Developing Phonological Competence in English: A Guide for Educators
Topic 9: Phonological Competence in English
The Phonatory Organs and Phonation. English Phonological System. Learning Techniques and Models. Perception, Discrimination and Emission of Sounds, Intonations, Rhythms and Accents. The Phonetic Correction.
1. Introduction
As has been proven throughout the years, the first ability acquired is listening, whether we are focusing on mother tongue or foreign language acquisition. In that way, it can be stated that receptive skills precede productive skills.
Following this idea, it is crucial to highlight that languages have multiple differences, especially Spanish and English, as they are the languages we are going to focus on. For this reason, phonetics, related to the way words or sounds are emitted, should be worked on from early ages. This is due to the fact that the earlier human beings are exposed to new sounds, the easier it will be for them to develop abilities that will make them competent in the acquisition of a foreign language such as English.
Furthermore, the Educational System establishes a main goal throughout a student’s schooling, which is, being communicatively competent. This idea is firstly shown in LOE 2/2006 31st May modified by LOMLOE 3/2020 29th December. Moreover, Royal Decree 157/2022 1st March sets the idea that students should be competent in at least two languages by the end of their educational stage. It has also been highlighted in Decree 61/2022 13th July.
To sum up, in this topic I will deal with the phonatory organs, some of the main elements in the English phonological system, and to finish, I will address some of the possible difficulties when learning English and ways of avoiding them.
2. Phonatory Organs and Phonation
To deal with phonetics, it is crucial to first know about the phonatory system that allows a person to emit sounds.
Firstly, we should focus on the lungs, which take in oxygen and thanks to this, we are able to produce air. This air goes up through the larynx and reaches the Adam’s Apple. Depending on how much air flows, a glottal stop can occur, or a vibration of the vocal cords can take place, that would lead to the emission of sounds. If vocal cords are too tight, a sound like coughing will be emitted. Following the larynx, we reach the pharynx, which is connected to the mouth and the nasal cavity. Within the mouth, other phonatory organs like the tongue can be mentioned. Depending on the position of the tongue, as well as the position of the lips and the contact between the tongue and the palate, different sounds will be made.
Now that I have talked about the phonatory organs, I will move on to the English phonological system.
3. English Phonological System
When dealing with the English phonological system, it should be highlighted that there are several differences with the Spanish one. I will move on to English characteristics to see these differences mentioned above.
3.1. Vowel Phonemes
Regarding vowel phonemes, it should be mentioned that, unlike the Spanish system, in the English language, there are twelve distinctive vowels. Furthermore, I would like to make a brief summary of the possible differences depending on how we use our phonatory organs.
If we focus on the position of the tongue, vowels can be close, middle, half-opened and open.
Depending on the position of the lips, they can be rounded, neutral or spread. If we focus on the length, they are short or long.
Below I will make a diagram that explains the existing vowels and the type they are depending on how we position our mouth organs.
After dealing with vowel phonemes, I will continue with the diphthongs in the English phonological system.
3.2. Diphthongs
When dealing with diphthongs, it has to be mentioned that unlike in the Spanish language, English has eight diphthongs. They are defined as a glide sound emitted when speaking. Furthermore, we can divide them into two groups.
- Centring diphthongs: They occur when the tongue has its highest part in the centre.
- Closing diphthongs: In this case, sounds like “u” or “i” are emitted.
The existing diphthongs are the following:
3.3. Consonants and Semivowels
To finish with the phonological system, I will deal with the consonants and semivowels. Regarding the consonants, there are 22 and, if we focus on semivowels, there are two.
Consonants can also be divided into groups depending on the way we articulate:
- Whether the vocal cords vibrate or not, we can distinguish between voiced and voiceless vowels.
- Depending on the manner of articulation, we can deal with fricative, affricate, plosive and lateral semivowels.
- Depending on the place of articulation, we can deal with bilabial, labiodental, interdental, alveolar, postalveolar, palato-alveolar, velar and glottal.
The main semivowels and consonants in the English system are the following:
The consonants we can find in British English are the following ones:
3.4. Learning Techniques and Models
To achieve good communicative competence, we, as teachers, should develop an efficient methodology, using proper materials and aids in order to engage our students’ motivation and facilitate the acquisition of pronunciation skills. With this in mind, I will talk about two important steps that children should follow to achieve communicative competence with the fewest possible mistakes.
Firstly, they will work on the perception and discrimination of sounds. That is, in other words, focusing on the relationship between sound and grapheme in order to acquire this knowledge and afterwards, being able to produce sounds properly.
In this first step, activities such as riddles and songs are good tools to reinforce the acquisition mentioned above. In my case, I will try to include in most of my didactic units some games and riddles to make the acquisition of sounds catchy. This can be seen in units like Christmas or Halloween. Activities with sound repetition are also useful.
Once students have dealt with perception and discrimination skills, the next step is for them to produce utterances following the patterns that they have acquired beforehand. For production in learning situations, activities such as roleplaying, playing board games where speaking and producing oral utterances is needed, and other activities are successful.
3.5. Stress, Rhythm and Intonation
After having dealt with the procedure for producing utterances in the English language, as well as others, I will move on to some important features.
When speaking a language, prosodic signs are also known as stress, rhythm and intonation. The first term, stress, is related to the greater degree of prominence that a syllable has. Unlike in Spanish, English stressed syllables don’t have any written accent mark as they do in Spanish.
Moreover, rhythm is related to aspects such as speed, tone… There are several differences between English and Spanish as English has a stress-timed rhythm while Spanish has a syllable-timed rhythm.
Lastly, I will deal with intonation, which, depending on how it is used in a language, can completely change the meaning of what is being said.
Regarding J.D. O’Connor’s classification, we can identify the following types of intonation:
- Glide down starts with a slight intonation that falls down. It can be used for tag questions.
- Glide up starts at a low tone and rises up. This type of intonation is usually used for yes/no questions or unfinished answers.
- Take-off intonation starts running at a low level and finally rises up. It is used for tag questions asking for an opinion.
- The high-dive intonation starts at a high-middle pitch, then it lowers the pitch and finally rises up slightly.
4. The Phonetic Correction
As it has been said previously, our role as teachers is crucial in order to be a good and useful guide for our students. At early ages, we should already introduce pronunciation patterns for children to follow so they can gradually acquire the abilities needed to produce utterances with correct intonation.
That being said, corrections are also part of the process, but in early ages, they should only be made when mistakes lead to misunderstanding.
4.1. Main Difficulties for English Learners
When dealing with the existing differences between the Spanish and English systems, there are several aspects that should be mentioned.
In the first place, the difference in the number of vowels in each language, as English has 12 and Spanish has only 5, makes the learning process more difficult.
However, prosodic signs are another difficulty when learning English, as this language has a stress-timed rhythm while Spanish has a syllable-timed rhythm.
Linked to this idea, some words in English have lost stress in their syllables, a fact that makes it more difficult to learn the target language. Likewise, the English language uses some neutral elements that do not exist in the Spanish language.
To finish, the inconsistency between written and oral language is an obstacle when learning this language.
To address these difficulties, as teachers, we should use different aids and techniques to ease the learning process.
Firstly, visual aids, used at the same time as introducing words, can lead students to link sounds with words and in that way, they will be developing their perception and discrimination abilities.
Body language and moving our mouths in a clear way, can also lead to better performance when it comes to pronunciation.
As it has been mentioned before, games such as songs and riddles are a great tool to engage students in pronunciation activities.
Finally, resources such as Jolly Phonics, that were often used in previous years, can be a great method to avoid the difficulties mentioned before.
Now that I have dealt with all the required aspects of this topic, I will move on to the conclusion.
5. Conclusion
Phonetics is a crucial part of the English learning process. Nevertheless, it can’t be taught to students as an isolated idea, but should be interlinked with other activities and methodologies like the ones mentioned above. It is also clear that the sooner a person starts to learn a language, the easier it will be for them to acquire the required skills that will make them competent in the English language learning process.
As teachers, it is also crucial that we are familiar with the phonological system of the target language so that we can design activities that deal with its characteristics as a whole.
Linked to educational law, it is crucial to focus on some of the competences that are related to this topic. To start with, linguistic competence is greatly relevant as we are mostly dealing with aspects of linguistics in English as a foreign language. Moreover, plurilingual competence is of course developed in this topic as the main aim of the subject is to become plurilingual and have a complete Exit Profile when finishing the Primary Education stage.
To sum up, it is a topic that leads to the development of various competences, easing the learning path of students.
6. Bibliography
- Crystal, O. L. D. (2018). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (3rd Reviseded.). Cambridge University Press.
- Hymes, D. (1972). On Comunicative Competence (in Sociolinguistics). Penguin.
- Jakobson, R., & Halle, M. (2017). Fundamentals of Language. Andesite Press.