Nternational Phonetic Alphabet

  There are two issues that need to be stressed when working with the international phonemic alphabet. First is the fact that we are no longer concerned with how a word is traditionally spelled. Additionally we need to stress that we are only concerned with the sounds needed to correctly produce a word. So rather than numerous spellings, which can often be pronounced in different ways, we have one symbol representing one sound. Once we can isolate a sound, rather than juggling various spellings, we can work with our students on how to say that sound. Doing that successfully is related to manner and place of articulation, which will be covered shortly. To get a better understanding of the phonemic alphabet, let's take a look at our chart. In the bottom half of our chart we have our...  [Read more]

  A better way to go about imparting how to make sounds or what sounds are utilized in a word, is this international phonemic alphabet. Now we have as mentioned one symbol being used in all the words which share that same sound. Now once we get a little bit more familiar with our phonemic alphabet we can also show how different our different sounds can be as in this symbol for ?ooh?, this symbol for ?ow? and this symbol for ?uh?. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the...  [Read more]

  In this video we'll be looking at the international phonemic alphabet and how it's used in the classroom. There are other phonemic alphabets but this is the most popular and the system, which is most widely used. You may have seen some of these symbols before as any good dictionary will supplement standard English spellings with the phonemic spellings to aid in pronunciation practice. Here we have a situation where we have what are called phonemes and each phoneme represents a sound within the English language. How is this helpful? Well, what it does is help students understand how to say words rather than simply relying on the often archaic English spellings. To illustrate this point let's for a moment put ourselves in the shoes of our students when trying to understand how to...  [Read more]

In order to learn to read either a native or foreign language, the reader must be able to identify words quickly and accurately. This process is known as decoding. Decoding words involves changing what the reader sees printed on a page into spoken language. The reader then decodes the word by sounding it out, using the context around the word for clues about it's meaning. In order to sound out words, a reader must be able to relate specific spellings with specific sounds. Phonics is the process of relating the sounds of the words to their spellings. There are many ways to teach phonics awareness and use. However, most types of phonics instruction focus on the sound- spelling relationships so that the new reader can come up with an approximate pronunciation of the word and then check it...  [Read more]

Teaching adult true beginners from day one is an interesting challenge and requires a strategy which must be formulated in advance. Do you begin with phonics' Can you start with rote memorization' How can you approach people with different learning styles' What has been the students experience in school previously' There are many considerations but in the end a good plan smoothes the way to the first day. When teaching the alphabet the issue of using phonics comes to the forefront. Many programs use a system of phonics instruction along with grammar and vocabulary topics. Teaching the sounds rather than the letter names per say has advantages and disadvantages. The learner will make more progress in speaking skills when he starts by learning the sounds. He will be able to imitate words...  [Read more]

Humans speak with each other by creating sounds. That is how we communicate with each other. Over the centuries the different languages have created systems of grammar to explain how the words in their languages work. Sometime after that, they began to create systems to explain how the sounds, or phonemes, of the different words work. Two disciplines arose out of this: phonetics and phonology.Phonetics is the study of the sounds themselves. In the world there are a limited number of possible sounds which the human vocal tract can produce. Of these sounds, the distinctive pronunciations of the different languages are produced. But how are theses sounds produced and represented' The answer to this question is the area of study of Phonetics. Generally, Phonetics is subdivided into three...  [Read more]

Phonetics has been defined by Roach (1992) as the 'scientific study of speech' (Roach, 1992: 81.) It is concerned with how speech sounds are formed, how we use them in our spoken language and how we can record these speech sounds using written symbols. Phonology on the other hand has been defined by Roach (1992) as 'the study of the sound systems of languages' (Roach, 1992: 82.) According to Roca and Johnson (1999), the way in which we speak is somewhat similar to playing a recorder. This is because when you play a recorder you have to blow air from your lungs, as you do when you speak. However, to play a tune, you cannot simply blow air into the recorder; you must have your fingers over specific holes. Therefore, when we speak, we have to interfere with the air that comes out of our...  [Read more]

Humans speak with each other by creating sounds. That is how we communicate with each other. Over the centuries the different languages have created systems of grammar to explain how the words in their languages work. Sometime after that, they began to create systems to explain how the sounds, or phonemes, of the different words work. Two disciplines arose out of this: phonetics and phonology. Phonetics is the study of the sounds themselves. In the world there are a limited number of possible sounds which the human vocal tract can produce. Of these sounds, the distinctive pronunciations of the different languages are produced. But how are theses sounds produced and represented? The answer to this question is the area of study of Phonetics. Generally, Phonetics is subdivided into three...  [Read more]

Phonetics and its Uses in Foreign Language InstructionPhonetics is the study of the physical aspects of speech. It is broken down into three categories: articulatory phonetics deals with the way in which speech sounds are produced, concerning itself with the actual organs involved in speech (vocal tract, tongue, lips, etc.); acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds, such as the properties of sound waves and the acoustics of speech; and auditory phonetics analyses the way in which humans perceive sounds, and involves the anatomy and physiology of the human ear and brain (Nicole Dehe, 'Phonology and Phonetics,' 1-2). Phonetics looks only at sounds themselves, rather their meanings or the context in which they are used, while the study of sound systems or...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Hainan Zangzu Zizhizhou? Are you interested in teaching English in Hainan Zangzu Zizhizhou? 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. Check out which city/town you may be more interested in and start your journey| Unit 13 covers pronunciation and phonetics, teaching how we speak and explaining how the way we speak can affect the underlying tone of our sentences Unit 13 is all about the phonetic alphabet, teaching pronunciation, and and stress and intonation Unit thirteen was...  [Read more]

  Now let's take a look at how we go from traditional spellings into the phonemic spellings. The first step in this process is identifying each unit of sound or each phoneme within a word. Let's look at bet, bit, but, and bought. The only difference in each one of these words is in the vowel sound. We have bet, bit, but and bought. Each word simply uses three sounds. Now we have photo. That's four phonemes. Wow we have taxi. That's five phonemes. We have unite with a hidden phoneme in there being the ?y? sound before anything else. Those are five phonemes as well and now we have a longer word: chemistry. Let's give that a shot. That's eight phonemes used in the word chemistry. Now once we've isolated each sound we want to assign a phoneme for each one of those sounds let's do that...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Xiaoyan Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Xiangyang Shi — Xiangfan? 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. This piece will discuss the difficulties faced by Japanese learners of English in regards to English pronunciation and suggest methods to help learners in different age groups overcome them. It posits that most difficulties stem from the differences in phonology between the English alphabet and the Japanese kana system. While the English alphabet is...  [Read more]

Pronunciation instruction is perhaps the most difficult aspect of English teaching. There are no simple answers as to how, when, or how long, it should be taught. However, this article hopes to present a different way of teaching the phonetics of English. My undergraduate work was not in English or even general education, but the performance of music. I learned from experts in the production and education of sound, and I feel the techniques they used may be applied to the instruction of English phonetics. By utilizing techniques used in college level music performance education, it is hoped a teacher may improve the effectiveness of phonetic instruction in their English class.While a student in one of the leading tuba studios in the country, my teachers utilized one underlying philosophy....  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Tuqiao Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Huaihua 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. Linguistics is the scientific study of the human language and its structure, and as any other science, it is divided into different branches or areas of analysis. One of these divisions examines the articulation of sounds and has a name that corresponds to its function: phonetics. In spite of the crucial character it plays in its scientific field, the one it performs...  [Read more]

Phonetics and its Uses in Foreign Language Instruction Phonetics is the study of the physical aspects of speech. It is broken down into three categories: articulatory phonetics deals with the way in which speech sounds are produced, concerning itself with the actual organs involved in speech (vocal tract, tongue, lips, etc.); acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds, such as the properties of sound waves and the acoustics of speech; and auditory phonetics analyses the way in which humans perceive sounds, and involves the anatomy and physiology of the human ear and brain (Nicole Dehe, ?Phonology and Phonetics,? 1-2). Phonetics looks only at sounds themselves, rather their meanings or the context in which they are used, while the study of sound systems or...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Tieling Shi? Are you interested in teaching English in Tieling 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. Check out which city/town you may be more interested in and start your journey| This unit is a quite confusing but it's also fulfilling once you learned it This unit on pronunciation is very insightful and challenging Pronunciations and phonology are the most difficult course I have come across, especially phonetic pronunciation This unit focuses on pronunciation and...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Beiye Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Luoyang 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. This unit covered the different aspects of pronunciation: intonation, stress, and the phonemic alphabet. It taught the three basic intonation patterns of English, rise/fall, fall/rise, and flat. It also covered some basic rules for knowing which syllable to stress in a word or which word to stress in a sentence. Although I naturally follow these patterns every day and...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Liangjiazi Nongchang? Are you interested in teaching English in Tieling 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. This unit explains the definition of phonology: the science and classification of the physical properties of sound. This unit also explains how to use the International Phonetic Alphabet to help students learn the correct pronunciation of English. This unit further explains the difference between intonation and stress. For example, I learned that intonation...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in E'erdong Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Wulanchabu Shi — Ulanqab? 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. One of the greater struggles in language teaching in general is teaching students how to discriminate between sounds that either don’t exist in their language or are allophones and are thus not consciously discriminated. Specifically, English – a very difficult language to learn for individuals coming from phonetic alphabet languages – presents...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Lunan Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Yingkou 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. This was a very interesting lesson! Regarding the first part of phonology, I found it helpful how to learn about and identify intonation patterns. It was very useful to understand in which contexts each technique is applied and used. I appreciated seeing the techniques for indicating and teaching intonation, as well as those techniques for indicating and teaching...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in SAnshiliuwAnkuangqu? Are you interested in teaching English in Chenzhou 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. This essay seeks to explain how the Japanese ‘Katakana’ and ‘Romaji’ alphabets cause barriers for the introduction of English education in Japanese elementary schools. It will look at how these alphabets effect the pronunciation, writing and reading abilities of Japanese students. The Japanese language arguably has four different alphabets. The main...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Ningdong Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Yinchuan 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. This unit talked about the importance of teaching phonology both for the teacher and the students. We also tackled the areas of stress, rhythm, and intonation. It showed how phonetic alphabet helps the students to come to an understanding of the pronunciation of English. Intonation is the variation in volume and pitch in a whole sentence. We have 3 patterns of...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Huretunaoer Sumu? Are you interested in teaching English in Xilinguole Meng — Xilin Gol? 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. Let us first distinguish the difference between phonetics and phonology. According to the research work of Frankfurt International School, Phonetic is the term for the description and classification of speech sounds, particularly how sounds are produced, transmitted and received. Whilst Phonology is the term used for the study of the speech...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Dongyang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Changsha 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. Japan is a nation that has tried to increase its citizens’ English ability, especially with the upcoming 2020 Olympic Games being held in their country. However, progress has been slow and not fruitful. There are various reasons for this slow stagnation of the nation’s English abilities such as the larger academic system and access to proper education in rural...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Mole Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Haibei Zangzu Zizhizhou? 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. This was a very interesting and informative unit. I enjoyed learning about the phonetic alphabet and how to incorporate it into the teaching of the English language. I also learned more about stressing words and how to teach that.I learned that while the phonetic alphabet can be very useful it can also be hard to teach and how not to over emphasis it, yet...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Jianquan Nongchang? Are you interested in teaching English in Shizuishan 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. The chapter 13 was focused towards teaching pronunciation and phonology. It includes definitions, intonations, stress usage and phonetic alphabet including the phonetic symbols used in the standardized system. Additionally, it includes mouth diagrams and explanation of how different sounds are generated. The chapter ends with a text written in phonetic...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Zhutang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Wuxi 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. The notion of phonetics/phonology exists only because alphabets do,there exist 26 letters of the alphabet which are divided into vowels and consonants. Each of these letters are very unique and fundamental when it comes to fully understand how words are formed and how we come about with the ability to read and write using a combination of these letters, even though...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Dazhang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Zhuzhou 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. It seems that the teaching of phonology to students of all levels is still typically centered on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The ITTT online material and Vantage offline classes are no exceptions. Despite seeing such introductions many times prior, it was still remarkable when the video narrator began mentioned “Alveolar, Retro­flex, Palatal,...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Butou Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Taizhou 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. I have learnt that pronunciation is the most neglected aspect of teaching the English language. An effective teacher must consider this is an integral part of any teaching course. Although there are differences between countries or regions (i.e. America, Britain, Australia) there is a general style from the phonetic alphabet. The phonetic alphabet is very difficult to...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Hongshui Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Haidong 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. Phonology and phonetics are two major components to learning a new language. As a teacher, understanding the phonetic alphabet and how it relates to a common language as well as the new language and native language is a very important component. Phonology and phonetics are two major components to learning a new language. As a teacher, understanding the phonetic...  [Read more]