9. DESCRIPTION OF THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM.

MODELS AND TECHNIQUES TO

LEARN PRONUNCIATION. PERCEPTION, DISCRIMINATION AND PRODUCTION OF SOUNDS,
STRESS, RHYTHM AND INTONATION. PHONETIC CORRECTION.

1. INTRODUCTION

2. PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

3. DESCRIPTION OF THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM

3.1. SEGMENTAL FEATURES

3.2. SUPRASEGMENTAL FEATURES

4. MODELS AND TECHNIQUES TO LEARN PRONUNCIATION

4.1. MODELS

4.2. TECHNIQUES

5. PERCEPTION, DISCRIMINATION AND PRODUCTION OF SOUNDS, STRESS, RHYTHM AND

INTONATION

5.1. SOUNDS

5.2. STRESS AND RHYTHM

5.3. INTONATION

6. PHONETIC CORRECTION

6.1. PROBLEMS FOR SPANISH SPEAKERS

6.2. CORRECTION TECHNIQUES

7. CONCLUSION

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. INTRODUCTION

In order to master a language, we need to understand their native speakers and also to make ourselves understood.
To do so, it is essential to discriminate and produce properly the sounds of the foreign language. P ronunciation is
the first and most important aspect that native speakers notice during a conversation. Knowing grammar and
vocabulary is important but useless if the speaker is unable to pronounce those structures or words correctly.

Our current legislation, RD 126/2014 where the grounding of corresponding teaching methods at Primary stage
are established, also states that the final outcome in the area of foreign languages is the development of

1
communicative competence in students. This communicative competence is composed of various
subcompetences. One of those is linguistic competence that is the ability to recognise and formulate correct
messages through the use of phonetic, semantic and morph syntactic elements.

Based on this view, we will start by clarifying the difference between Phonetics and Phonology. Afterwards we
will describe the English phonological system, paying attention to both segmental and suprasegmental features.
Then we will deal with the teaching of pronunciation, focusing on the main models and techniques to learn
pronunciation and some activities to work on it. Finally we will concentrate on phonetic correction, analysing the
main problems for Spanish speakers and the correction techniques that must be used by the English teacher.

We deal with an essential topic since correct pronunciation contributes to efficient communication, and this is the
goal of learning languages in Primary Education. The Foreign Language Curriculum for Primary Education
highlights the significance of this topic by including in its objectives, blocks of contents and assessment criteria
the identification and production of both segmental and suprasegmental features of language.

2. PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

Phonetics and Phonology are concerned with the study of how speech happens. Phonetics studies the physical
aspects of speech processes. The unit of Phonetics is the sound. It has two branches:
- Articulatory Phonetics: It describes the way in which different sounds are produced by the organs of
articulation.
- Acoustic Phonetics: It is concerned with the way in which sounds are perceived by the human ear.

In contrast, Phonology deals with the sounds made by the speakers of a given language, and the way they are used
to express meanings. It also deals with prosodic features. The unit of Phonology is the phoneme. It is the smallest
contrastive unit that might produce a change in meaning. English has forty-four phonemes.

3. DESCRIPTION OF THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM

In this section we will attempt a definition of both segmental and suprasegmental features. The segmental features
are the vowels and the consonants, and the suprasegmental features are stress, rhythm and intonation.

SEGMENTAL FEATURES

The segmental features are the contrastive sound elements that can be identified in speech. Sounds are produced
by an air stream from the lungs, which goes through the larynx and influences the vocal chords.

Vowels are the sounds made by voiced air passing through the mouth without being obstructed. They are
described with reference to three criteria:
1. The height of the tongue: They can be close (when the tongue is up in the mouth), half-close, open (when
the tongue is down in the mouth) or half-open.
2. The part of the tongue that is raised: Front, central or back.
3. The shape of the lips: They can be rounded or spread.

The characteristics of the twelve English vowels are:

2
 / iː/ (tree): Front, close, spread
/ ɪ / (sit): Front, half-close, spread
/ e / (pen): Front, half-open, spread
/ æ / (man): Front, half-open, spread
/ ɑː/ (car): Back, open, spread
/ ɒ / (box): Back, open, rounded
A diphthong is a glide from one vowel position to another. There are eight diphthongs:
/ eɪ / Late
/ aɪ / High
/ ɔɪ / Noise
/ aʊ / Town
3
/ ɔː / (ball): Back, half-open, rounded
/ ʊ / (full): Back, half-close, rounded
/ uː / (food): Back, close, rounded
/ ʌ / (come): Central, half-open, spread
/ ɜː / (word): Central, half-close, spread
/ ə / (about): Central, half-open, spread
/ əʊ / Phone
/ ɪə / Here
/ eə / Wear
/ ʊə / Pure
Consonants are the sounds that are produced by blocking the air stream from the lungs. They can be described
with reference to three criteria:
1. Action of the vocal chords: Voiced consonants are produced when the vocal chords vibrate. If there is
no vibration they are voiceless.
2. The place of articulation: It refers to where the closure takes place:
a. Plosive: A complete closure is made in the mouth. Then the air is released explosively.
b. Affricate: A complete closure is made in the mouth. Then the air is released relatively slowly.
c. Fricative: Two vocal organs come so close that the movement of air between them causes
audible friction.
d. Nasal: A complete closure is made in the mouth. The air escapes through the nose.
e. Lateral: a partial closure is made in the mouth. The air escapes around the sides of the closure.
f. Approximant: There is a narrowing of the vocal tract, with enough space for air to flow without
friction.
3. The manner of articulation: It refers to the type of obstruction at the place of articulation: bilabial,
labiodental, dental, alveolar, palato-alveolar, palatal, velar and glottal.

The consonant system of English is conventionally presented on a grid with manner of articulation shown
horizontally and place of articulation vertically. Voiced and voiceless pairs are in the same cells of the grid, with
the voiceless consonant of each pair to the left.

Palato-
Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
alveolar
Plosive p, b t, d k, g
Affricate tʃ, dƷ
Fricative f, v θ, ð s, z ʃ, Ʒ h
Nasal m n ŋ
Lateral l
Approximant w r j

Everything explained previously should be taught in the classroom through different activities that involves the
practice of the different sounds.
In addition, CONSONANT CLUSTERS needs lots of practice, since they are not normally found in Spanish
words, and children are not familiar with their pronunciation. I am referring to words like asks, or changed
where we need to pronounce three consonants in a row (en fila) without any medial vowel.
Students also need to be trained to pronounce consonants in final position, in words like LAST, MONTH, etc,
because they are not used to pronouncing these sounds in final position in their mother tongue.

SUPRASEGMENTAL FEATURES

The suprasegmental features are stress, rhythm and intonation. They operate above the level of individual
segments and influence the meaning of chunks of speech.

STRESS

Stress is the oral emphasis of certain syllables or words. Stress in English is not graphic but tonic. In the case of
words the speaker has no choice of which syllable to stress, but at sentence level s/he can stress words to change
the meaning of the sentence. For example, I expect you to bring John (it’s John, not other) and I expect you to
bring John (it’s me, not other).

Although most English words are single-stressed, words with prefixes and numbers (thirteen, fourteen) have
two stresses. Unstressed syllables are said quickly and lightly. Stress also has a grammatical function: to
distinguish nouns and adjectives (which have first syllable stress) from verbs (which have second syllable
stress), for example ‘contrast and con’trast.
At sentence level, certain words will be stressed and others will be unstressed. Content words (nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs, demonstratives...) are usually stressed. Grammatical words which aren’t essential for the
communication of a message are not stressed. However, as we said before, the speaker can stress specific parts
of an utterance to convey meaning.

RHYTHM

It is the occurrence of stressed syllables at regular intervals of time. English has a stressed-timed rhythm:
stressed syllables tend to be equidistant in time, no matter how many unstressed syllables come in between.
Other languages, such as Spanish, have a syllable-timed rhythm. All syllables tend to occur at regular time
intervals.

Native English speakers frequently use schwa in unstressed syllables: reducing vowels enables them to speed
through unstressed syllables. This is how the particular rhythm of English is achieved. Speakers can also vary
the rhythm to convey other meanings: urgency, emphasis...

INTONATION

Intonation is the change in pitch of our voice. It is realized in tone units (sequences of stressed and unstressed
syllables). Intonation has two basic functions: to indicate grammatical meaning in a similar way as punctuation
in written language (grammatical function) and to express a wide range of attitudinal meanings (emotional
function).

There are four main intonation patterns:

1. Falling intonation: Statements, wh-questions, commands, routines...
2. Rising intonation: Yes/no questions, friendly greetings, polite requests...
3. Falling-rising intonation: Warnings, uncertainty...
4. Rising-falling intonation: Impatient attitude.

4. MODELS AND TECHNIQUES TO LEARN PRONUNCIATION

MODELS

The choice of a certain model of English when teaching pronunciation is a matter of great importance, because
English is spoken world-wide and therefore has different spoken forms and accents. There are two main basic
models: British Received Pronunciation (RP) and American. The preference for one or the other tends to be
traditional or geographical: European countries teach British RP, while in Asia and South America the American
model is preferred. A convergence of RP and General American is resulting in a new register called “Mid-
Atlantic” equally acceptable to Britons and Americans.

British English has always had regional pronunciations for historical and geographical reasons. However, for the
last five centuries, one regional accent began to acquire social prestige. This model of pronunciation was called
British Received Pronunciation (RP). It became a sign of position in society since it was the accent of educated
Southern English people. RP has become the form of pronunciation most commonly described in books on
phonetics and is usually taught to foreigners.

In the early stages it is advisable to teach students a good model of English such as British RP. As they gain
confidence in their productive competence, they can be gradually exposed to other important regional types, like
American English. The teacher’s own pronunciation must reach the highest level possible. As Grimson says,
young pupils will imitate a bad pronunciation as exactly as they will a good one. The teacher must speak clearly,
facing the students so they can see his/her mouth and facial expression.

TECHNIQUES
According to Hubbard, pronunciation must be an integral part of an English teaching programme from the early
stages, just like the teaching of structures and vocabulary. Pronunciation work must not be restricted to
particular sessions; it is better to do five minutes of speech work every day than one long session sometimes.
Teachers must bear in minds that pronunciation practice might be boring and repetitive if it is done for a long
time.

A basic approach to teach pronunciation follows an order that progresses from the smallest unit of speech
(phonemes) to the word (stress) and finally to connected speech, incorporating features such as rhythm and
pronunciation. As we will see in the next section, learning pronunciation has two phases: learning to
discriminate English sounds, stress, rhythm and intonation and learning to produce these aspects in an
intelligible way. Therefore, listening is the first step in the learning process of pronunciation. Pupils can listen to
the teacher or to a model on tape, CD or video.

Now we are going to concentrate on the techniques used to work on pronunciation in some foreign language
teaching methods. The Direct Method emphasizes oral communication, therefore pronunciation is important.
The most common technique is the repetition of sounds, words and sentences.

The Audio-Lingual Method gives great importance to precise native-like pronunciation, which is practised
from the beginning. The teacher introduces a dialogue by modelling it, establishes some drills and corrects
mispronunciation.

In the Silent Way, the language learning process begins with the study of foreign sounds associated with
colours. The teacher doesn’t model the sounds, but uses gestures and instructions to show the students how to
modify their mother tongue sounds. Therefore, language is not learned by repeating after a model; students need
to develop their own ‘inner criteria’ for correctness.

Human Computer is a technique used in Community Language Teaching. A student chooses a part of a
previously worked transcript to practice pronunciation, and the teacher repeats the phrase as often as the student
wants to practice it, without correcting mispronunciation. The student self-corrects as s/he tries to imitate the
teacher’s model.

5. LEARNING TECHNIQUES. PERCEPTION, DISCRIMINATION AND PRODUCTION OF

SOUNDS, INTONATION, RHYTHM AND STRESS

At the listening stage, students must perceive and discriminate sounds, stress, rhythm and intonation. The
teacher must devise ear-training activities, since the students must be taught to listen. Following on from
recognition and discrimination, the teacher will devise productive exercises. At the beginning, they will be
based on repetition. Turning repetition into a fun activity can be done in a variety of ways: playing with volume,
experimenting with tone and speed, playing with rhyme... Now we are going to suggest some activities that can
be used to teach and learn the segmental and suprasegmental features of language. Although they are classified
into categories, exercises in which all the features are integrated are desirable.

SOUNDS

In order to work on the perception and discrimination of sounds, the teacher can prepare a list of minimal pairs.
S/he reads one pair or says the same word twice, and asks the students whether the two words are the same or
different. Younger pupils can draw the word they hear. Another activity is odd man out; the teacher reads a list
of four words, all except one containing the same sound, and students say which the different word is.

The next stage is the production of sounds. First of all, the teacher will demonstrate the way in which the sounds
are made, showing what must be happening to the lips, tongue and teeth. Students listen and repeat the model.
This can be done through different types of drills. Raps, songs, chants and tongue twisters are very useful to
practise pronunciation in context and in a highly motivating way.

RHYTHM AND STRESS

Clapping hands is a simple way to demonstrate the perception and discrimination of stressed syllables in words
or sentences. The stress can also be marked using symbols, for example large circles for stressed syllables and
small circles for unstressed syllables.

o 0 o 0 0 o o
Vocabulary Festival

An useful activity to practise the differences in the stress of words, could be classification of words into a table
according to the accent. (Según están acentuadas se colocarán en una columna u otra)

0 o o o0o o o 0

History Collecting
Animal

Regarding stress at sentence level, this should be learnt through dialogues, songs, rhymes, where the context
facilitates the comprehension of the speaker's attitude. To be a great communicator this classroom work should
never be left aside.

Newspaper headlines are particularly useful to work on stressed and unstressed words, since they are created by
reducing the message of a sentence to the key words, which are the stressed ones. Contrasting a headline with its
complete message highlights the stress patterns of English.

Clapping hands also allows us to work on the perception and discrimination rhythm since it is directly related to
stress. Children can clap the beats in songs and rhymes. Then, they can be asked to clap the beats in a sentence,
adding more and more syllables between claps. For example:

ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR / ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR / ONE and then TWO and then THREE
and then FOUR

When children are familiar with stress patterns in English, they can be asked to read out loud familiar dialogues
highlighting the words which they think are the most important parts of communication. Drills, raps, songs,
chants and tongue twisters are useful to work on the production of rhythm and stress too.

INTONATION

Children can demonstrate the perception and discrimination of pronunciation by moving their arms from high to
low to indicate the falling tone or vice-versa for the rise. They can also draw arrows to indicate the direction of
the intonation pattern. They might be asked to compare different intonations and reflect on the changes in
meaning.

Imitation of intonation patterns can go together with body movements or gestures. After students repeat a
sentence with different intonation patterns, they can be asked to compare the changes in meaning. Teachers can
suggest a role-play in which children adopt a role (Mr. Happy or Mr. Sad) and act out a short sketch,
emphasising their mood through intonation. Finally, children can be asked to say hello to different people
changing the intonation according to the interlocutor: a baby, a neighbour they don’t like, a friend they haven’t
seen in three years...

6. PHONETIC CORRECTION

Accurate pronunciation is not easily achieved just through exposure to the language. In the English classroom, a
number of problems might arise: the irregular relationship between pronunciation and spelling, failure to
discriminate the different sounds and therefore to imitate them, problems in oral communication due to poor
pronunciation, lack of confidence in the pupils... For all those reasons, the teaching of pronunciation must be
given a role in the English classroom.
In this line, our legislation establishes error correction as an important part of the teaching-leaning process. It
should be done in a coherent manner along with the objective of the activity being carried out by the students.

/****
If it deals with identifying sounds or producing sounds, it is essential to give the students adequate information
about its role and, if it is necessary, the activity should be interrupted to reflect on the error and produce the
correct model. But if it deals with a communication activity, it is not advisable to interrupt it because of errors
made in its realisation, since what is important here is managing to transmit the message. It doesn't mean that
the error must not be borne in mind. It is the role of the teacher to take note of the errors in order to be
reinforced and corrected in the following sessions.

In addition, the importance of involving the students in the correction process must be emphasised. To achieve
this, pair work or group work should be organised and the correction of phonetic errors by the own classmates
should be permitted. Reflection on phonetic production benefits both the student that corrects (it strengthens
his/her self-confidence), and the student that is corrected.

******///

There are usually three reasons behind pronunciation errors:

1. L1 Interference: Foreign learners of English have difficulty in identifying features in the spoken form
which are different from the ones in their first language. This leads to L1 interference, as the learners
substitute their nearest L1 form for the English one that they do not perceive properly.
2. Generalisation: Learners sometimes tend to wrongly generalise rules or apply them out of their limits.
The word bus is correctly pronounce / bʌs /, so some learners might say */ tʌ(r)n / instead of / tɜːn /
(turn) assuming that u must always be pronounced / ʌ /.
3. Influence of the written form: In many languages, spelling is closely connected to pronunciation, but
that is not the case of English. For example, i and o are not pronounced at all in the word
station /’steɪʃn /. This is hard for foreign students to perceive and imitate. Some Spanish students would
say */’steɪsion/.

COMMON PROBLEMS FOR SPANISH SPEAKERS

When teaching pronunciation, the teacher must be aware of difficult segmental and suprasegmental features of
the target language and concentrate on those that may cause low intelligibility. For Spanish students, the main
problems are:
1. Difficulty in distinguishing long and short vowels.
2. Substitution of the weak form / ə / by its spelling.
3. Confusion between the voiced and voiceless realization of sounds: /b/ and /v/.
4. / p, t, k / are not aspirated in the initial position.
5. / t / is dental in Spanish. In English it’s alveolar.
6. Difficulties in pronouncing long words with the stress on the first syllable (vegetables).
7. English derivates don’t follow the stress patterns of their roots (‘nation – nationali’zation).
8. Spanish rhythm is syllable-timed, while English rhythm is stressed-timed.
9. Spanish has a narrower pitch range than English.

CORRECTION TECHNIQUES
The teacher’s positive attitude towards errors is of crucial importance for the learner. Pronunciation mistakes
must be corrected at the presentation and practice stage, where accuracy is more important than fluency. At the
production stage, we will make note of the mistakes and use them as the basis of feedback. We must not correct
our pupils very often, otherwise they may lose self-confidence and feel discouraged, according to Krashen's
affective filter hyphotesis.

There are various techniques to indicate our pupils that they have made a mistake: asking them to repeat, asking
‘is that correct?’ or telling the pupil his/her response is incorrect and asking him/her to repeat it. Then, the
teacher will draw attention to the problematic sound or pattern and pronounce it in isolation. Finally, s/he will
explain how the sound/pattern is formed. If pronunciation problems remain, the teacher must make note of the
problem and make a short plan including discrimination and practise activities.

7. CONCLUSION

To conclude this chapter, we should emphasise that phonology is an important part of oral skills, as it affects
both listening-understand and speaking in an understandable way. By improving their English pronunciation and
use of stress, rhythm and intonation, our students will be more effective communicators, which is directly linked
to basic competence 1, linguistic competence, which is an importance competence regarding the English Area.
In our classroom, we frequently find reluctant attitudes in our students because of embarrassment, shyness or
simply a lack of motivation that involve difficulties in the learning-teaching of oral production. This, which
often happens in the mother tongue, is of grave concern in the English language. Therefore, we must use some
techniques and activities in order to overcome these problems and, as teachers, help our students to get a
necessary phonemic awareness of the foreign language.

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY

BREWSTER, J. et al. (2003): The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. Penguin English.
HARMER, J. (2003): The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman.
LARSEN-FREEMAN, D. (2003): Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford University Press.
VARELA, R. et al. (2003): All About Teaching English. Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces

ANEXOS

/*****
a mispronounced phoneme, either a consonant or a vowel, can often change the meaning of the word.

//**For example, if we pronounce feet with a Spanish /i/ an English listener will probably hear the word fit. If we
pronounce the word BATMAN referring to someone who is half-man half-bat with a Spanish T, which is softer than
English T, and English listener will perceive BAD MAN, which means something completely different.**//

Another reason in favour of phonetic training in the classroom is that there is some pattern of relationship between English
spelling and pronunciation.

//**A learner who pronounces the diphthong /ei/ in the words take, make, same, etc, intuitively knows that words with a +
consonant + final-e is pronounced with the diphthong /ei/ and will therefore pronounce words like crane (grua) or brake
(freno) correctly.**//

But perhaps the most important reason for phonetic training in the classroom is that “bad habits die hard”: If a child
internalizes an inaccurate or poor pronunciation of English, this pronunciation will be difficult to improve in the future.

3.1.“PHONEME” AND “LETTER”

it is convenient to make a distinction between “letter” and “phoneme”: A letter is one of the written symbols of the
alphabet: "a", "b", "c", etc, are letters. Gimson describes phoneme as "a sound of contrastive significance". The dictionary
defines the phoneme as: a member of the set of the smallest units of speech that serve to DISTINGUISH one utterance from
another in a language.
In English, there is no fixed correspondence between vowel letters and vowel phonemes. One vowel letter may represent
several vowel phonemes, we can see this if we compare the a's in father, fall, any, fat ; The u's in use, put, hut, or the i's
in wind, machine, bird

On the other hand, a vowel phoneme may be represented by two letters in written English. For example, the long i-sound
/i:/ can be represented by different vowel letter combinations as in meet, eat, receive. On the other hand a single letter often
represents a diphthong: /ou/ and /ai/, for example, may be represented by one letter: go, wild.

As a result of the above, the fact that a child has learnt to read in Spanish does not improve pronunciation of English words.
On the contrary it has a negative influence on pronunciation as it induces students to pronounce written words with the
wrong vowel in English. For example, pronouncing mOther with a Spanish /o/ instead of with an English / /, or
pronouncing cAt with a Spanish /a/ instead of an English / /.

*****////

////****** INTONATION
1) The falling tone is by far the most common. It is used to signal that a sentence is “finished”. It is also used to signal
imperatives, exclamations, wh-questions, Yes/No questions and tag questions: In a Yes/No question structure, if the
speaker uses a falling tone, we assume that he already knows the answer, or at least he is sure that he knows, and the
purpose of asking the question, as far as the speaker is concerned, is to put the answer on record. In the following exchange,
the speaker is sure to get a 'Yes' answer from the addressee:
a) Have you MET him? b) YES.

2) The low-rise tone is used in genuine 'Yes/No' questions where the speaker doesn’t know the answer.

3) high-rise is used when the speaker when the speaker is asking for a repetition or clarification, or indicating disbelief,
as in b) : a) She passed her DRIving test. b) She PASSED? (disbelief)
4) The fall-rise intonation normally expresses surprise or scepticism. It is also used in what may be called 'dependent'
intonation units such as those involving subordinate clauses. In this case the fall-rise intonation signals dependency,
continuity, and non-finality.

*******///////