1 Simple vowels

i:, 1,e

In your language you will have a vowel which is like the English /i:

in see, and one which is like the English /a/ in sun, and almost certainly

one which is like the English le/ in get. They may not be exactly the

same as the English vowels you hear in listening to English, but they

will do for a starting-point. Say the words bi:d bead and bed bed sevetal

times and listen carefully to the sound of the vowels; then try to say

a vowel which is betuween the other two, and different from both, not

bi:d and not bed, but... bid- that will be the vowel in bid. You need

2. COMPREHENSIVE OF THEORY
 Title : Better English Pronunciation.

Author(s) : J.D.O’Cornnor

Publisher : Willey Publishing, Inc.

Year : First published 1967 Second edition 1980

Language : English

ISBN : 223-478890-221

 Advantages
 This book can be a reference for prospective students to learn how the strategies for
how to carry out a good learning process.

 This book contains many references such as the notion of the curriculum, which
contains many opinions from experts, so that readers further expand their horizons.
  In this book there are many drawing diagrams, which will attract the attention of many
readers.

 At the end of this book contains an appendix to the preparation of the curriculum, with
which students will know how to prepare the curriculum, which certainly will increase
their knowledge.

 This book writes a summary at the end of each chapter, which makes it easier for
students to understand the contents of the book without having to read the entire
contents of the book.

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 Writing the title on the cover of this book uses clear capital letters and is enlivened with
neutral colors, making the reader like it and getting interested.

  The discussion in the book is very structured so that the mindset of the reader
becomes directed.
z
 Disadvantages

 The language used by the author in this book is too heavy, so the reader needs to find
the meaning of the words used by the writer.

 This book has 305 pages thick, making the reader feel bored, because the material is
endless.

    The images used in this book, there are no little additions to make it more attractive.
  This book also only explains the learning model diagrams, but does not state what the
model itself means.
      The words in this book use a lot of English, it will make readers who do not know
English feel confused.
    This book explains more theory than applying this theory in the real world
 (8)

CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A. Conclusion

The conclusion from the text is there are kind of exercise that students have to
do before read, while read, after read and how read. Before read, students have to do
Topic and Text test, that to check students know some relevant vocabulary, knowledge
about the kind of text and use information from pictures, diagrams,headings, and the
title to help the students to predict. While read, students have to do Purpose–First
Reading & Checking Understanding-Second Reading that to give students reasons for
reading, so they know what to look for before they read and choose the appropriate
reading style. Read the text again to help student get at the meaning and interpret what
is there. So we can get some information by explanation from the chapter by this book.

B. Suggestion

Don't give too much an explanation to make the reader bored. but make a
clear but clear explanation to understand. They gain knowledge but they forget to learn the
practical approaches most of the time also make some students will be bored about them.
(9)