UNIT 3

PHONOLOGY

The concept of phonology is the study of sound features that we use to communicate in a language.Those features include phoneme, word stress, sentence stress and intonation. Analyzing each one we have that a phoneme is considered a small unit of sound that helps to differentiate the meaning in a language also a phoneme distinguishes one word from another e.g./s/-/sh/ in sock and shock (Spratt, Pulverness, and, Williams,2011). The phonetic chart represents each phoneme in a language and it is divided into three categories vowels. diphthongs, and consonants. Then, the word stress is the syllable in which it puts more force of voice and it is represented by this sign ' or also could be underline e.g. important. On the other hand, the sentence stress is a useful process to understand the real meaning of the sentence.Commonly one word in a sentence has primary or main stress that indicates the word is really important for the speaker and the other words could not be relevant and it has secondary stress. The last feature is intonation, which is important because it shows the meaning through the changes of the level of the voice. According to Roberson (1946) is crucial to diagnose the legitimate pronunciation in order to evaluate not only the different difficulties but also the needs that learners have to improve. For that reason including real models of listening in classroom promote the real pronunciation. Also including phonetic transcription on the wall is a good strategy so the learner can look them every day(Hayes,2011).

References:

ü  Sprat, M. Pulverness, A. & Williams, M. (2011). The TKT course. Modules 1,2,3. Second Edition.

ü  Hayes, B. (2011). Introductory phonology (Vol. 32). John Wiley & Sons.