GST 111

COMMUNICATION
IN ENGLISH
PEN RESOURCE UNIVERSITY (PRU) GOMBE,
GOMBE STATE, NIGERIA
WEEK ONE: LANGUAGE SKILLS AND
ENGLISH SOUND PATTERNS
 Defining the key terms: communication, language
 Communication is the process by which information, meanings and
feelings are shared by persons through the ezchange of verbal and
non-verbal messages (Brooks and Heath, 1985, p. 8).
 Language Is the verbal aspect of communicative ezchange. It is a
structured system of communication, which is verbal and human, with its
grammatical, semantic and phonological structures.
 Language skills are the four aspects of language that are manipulated
for effective verbal communication. These are, in order of natural
sequence: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
 Skills of Oracy: listening and
speaking
 These two are acquired naturally in a setting where human beings live.
Hardly is any formal training required. Any body with a sound mind and
body will be able to listen and speak in the language of the
environment where he/she resides.
 Listening: a mental activity that is practiced right from the earliest stage
of human development. Thus, the ability of a child to speak depends
on their listening capacity.
 Steil (1991, p. 203) defines listening as “the comple , learned human
process of sensing, interpreting , evaluating, storing and responding to
oral messages”
 As Students you should know that listening is key to your progress a you
need to pay close attention to, and attempt to understand, the verbal
and the non-verbal signals being emitted by lecturers in the course of
their delivering lectures.
Oracy…cont’d
 Speaking: this is a meaningful verbal signals emitted by humans in
the course of day-to-day communication with fellow humans.
 Speaking skills require practice in enunciation, projection,
confidence, fluency, coherence, all of which are required in the
following forms of speech: impromptu, prepared, memorized and
eztemporaneous
 Impromptu speech: done at the spur of the moment. Speakers are
given short notices to speak on a topic or just to “say something” to an
audience (eg at social and political gatherings).
 Prepared speech: written speeches for presentation. The words are
ezpected to be presented verbatim (political speeches during special
occasions in the history of nations).
 Memorised speech: originally written but eventually committed to
memory.
 Eztemporaneous speech: a well-researched speech where the speaker
relies on notes during presentation with the bulk of the ezplanation
coming from his head (this lecturer, for instance).
 Skills of literacy: reading and
writing
 Reading: using the eyes to peruse what’s scribbled or typed on a
page. What the eye has taken in is ezpected to be processed by
the brain for comprehension to take place.
 Reading may be fast or slow depending on the purpose of the
reader. A researcher tends to be slower in reading than somebody
who reads a novel for pleasure! Based on the purpose, reading may
be one of three major types: skimming, scanning and
intensive/critical reading
 Skimming: reading a tezt quickly in order to get the main gist or have a
general idea of the content of the tezt (e.g., newspaper, magazines,
novels for pleasure reading, social media post).
 Scanning: this is paying close attention to specific parts of a tezt as is the
practiced during reading comprehension ezams.
Literacy…cont’d

 Intensive/critical reading: careful attention is given to the whole body of

a tezt, with the reader even reading between the lines. This is necessary
in the case of studying for ezams because the student usually doesn’t
know from which part the ezam questions are coming.
Literacy…cont’d
 Writing: the most tasking of all the communication skills as it requires
a lot of careful planning so that the actual thought of the writer
effectively communicated.
 Any written tezt is supposed to be coherent and unified
 writing can be narrative, descriptive, ezpository and argumentative
depending on what method of development is dominant.
 Irrespective of the method of development, writings differ in terms of
their forms (the stylistic features that set one form of writing from
another); hence, we have the following inter alia:
 Letter
 Report
 Minutes
 Memo
 Instruction manuals
Forms…cont’d
 Announcements
 News bulletins
 Poem (ballad, elegy, sonnet, free verse, metric…)
 drama tezts
 Novels
 Short stories
 Academic writing
 Police eztract
 Police FIR
 Court affidavit
 Application forms
 etc
 English sound patterns
 English sound system: these are the 44 (some scholars say 49) sounds
of the BBC English variety which are used to form meaningful
utterances in English. 24 are consonants, 20 are vowels. Note: English
sounds are egressive.
 Consonants: sounds produced with the air flow (stream) obstructed
at some points. Contrary to what obtains in the alphabet system,
these are 24 NOT 19!
 Vowels: sounds produced without any turbulence as a result of the
free flow of the airstream. Contrary to what obtains in the alphabet
system, these are 20 NOT 5!
 Syllables/words: these are the patterning of consonant and vowel
sounds that is allowed in English. Syllables in turn are allowed to
pattern in a way that produces English words that are polysyllabic.
 Spelling-sound incongruence
 This was alluded to when defining consonants and vowels. Here
specific instances of spelling-sound differences will be given. Four have
been identified below:
 Same sound; different letters: /i/ as a=village; e=pretty; o=women; u=busy;
c=cup; k=kind; ch=Christ; q=queen
 Same letter; different sound: man; many; make; machine; gun; gem;
garage; cup; city
 Silent letters: the letters are not pronounced at all: most e-ending words;
knee, calm, debt; damn; coup, campaign; psychology
 Eztra sounds: sounds pronounced but which have no representation in
writing: /j/ union; Eunice; ewe; /w/ once
 This incongruity makes it mandatory to have a writing system that could
solve the problem identified above. The solution is found in the IPA
(International Phonetic Alphabet).
 The IPA (International Phonetic
Alphabet)
 These are the symbols used to represent both consonants and vowels. Lets start
with the consonants:
 Plosives: /p, b; t, d; k, g/
 Affricates: /tʃ dʒ/
 Fricatives: /f, v; θ, ð; s, z; ʃ, ʒ; h/
 Nasals: /m, n, ŋ/
 Lateral: /l/
 Glides/approximates: /w, r, j/
 consonants
 Symbol Example Description
 /p/ pin voiceless, bilabial, plosive
 /b/ bin voiced, bilabial, plosive
 /t/ tin voiceless, alveolar, plosive
 /d/ din voiced, alveolar, plosive
 /k/ kin voiceless, velar, plosive
 /g/ gun voiced, velar, plosive
 ------
 /tʃ/ chin voiceless, post-alveolar, affricate
 /dʒ/ gin voiced, post-alveolar, affricate
 ------
Consonants…cont’d
 /f/ fin voiceless, labio-dental, fricative
 /v/ van voiced, labio-dental, fricative
 /Θ/ thin voiceless, dental, fricative
 /ð/ this voiced, dental, fricative
 /s/ sin voiceless, alveolar, fricative
 /z/ zinc voiced, alveolar, fricative
 /ʃ/ ship voiceless, post-alveolar, fricative
 /ʒ/ measure voiced, post-alveolar, fricative
 /h/ house voiceless, glottal, fricative
 ----------------
 /m/ mice voiced, bilabial, nasal
 /n/ nice voiced, alveolar, nasal
 /ŋ/ king voiced, velar, nasal
Consonants…cont’d
 /l/ leap voiced, alveolar, lateral
 ------
 /w/ weep voiced, bilabial, approximant
 /r/ reap voiced, alveolar, approximant
 /j/ you voiced, palatal, approximant