TEACHING PHONETICS

WARMING UP DISCUSSION . MARK THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS AS TRUE (T), FALSE (F) OR
DEBATABLE (D)
Statements TFD

1. Teaching grammar and communicative skills are more important than

teaching pronunciation
2. Pronunciation should not be deliberately taught.
3. Received Pronunciation (UK) should be chosen as a model
4. A non-native speaker can’t serve as a model for teaching pronunciation
5. One of the reason for pronunciation errors is that the learners transfer their
native sounds to the second language
6. The learners should forget about the native language sounds in order to learn
the target language pronunciation.
7. Correct English speech sounds are more important than intonation
8. In order to master the pronunciation, it is necessary to sound like a native
speaker.
9. The quickest way to master the target pronunciation is to have contacts with
the native speakers
Warm up activity.
Distribute these tongue twisters to the
students, give them time to prepare them
to pronounce.
Introduction
The teaching of pronunciation has witnessed remarkable changes throughout the
history of language teaching and learning. As one of the most neglected aspects
of English language teaching, pronunciation has gained attention only in the
past half of the 20th century with the rise of Audiolingualism and the Direct
Method. Throughout history, teachers and applied linguists have been concerned
with the difficulty of teaching this skill. In this respect, they have attempted to
develop different methods and techniques with the reliance on other sub-
disciplines such as phonetics, phonology and second language acquisition
among others.
Definition and Background:
In general terms, pronunciation is defined as “the manner in which speech
sounds, especially connected sequences are articulated by individual speakers or
by speakers generally” Trask (1996: 291). In the light of this definition,
pronunciation seems to be closely linked to the study of phonetics which
involves the scientific study and description of speech sounds. From a more
technical perspective, Pennington & Richards (1986: 208) define pronunciation,
according to language teachers, as follows:

“For most language teachers, pronunciation is largely identified with the

articulation of individual sounds and, to a lesser extent, with the stress and
intonation patterns of the target language.”
In this respect, the second definition does not limit pronunciation only to the
way in which sounds are articulated but goes further to incorporate other
articulatory aspects, namely stress and intonation patterns.
In addition to this definition, Pennington & Richards (1986) subdivided
pronunciation into four major components which include:
-Segmental features: minimal units of sound defined in phonetic terms.
-Voice-setting features: General articulatory characteristics of stretches of
speech.
-Prosodic features: involving the relative levels of stress and pitch within
syllables, words, phrases and longer stretches of speech.
SAQ

1 How many letters are there in English alphabets?

2 How many vowels are there in English
alphabets?
3 How many consonants are there in
English alphabets?
Task. Divide Ss into pairs. Give them time to think
about next Phonetic table and ask them to explain
what about it is. Ask them to speak about vowels
and consonants, monophthongs and diphthongs.
Home task
Ask students to investigate next link about
“What is phonology?”, and ask them to prepare a
brief presentation about it. https://
www.eltconcourse.com/training/tkt/tktmodule1/tkt_
m1_phonology.html