Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Moujiaba Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Hanzhong Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
Phonetics/Phonology. Phonetics refers to the study of speech sounds. In other words, Phonetics is that branch in Linguistics that studies the various sounds that come together to form words in a language. Phonetics happens to be one of the most important aspects when it comes to teaching and learning language. Phonology on the other hand, which is often intertwined with phonetics is the branch in linguistics that has to do with language acquisition, in other words, how language is acquired by individuals. In this paper, the concepts of Phonetics and Phonology are going to be discussed at length. Phonetics is that branch in Linguistics studies that help in the understanding of intonation as it enables students of a foreign language to familiarize themselves with intonation patterns. In order to understand phonetics, it is relevant to know about the various sounds and keep in mind that sounds are different from words as the former are individual letters that join to form words in sentences or phrases and the latter are the outcome of these sounds put together. The International Phonetic Alphabetic chart (IPA) is very useful in the study of phonetics. This chart is a standardized system of phonetic symbols which was created by the International Phonetic Association. The chart comprises of both consonant and vowel sounds used in the creation of words in every language, English language and other native languages as well. For that reason, some of the sounds found on this chart are not ordinary and may not be comprehensible by someone who does not have some knowledge in Linguistics studies. Some of the consonant sounds that can be found on this chart that are used in forming English words include p, b, t, d, s, z, f, v, m, n, k, g, r and h. Some of the vowel sounds on the IPA chart are a, e, i, o, u and y. In this case, “y” is considered a vowel and not a consonant sound, but this is because it is replacing the “j” sound which is pronounced y. Phonemes is another way in which phonetic sounds can be called. These phonemes are the sounds that are used in the dictionary in word transcription for learners to better understand the concept and context of the words’ transcription. Phonemes are a set of symbols used to demonstrate what a letter sounds like. Most often, people do not understand the difference between a sound and a letter as there is often a big difference between the sound of a letter and the letter itself. Phonology is that branch in Linguistics studies that is concerned with how sounds are organized in a language. Phonology studies the meaning of sounds and their patterns in languages and how these sounds come together to form words and speech. Phonology is categorized into three categories; Articulatory, Acoustic and Auditory phonology, where articulatory has to do with the production of speech sound, acoustic, which is how speech is transmitted and auditory which has to do with sound perception. Phonology is very imperative when it comes to understanding how sounds work with each other. It studies what combination of sounds will work appropriately together in a language to form words and speech and why. Phonology has different branches, these are; Segmental phonology. This is that branch of phonology that studies each sound individually. The second branch of phonology is the Suprasegmental branch which studies multiple sounds and how they come together to form words or speech. The third branch of phonology is the Diachonic branch which goes even deeper in studying the sound system of a language and its patterns, and the last but not the least branch of phonology is the Synchronic branch which analyses the patterns of the sounds of a language. In conclusion, although Phonetics and Phonology are often used together in the study of Linguistics, it is clear that there are both different concepts as phonetics has more to do with the various speech sounds of a language and how they come together to form words meanwhile phonology is that branch that is more concerned with how these phonemes are acquired to form language(language acquisition).
