T9: Description of the phonological system of the English language. Learning models and techniques.

Perception, discrimination and emission of sounds, intonation, rhythms, and stress. Phonetic corrections

1. Introduction
2. Preliminary Considerations
2.1. Phonetics and Phonology
2.2. The Speech Chain
2.3. Articulatory phonetics: the Speech Mechanism
3. Description of the phonological system of the english language
3.1. Segmental features
3.2. Suprasegmental features
4. Learning models and techniques
5. Phonological awareness
5.1. Perception, discriminationb and emission of sounds
6. Phonetic corrections
7. Conclusion
8. References

1. Introduction

The final aim of teaching and learning English as a foreign language, according to the Primary Education
curriculum is the acquisition of 7 key competences (RD 126/2014 and Decree 181/2020 for Primary Education
in Andalusia). The tasks and activities designed for TEFL must help students to develop their linguistic
communication, social and civic competence, cultural awareness and expression, and learning to learn,
among others. The Spanish law on Education (LOMLOE that modifies LOE) defines competences as the
ultimate knowledge and skills students must develop throughout their education to succeed in different
activities and complex learning situations.

As EFL teachers, we must enable our students to communicate in the foreign language (General Objective F
in RD 126/2014). That means developing the four skills in order to take part in simple communicative
situations: understanding (listening), expressing (speaking), interacting, reading and writing. Moreover,
students must be able to identify phonetic, linguistic and lexical aspects as well as rhythm, stress and
intonation and be able to use these as the basic elements of communication (Foreign Language Objectives
from the Order of the 15th of January, 2021 for Primary Education in Andalusia).

Applying phonetics for language learning can help with both pronunciation and understanding stress and
intonation of sound which are major components of pronunciation and affect the message being
communicated.

2. Preliminary considerations

Humans have the unique ability to communicate complicated messages through language through auditory
and visual sensory stimulation. Children, from an early age, respond to sounds people make when talking to
them. Due to their constant exposure to spoken language and their need to communicate they begin to imitate
those sound patterns, which leads to a rapid acquisition of the framework for spoken language.
Even so, it takes several years for them to master the sound system of their community. Thus, it is no wonder
that learning a foreign language later in life and artificially in short, sporadic activities in a foreign language
classroom tends to be only partially successful. Very young children are able to seemingly effortlessly imitate
speech they hear, while it requires more conscious effort as we grow older. Here we will look at some basic
concepts relative to this topic.

2.1 Phonetics and Phonology

Spoken English refers to the ways in which the English language is transmitted through a conventional
system of sounds, whose individual units are called phonemes. The study of speech sounds is the branch of
linguistics known as phonetics. The study of sound changes in a language is phonology.

Phonetics studies the production, transmission and reception of human speech sounds. It is concerned with
articulatory aspects (how sounds are produced by which speech organs, acoustic aspects (the transmission
and properties of sound) and auditory aspects (how we receive and perceive sounds).

Phonology is concerned with how a particular language systematically organizes their sounds. Phonology is
traditionally studied through phonemics- the study of distinct units of sound- the phonemes. Phonemes can
be defined as the smallest phonological unit that can distinguish one word from another (for example p, b, d,
and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat).

2.2 The Speech Chain

According to Denes & Pinson (1993), the

speech chain is a simple model of spoken
communication that describes the stages
through which a message moves between the
mind of the speaker and the mind of the
listener. It comprises the processes of: speech
production, auditory feedback to the speaker,
speech transmission to the listener, and
speech perception and understanding by the
listener.

It involves activity on at least 3 levels first on the speaker’s side, then on the listener’s end:
- Linguistic- Speaker formulates a message in the brain and chooses the basic sounds of
communication
- Physiological- Motor nerves send impulses to lungs, larynx and articulators so the vocal tract
produces the sounds associated with the speaker’s message
- Acoustic- Sounds are released from the lips and nostrils. Sound waves are transmitted to both the
speaker’s (sound feedback) and listener’s ears.
- Physiological- The ear analyzes and transforms the sounds via neural pathways in both speaker and
listener, and finally.
 - Linguistic- Listener’s brain decodes the sequence of linguistic units to understand the message being
communicated.

. 2.3 Articulatory phonetics: The Speech Mechanism

The capability of human beings for articulation of sound distinguishes them from the other species. The
Speech Mechanism refers to how humans make sounds and the parts of the human body which are directly
involved in the production of speech (speech organs). There are three main organs of speech: Respiratory
organs (diaphragm, lungs), phonatory organs (trachea, larynx, pharynx, vocal cords, mouth, nose) and
articulatory organs (tongue, teeth, lips and palate). Speech is a coordinated effort of lungs, larynx, vocal
cords, tongue, lips, mouth and facial muscles, all activated by the brain. It takes place in various stage:
1. Air from the lungs moves up through the trachea (windpipe). (breathing stage)
2. The air moves through the larynx and vocal cords, which open and close at various degrees (phonation
stage).
3. The sounds produced by the vocal folds get modified or amplified in the pharynx, oral or nasal
cavity. (resonation stage)
4. We shape the sounds by moving the articulators towards the points of articulation. (articulation
stage).

3. Description of the phonological system of the English language

When studying the pronunciation system of the English language, we differentiate two categories:
segmental features and suprasegmental features.

3.1 Segmental features

Segmental features refer to the particular sounds that may be identified in a stream of speech. There are
various factors that determine a sound’s phonetic features and description. They include: the airstream,
vocal cords (vibrate- voiced, do not vibrate- unvoiced), soft palate (raised-oral, lowered-nasal), place of
articulation (where main closure is made), manner of articulation (type of constriction), position of the lips
(rounded, unrounded- particularly for vowel sounds).

Vowel System: vowels are voiced sounds produced with a

continuous flow of air. The differences in vowels depend on the
articulatory movements and position of the tongue (front, back,
central), lips (rounded, unrounded) and mouth (open, half-open,
half-closed, closed).
-
English has 5 vowels, but 20 different vowel sounds and they can
be classified as pure vowels (either short or long) and diphthongs
(as well as some triphthongs, such as the sounds in lion and hour).

For instance, to make the /ae/ sound as in bat, the tongue is at the
front and the mouth is open and lips are unrounded. To make the sound /u/ as in boot, the tongue is at the
back, the mouth is closed and the lips are rounded.
Diphthongs are made when the shape of the mouth changes from the beginning of the sound to the end. For
instance, to make the /ai/ sound as in bite, the mouth begins open, with the tongue near the front, and ends
with the mouth closed and the lips are unrounded. Or to make the /au/ sound as in brown, the mouth begins
open and lips unrounded and ends closed with lips rounded.

Consonant system: In the English alphabet there are 21 consonants, but about 24 consonant sounds
(depending on the reference source). Vowels are produced by a constant flow of air, while consonants are
produced by either a narrowing or complete closure of the vocal tract (manner of articulation). They
require the interaction of different parts of the mouth (tongue, lips, palates) to be produced (place of
articulation). While vowels are all voiced, consonants can be voiced or unvoiced. Here we will take a deeper
look at the factors that determine consonant formations:
1. Place of articulation: this tells us which vocal components are active or what part of the mouth the
tongue is touching.
a. Bilabial: made with the two lips touching /p, b, m/ as in pet, bed, man. Although, there are
some exceptions such as the silent p in cupboard, or a doubling like in apple
b. Labiodental: lower lip touches the upper teeth /f, v/ as in fun, photo or van
c. Dental: the tip of the tongue touches the upper teeth as in the “th” sound /θ/ and /ð/ as in
thanks and the
d. Alveolar: the tip of the tongue touches against the teeth-ridge as in /t, d, s, z, n, l/. Examples:
ten, day, say, zip, nine, like. These consonants may also sometimes be doubled daddy, cross,
fizzy, granny, seller
e. Palato-alveolar: blade of the tongue touches the teeth-ridge and the body of the tongue is
raised toward the palate (bunched up tongue) /tʃ/ chick /dʒ/ jam/ʃ/ shot /ʒ/ vision. These
consonants can have several forms of spelling: chair, patch, judge, share, treasure
f. Palatal: the front of the tongue touches the hard palate /j/ like in yes or yellow
g. Velars: the back part of the tongue against the soft palate /k, g, ŋ/. They can have different
spelling: cat, koala, quite, game, egg, song
h. Labio-velar: simultaneous articulation (movement) of the velum and the lips (velum- soft
palate) /w/ window
i. Glottal: involves the obstruction or narrowing of the glottis /h/ such as in hat
2. Manner of articulation: this refers to how the sound is made in the vocal tract (pharynx, mouth,
nasal cavity) to form the consonant. The manner of articulation may be divided into at least 6
categories:
a. Plosives/Stop: a complete closure at some point in the vocal tract, where the air pressure
builds up and is released with a sudden burst /p, b, t, d, k, g/ Put, bag, time, day, car, go
b. Affricates: complex consonants which begin as a stop/plosive and moves to a fricative
releasing the air through a constricted space. /tʃ/ chick /dʒ/jam
c. Fricatives: produced by forcing air through a constricted space. These are the most common
ways of forming consonants /f/ fun, /v/ van, /θ/ thanks /ð/ the /s/ say, /z/ zip, /ʃ/ shot, /ʒ/
vision, /h/ hat
d. Nasals: When air flow passes through the nasal cavities instead of through the mouth. /m, n,
ŋ/. Mouth, need, dancing
e. Lateral: When an occlusion is made along the axis of the tongue, letting the air pass on either
side. /l/ lion and love
 f. Approximant /glide: these are sounds which fall between fricatives and vowel. /w/ west and /j/
yellow are considered semi-vowels, and /r/ liquid.

3.2 Suprasegmental features

Vowels and consonants are the segments speech is made up of. Together, they form syllables, which in turn
make up utterances. Suprasegmental or prosodic features are speech features that accompany or are added
over consonants and vowels and are often extended over syllables, words and phrases. When we speak, we give
more prominence to some parts of an utterance than to others. Accent or stress, rhythm and intonation deal
with the perceptions of this emphasis.

Accent or stress: This is a verbal emphasis (prominence) placed on one syllable of a word (word stress) or
on a longer utterance or sentence (sentence stress). In English, word stress is unpredictable, therefore the
accentual pattern of words must be learnt separately. It is difficult to offer a list of rules for the accentuation of
simple and compound words in English. However, we can make some useful generalizations and offer a few
examples.
- One word only has 1 stress. If you hear two stresses, you hear two words. Some longer words can have
secondary stress, but it is not as strong.
- We can only stress vowels, not consonants.
- Stress on 1st syllable: most 2-syllable nouns and adjectives: ‘table, ‘kitchen, ‘happy, ‘tired
- Stress on last syllable: most 2-syllable verbs: de’cide, be´gin
- Many two-syllable words in English can change class and meaning with stress.
- Nouns: ‘present, ‘contract, ‘object, ‘increase
- Verbs: pre’sent, con’tract, ob’ject, in’crease
- Stress on penultimate syllable: words ending in -ic, -sion, -tion: geo’graphic, super’vision, imi’tation
- Stress on the antepenultimate syllable: words ending in -cy, -ity, -phy, -gy, -al: de’mocracy,
responsa’bility, pho’tography, ge’ology, ‘critical, e’motional
- For compound words (words with two parts)
- Compound nouns: first element stress: ‘blackbird, ‘washing machine
- Compound adjectives: second element stress: bad-’tempered, old ‘fashioned, good ‘looking, free
‘thinker,
- Compound verbs: second element stress: under’stand, over’flow

Rhythm: This refers to the pattern formed by stress as it is distributed in an utterance and conveys meaning
(emphasis, urgency). Pitch, loudness and tempo together make up a language’s rhythm. According to Pike,
English is a stress-timed language, in that it makes use of stressed syllables produced at approximately
regular intervals of time separated by unstressed syllables that tend to be compressed and quickened. For
instance, when saying “fish and chips” fish ‘n chips, or a chair ‘n a table. The unstressed syllables tend to be
made up of conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliares, articles.

Since Spanish is syllable-timed, students often have difficulty producing unstressed sounds in a stress-timed
language like English, giving equal stress to all syllables in the utterance.

Intonation: This is the most important suprasegmental feature. It refers to how we say something, or the way
the pitch of our voice goes up or down (tunes). Intonation is used to express different emotions and
attitudes, to identify and distinguish certain grammatical structures, such as statements from questions, and
helps organize the language units into chunks which are more easily perceived and memorized.

It is unrealistic to expect us to teach all of the tunes English speakers use, but we must highlight the ones our
students must know and can be worked in class: falling tune (statements, commands, WH questions &
question tags), rising tunes (Y/N questions, polite requests) and falling-rising tunes (warning, threat).

4. Learning models and techniques

For teaching English as a foreign language in Primary Education in Andalusia, we will use British RP
(Received pronunciation) or General British as our basic model for pronunciation. However, it’s important to
keep in mind that due to ICTs, Netflix, Disney+ and other streaming services, there’s a strong possibility our
students are exposed to American English as well outside of the classroom (if they watch things in original
versions). Although most coursebooks will focus on British RP We also must consider our performance targets
(pronunciation goals) which are determined by our students’ age, their natural ability, motivation and the
curriculum objectives.

The lowest requirement can be described as minimum general intelligibility, which means the learner can
convey a message efficiently when the listener has had time to tune into the speaker’s pronunciation and the
context is known. High intelligibility is a form of speech that even a native listener might not identify as non-
native. It may seem unrealistic to aim for high intelligibility, but it is our job as English foreign language
teachers to make our students become as near-intelligible English speakers as we can. It does not mean students
must acquire any specific accent. It is the role of the teacher to provide as faithful a model of English
pronunciation as possible since students will imitate bad pronunciation as exactly as they will good
pronunciation (Gimson).

5. Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness comprises a series of skills that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral
language – parts such as words, syllables, onsets and rimes. According to Yopp (2009), it is students’
understanding that speech is composed of words; words can be divided into syllables and onset-rimes that
can be divided into individual sounds (phonemes).

Researchers agree that phonological awareness is crucial for reading and spelling success (Cooper, 2002).
Children who have phonological awareness skills are able to identify words that rhyme, recognize alliteration,
can clap out the number of syllables in a word, segment a sentence into words, identify syllables in a word,
and blend and segment onset-rimes. The most sophisticated skill— and last to develop — is called
phonemic awareness (readingrockets.org).

Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice and work with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken
words. This includes blending sounds into words (CVC words: C-A-T, then with clusters), segmenting words
into sounds (fish- f-i-sh), and deleting, adding or substituting sounds in spoken words (block-clock-lock-
luck).
 5.1 Perception, discrimination and emission of sounds

As English foreign language teachers we must provide a good model of pronunciation for our primary school
students since children are good at imitating and will pick up our model of pronunciation. Pronunciation
practice should form an integral part of language teaching and learning. We must use activities like songs and
rhymes that use repetition, appeal to children and give meaningful, contextualized practice, not drills

Students must be able to perceive and discriminate that the sounds they are hearing are English sounds, and
ear-train them to differentiate English sounds from their L1 sounds. Some exercises can be “to write the word
you hear; odd one out; same or different.”

Pronunciation teaching must also include suprasegmental features. Students should begin by practicing
English word stress patterns then they can begin with rhythm and intonation.

With regards to emission of sounds, students must learn how to say new words they see. When they say
something we do not understand, we must figure out what the intended message was and show them the
correct pronunciation. So, often pronunciation work is inevitable and automatically integrated into our
lessons. We are not going to plan lessons based on rules of pronunciation for our primary students. We need to
make a careful selection of materials that will enable us to present them with correct examples and a variety
of the segmental and suprasegmental features they must learn.

6. Phonetic corrections

Phonologically speaking, the Spanish language is significantly different from English, particularly in the
production of vowels and less so with consonants, although they do exist. Here we will look at only a few of the
most common mistakes Spanish learners of English make.

-Short and long vowel sounds often sound the same: In English there are 20 distinct vowel sounds, whereas
in Spanish there are only 5. As a result, Spanish-learners of English tend to stretch out the vowel sound or
merge it with the closest sound in Spanish. This can lead to mispronunciations such as, “Where do you leave?
/i:/” instead of “Where do you live? /I/” or “I am very fool /u:/” when they mean “I am very full /u/.” Students
need to be made aware that there are both short and long vowel sounds in English. By practicing minimal
pairs of vowel sounds students can better discriminate those differences.

According to Helman (2004), Spanish and English share many of the same consonant sounds, albeit with
differences in spelling. Difficulties arise because Spanish only has 18 consonantal phonemes, while in English
there are 26. We can predict some of the problems our students may have.

- Differentiating between v and b: Native English speakers can clearly distinguish between these two
sounds, but Spanish learners are not used to producing the /v/ which requires them to touch the upper
teeth with the lower lips. This leads them to mispronounce “over” as “ober” or “move” as “moof”.
- The /h/: In English the /h/ as happy is a voiceless consonant, but in Spanish, many students will produce
a constricted sound as in the Spanish “j” for jardín
- The /j/ and the dʒ: These errors are common at the beginning of words, as students often pronounce
words like yellow or yesterday with the dʒ sound instead of the /j/ sound
- The /w/: Spanish-learners of English mispronounce the /w/ sound when it comes before a /u/, as in
wood or would, and instead they make the /g/ sound, saying “good”
 - Vowel sounds added to words starting with an “s” and a consonant: Spanish speakers pronounce
add a vowel sound before consonant clusters with /s/ such as “I am espanish. I am a estudent”. Simple
tongue twisters can help students to practice these consonant clusters without the added vowel sound,
such as “SpongeBob SquarePants speaks Spanish at school.’ or Seven stupid students studied Spanish in
Scotland
- Omitting sounds in consonant clusters: Some consonant clusters are not a problem (fl- flower, flor,
clear, claro). However, for others Spanish speakers omit sounds, such as “nes” for “next” and “brefast”
for breakfast.

6.1 Considerations for the region of Andalusia

Pronunciation may also be influenced by regional varieties of the Spanish language. In terms of consonants, a
major acknowledged feature of same areas of Andalusia is the “seseo” (in parts of Córdoba), and the “ceceo”
(in parts of Seville, Málaga, Cádiz and Huelva). This may affect the extent to which speakers use one
predominant sound or another.

Another major feature of spoken Spanish in southern Spain is the frequent tendency to aspirate word
endings. Again, this may influence the way in which speakers pronounce word endings, and is often quite
noticeable in the final “s” of plurals and present simple third person singular verbs.

7. Conclusion

As we have seen throughout this topic, there are more differences than similarities in how English speech
sounds are made and how English phonemes are pronounced. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance to train
our students to be able to perceive, discriminate and produce English speech sounds and oral speech patterns.
This means the teacher must also serve as a native-like model for pronunciation and functional oral activities
must be meaningful and appropriate to students’ age, interests and language level.

The goal of teaching and learning English as a foreign language is to develop students’ communicative
competence. It is not necessary for them to speak with a native accent to be understood or to take part in social
interactions that involve oral communication. However, they must have correct pronunciation in order for their
messages to be understood, as oftentimes in English even a slight change to pronunciation (at the segmental and
suprasegmental level) can completely change the meaning of the intended message.

8. References

Baker, A. (1984): Introducing English Pronunciation. Cambridge: CUP

Brewster, J. and Ellis, G. (1992): The Primary English Teacher’s Guide. Penguin: London
Byrne, D. (1986): Teaching oral English. Longman: London
Council of Europe. (2001): Common European Framework of Reference for Language: Learning, teaching and
assessment. Council of Europe Publishing: Strasbourg
Council of Europe. (2020): Companion Volume to the CEFR. Council of Europe Publishing: Strasbourg
Denes, P. and Pinson, E. (1993): The Speech Chain. Oxford: OUP
Halliday, J. (1982): Spoken and Written Language. Oxford: OUP
Halliwell, MAK. (1989): The Primary English Teacher. Longman: London
Harmer, J. (2012): Essential Teacher Knowledge. Pearson: London
Krashen, S. (1981): Second language learning and second language acquisition. Oxford: OUP
Krashen, S. (1982): Principles and Practices in SLA. Oxford: OUP
McLaren, D. and Madrid, N. (2004): TEFL in Primary Education. Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada
Mott, B. (2011): English phonetics and phonology for Spanish Speakers. Univeristat de Barcelona
Stern, HH. (1989): Fundamentals of Teaching English. Oxford: OUP
Willis, J. (1981): Teaching English through English. London: Longman
Widdowson, H.G., (1978): Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford: OUP
https://www.readingrockets.org/helping/target/phonologicalphonemic
www.teachingenglish.org.uk/