UNIT 3 PHONOLOGY

Phonology is the study of sounds patterns used in a language. It involves phonemes, word stress, sentence stress and intonation.  A phoneme is a distinct unit of sound that makes different one word from another. Example: phoneme /k/ in cat, kit, skit.

The following phonemic chart shows the different phonemes in English. It is divided into vowels, diphthongs and consonants which can be voiced and unvoiced: 

In addition, word stress is the emphasis we make when we pronounce a syllable. For example: pencil, the stress is in pen.

On the other hand, in sentence stress there are two levels: primary and secondary.  Primary stress is the word that is pronounced with more stress in a sentence. Secondary stress are the words pronounced with less emphasis than the surrounding ones.

Moreover, contrastive stress  is the most important stress in a word in contrast to others. Example: The boy eats slowly. (not in another way).

Besides, intonation is the way the voice rises and falls to convey meaning. For example: "Tomorrow is Monday"

Finally, to teach this unit I would make my students focus on the different aspects of pronunciation that according to Tennant (2007) it is very important to work on these aspects because students have to develop intelligibility to communicate successfully. For example, I would do an activity about minimal pairs (words with one phonemic variation: e.g. cut-cat) to check students' pronunciation. So I would show different flashcards to my students in order that they can practice the different pronunciation and I can monitor and control their progress. Furthermore, I would make my students listen to different English sources such as TV, radio, podcasts because according to Lansford (2014) it is useful in order that they can identify and get familiarized with the different sound patters and later on they can produce them. 

Extra information to teach phonology:

References:

Tennant, A. (2007). Sounds reasons for teaching pronunciation. Onestopenglish.com. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/pronunciation/pronunciation-matters/pronunciation-matters-sound-reasons-for-teaching-pronunciation/155507.article

Lansford, L. (2014). Authentic materials in the classroom: the advantages. World of Better Learning | Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from http://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2014/05/16/authentic-materials-classroom-advantages/

Teaching Phonology. (2017). YouTube. Retrieved 22 April 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM5OgB7ycfg