Module 9: How to teach Phonology?

Contents
Module 9: How to teach Phonology? ............................................................................................................................. 1
Lesson Structure ......................................................................................................................................................... 2
Teaching Phonology .................................................................................................................................................... 2
Drilling ......................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Phonemic Chart and how to use it? ........................................................................................................................... 4
Spelling and Phonology .............................................................................................................................................. 7
Stress and Intonation .................................................................................................................................................. 7

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Introduction
Remember: Integration of skills is paramount!

Teaching Phonology is about teaching the correct sounds of words and sentences. This involves teaching the
correct use of stress, intonation and pronunciation. There is a phonetic alphabet which is also very helpful
when teaching Phonology.

Remember: Teaching the correct sounds of words and sentences will come up at some point in every lesson
you teach.

Let's now explore the best ways to teach it.

Lesson Structure
Warmer:

Please see the warmers and coolers section.

Introduction:

Introduce the lesson with your objectives for the lesson.

Present:

You can use the board or flashcards to introduce a word with the correct phonemic letters and pronunciation.

Practice:

Please see the activities in the next section.

Production:

Please see some of the recommended activities in the next section.

Summary:

Review and reflect on your lesson.

Cooler:

See cooler activities.

Teaching Phonology
Teaching Pronunciation as a complete lesson is something you may wish to do if you are having repeated
problems with students mispronouncing words.

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Most of the time you will use the phonemic chart and incorporate pronunciation into your everyday lessons,
often spending time with just a few students who need more practice.

You can also encourage students to view your Wikispaces site to help them practise by themselves.

Let's explore the ways you can Teach Phonology:

 Drilling or repeat after me

 Spelling and phonology

 Stressing or emphasising syllables and words

 Intonation

Drilling or repeat after me

When you introduce a new word or structure, the students should repeat it a few times so that they can learn
how to say it correctly. You can try group and individual drilling.

This does not mean that the students spend the whole lesson repeating words. You will get a feel for how
much drilling you need to do within the normal flow of the lesson. Often you will notice the same errors
occurring with a student and you will make a note and give feedback to that student.

Phonemic Chart and Spelling:

When teaching pronunciation, we can use phonology to help students understand the sound of a word. The
symbols we use are called 'phonemes'. Each symbol represents a single sound in the English Language.
There are 44 individual recognised sounds in the English Language.

Let's explore the symbols and a video. Don't get scared!

http://www.tedpower.co.uk/folkchart.htm

Also, please have a look at the Phonemic Chart in the next section.

Phonemes look as if they will be difficult to teach. They're not. The best way to teach them is to write the
symbol on the board and get the students to repeat the sound after you. There are also a lot of videos on
YouTube that you can add to your Wikispaces or blog for your students to study.

Stressing or emphasising syllables and words:

When you teach English, you will stress certain words in a sentence more than others. We also stress certain
letters in a word more than others.

It is much easier to show students the stress of certain syllables and words on the board.

For example:

I went to watch a movie last night. It was wonderful.

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You can rewrite the sentence as follows to stress the syllables:

I went to watch a movie last night. It was won/der/ful.

Where were you last night? I waited for nearly 1 hour.

Intonation:

Intonation through using tone can communicate mood and feeling. You can explain the difference in the
tone in your voice when you are happy or sad.

Drilling
Drilling to Teach Pronunciation:

Drilling is when you get your students to repeat after you, to help them understand how to pronounce a word
correctly. It's paramount that you listen for errors and correct where possible. It's also a good idea to listen
out for common errors and work on that issue in the Summary/Reflection part of the lesson at the end.

There are two ways you can drill. One is individually and the other is collectively as a group in a chorus.
Both work well and you will find yourself using one or the other in most lessons.

Start by just saying 'Repeat!'

You can also drill whole sentences like 'What would you like to eat?'

With complete sentences, start with the last word and work backwards. For example, ask the students to
repeat 'eat' the 'to eat' then 'like to eat' until you have done the whole sentence.

Phonemic Chart and how to use it?

Please explore the following Phonemic Chart from the British Council

Phonemic Chart

Let's have a look at the individual phonemes:

There are a total of 44 phonemes made up of vowels, double vowels and consonants. We also need to
consider schwa sounds which we'll come to in a moment.

Vowels:

You say vowels with an open mouth.

From left to right, a row at a time:

1. tree/see/please

2. it/is/sit

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3. put/look

4. food/too

5. extra/said

6. mother/around

7. early/ word

8. door/floor/more

9. mat/hat/cat

10. cup

11. farm/arm

12. not/got

Double Vowels (diphthongs):

Double vowels are two vowels joined together.

From left to right, a row at a time:

1. ear/beer/career

2. rare/bear/hair

3. photo/know

4. cow/plough/how

5. face/ace

6. my/eye

7. destroy/boy

Consonants:

From left to right, a row at a time:

1. up/pen

2. wife/off

3. tea/tight

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4. bath/thank

5. cheap/cheese/

6. nice

7. sugar

8. cook

9. bubble/bad

10. voice

11. mud

12.father

13. general

14. jazz

15. visual

16. good/big

17. how

18. man

19. no

20. bling

21. red

22. leg

23. wet

24. yes

The Schwa: /ə/

This is the most frequent of all English vowels. It is the easiest sound in the language, since you
don't have to do anything to pronounce it.

The schwa is a special type of short vowel. It is a very weak sound that is never stressed. You find
the schwa in words with more than one syllable.

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It is heard primarily in unstressed syllables, as in these words where we have bolded the schwa
sound: above, photograph,America, mother

It is the vowel we produce if we vocalise as we prepare to speak--uh. The tongue is said to be in its neutral
position as we pronounce this vowel.

Any vowel letter can be pronounced as schwa and the pronunciation of a vowel letter can change depending
on whether the syllable in which it occurs is stressed or not.

For example:

I see a man. /'mæn/

I see a policeman. /pə'li:smən/

In 'policeman', the syllable 'man' is unstressed and the letter 'a' is pronounced as schwa.

In fact, this schwa sound very often disappears and it is not pronounced at all, especially in British
English. For instance, the word 'police' may sound /pəli:s/ or simply /pli:s/.

A schwa comes from an unstressed syllable that became very weak, so today a schwa can be
written with any vowel or vowel combination, for example (schwa sound in bold):

the sun, important, station, festival, about, brother

Using the Phonemic Chart:

You can use the phonemic chart at any time during the lesson to help students understand the sound of a
word. They will understand the chart more and more as you use it more often in your lessons. Whenever you
introduce a new word, you can write the word on the board and write the phonemic letters underneath.

Spelling and Phonology

Spelling can be taught using phonemes.

The best way to teach the pronunciation and spelling of words is to write the phonemes on the board and
use drilling to get students used to the sound.

Also, it's a good idea to over-emphasise the movement of your lips and mouth and neck. This will help your
students to get more familiar with making the sound.

Stress and Intonation

Words and Syllables:

A word is made up of phonemes, i.e. individual sounds, and syllables, which divide a word and require
different stress.

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You can put a line above the part of the word or draw capital letters to show where the stress occurs.

Let's look at the following. The stressed syllables are bolded:

'prepare': you could show this as prePARE

'computer': you could show this as comPUter

Sentence Stress:

When we consider a sentence, some words are stressed more than others.

The cat sat on the mat

The words in bold are stressed and the others are not stressed. We say different parts of the sentence with
more or less stress, i.e., slower and louder, or quicker and more softly. The word stress within a sentence
helps bring more meaning to the sentence.

Often, though, one word in the sentence will have the main stress. This is the word which the speaker thinks
is most important to the meaning of the sentence.

Other words can have secondary stress. This is not as strong as main stress and falls on words which are not
as important to the meaning as the word with main stress.

Other words in the sentence are unstressed.

For example, in this spoken sentence: She came home late last night, the word with the main stress is the
underlined one - late; the words with secondary stress would probably be came, home, last, night; and the
unstressed word is she .

But remember: It is possible to stress any word in a sentence if the speaker thinks it is important.

Whether you are looking at word stress or sentence stress, provide the class with some guidance about the
position of the stress.

Either write the word/sentence on the board and show the stress by using a symbol or capitals or use a hand
to make a gesture (perhaps a chopping movement) to demonstrate where to place the stress when you say the
word.

Word stress and sentence stress rules:

We're going to stick to simple rules here as many rules are full of exceptions.

For example, there are many two-syllable words in English which are spelt the same but their meaning
changes depending on the stress:

1. You will progress a lot with your English if you follow this rule.

You will make a lot of progress with your English if you follow this rule.

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2. He rejected the plan.

This bowl was a reject, so I bought it at half price.

3. Everyone was present at the meeting.

I will present my ideas to the company tomorrow in a presentation.

Here are some key word stress rules:

1. One word has only one stress. One word cannot have two stresses. If you hear two stresses, you hear two
words. Two stresses cannot be one word. It is true that there can be a secondary stress in some words. But a
secondary stress is much smaller than the main (primary) stress, and is only used in long words.)

2. We can only stress vowels, not consonants.

Here are some sentence stress rules:

1. Content words are stressed. Content words carry meaning, e.g. main verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs and
negative auxiliaries (don't, can't, aren't)

2. Structure words are unstressed. Structure words are used for correct grammar, e.g. pronouns, prepositions,
articles, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs (e.g. do, be, can, have, must)

3. The time between stressed words is always the same.

There's the odd exception to sentence stress rules, but far fewer than word stress exceptions.

For example, we have said that structure words are unstressed in a sentence. But look at the structure
word she (pronoun) below, which the speaker is stressing for emphasis whilst confirming information:

'Lisa didn't do that, did she?'

'Yes, she did.'

Rhythm:

Sentence stress is what gives English its rhythm or beat.

Look at this sentence:

Will you CLOSE the DOOR because he's GONE to WORK?

In our sentence, the 4 key content words (close, door, gone, work) are stressed.

Why is this important for pronunciation? It is important because it adds music to the language. It is the
rhythm of the English language. It changes the speed at which we speak (and listen to) the language. The
time between each stressed word is the same.

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 There is 1 syllable between CLOSE and DOOR and 3 syllables between DOOR and GONE. But the time
between CLOSE and DOOR and between DOOR and GONE is the same.

We maintain a constant beat on the stressed words. To do this, we say the more slowly, and because
he's more quickly. We change the speed of the small structure words so that the rhythm of the key content
words stays the same.

Connected Speech (Linking):

When a person speaks naturally in English, words seem to join together in connected speech. The way a
person pronounces the end and beginning of a word depends on the sounds at the beginning and end of a
word.

Consonant to vowel linking: This is when a word ends in a consonant and the next word is a vowel, then the
consonant and vowel join together. It's called an intrusion. For example, 'not at all' becomes 'notatall'

Vowel to vowel linking: The word ends in a vowel and begins with a vowel. In this situation, an extra sound
is added to make the words smooth. It's called an intrusion. For example, 'please do it' sounds like 'please do
wit.'

Sounds disappear: This is called elision. For example, the word 'interest' becomes 'intrest'. Here, the syllable
containing the unstressed schwa is often not pronounced. Elision can also be seen in this example: 'It's no
joke' is often pronounced as 'snow joke'

Sounds join together: With consonants, the sounds / t / and / d / are commonly elided, especially when they
appear in a consonant cluster. These words join together. For example: the 'first three' becomes 'firsthree'.

Note that students need to hear natural, fast, relaxed pronunciation as we speak it every day, not a carefully
over-articulated overly-pronounced one-word-by-one-word phrasing of sentences.

Speaking too slowly and too emphatically is a common characteristic of the inexperienced teacher.

Speaking unnaturally affects your students for two reasons:

they will imitate your speaking style and speak unnaturally too

they will not recognise and understand natural rapid speech when they hear it

This doesn't mean you shouldn't slow your speech down a bit to help your students get some basic ideas, but
it does mean that you should speak naturally most of the time.

It also means that you need to teach them what natural speech sounds like. There is some evidence that says
that if students don't speak naturally, they won't recognise normal speech when they hear it.

Some examples:

My name is Fred sounds something like Mi naeh miz Fred.

How much is it? sounds something like How muh chi zit?

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 Don't eat apples! sounds something like Don tea tapples!

If you habitually speak slowly and over-enunciate, your students will listen for How much is it? and won't
understand when they hear the normal speech sounds of How muh chi zit?

The effective EFL teacher instructs her students in these differences, how to pronounce them and how to
listen for them.

You should encourage your students at least to attempt to approximate these linking features of English
because they are so commonly used in normal speech. This, in turn, should raise their awareness of the
existence of these features and will make the task of listening easier.

Intonation:

Intonation is another important part of pronunciation. It is the movement of the level of the voice, i.e., the
tune of a sentence or a group of words.

We use intonation to express emotions and attitudes, and to emphasise or make less important particular
things we are saying.

We also use intonation to signal to others the function of what we are saying, that is, to show we are starting
or stopping speaking, or whether we are asking a question or making a statement.

Practice: To hear these intonation uses, try saying School's just finished with these meanings:

1.as a statement of fact

2.with surprise

3.with happiness

4.as a question

5.to emphasise 'just'

You should hear the level of your voice rising and falling in different patterns.

Different intonation patterns can show many different meanings. However, there is no short and simple way
of describing how the patterns relate to meanings.

Intonation patterns can also be demonstrated with the use of arrows on the board or hand gestures to show
the 'musical' pattern. Wherever possible, try to speak in a normal manner without a distorted
intonation pattern as this will provide the students with a better model to follow.

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