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The tension or relax of the vocal cords, producing a greater or lesser frequency on the
vibration (high or low pitch)
The modification of the volume of the edges: thinner for the high frequencies, thicker for
the low frequencies)
The control of the vocal cords is produced through the participation of several muscles and
ligaments placed in Adams apple. If we stop to listen to a single sentence, we could check the
complexity and work of the mentioned muscles, which allow a quick and accurate articulation of
many different sounds.
1.4.3.- Articulation.
The primary sound formed in the larynx will be modified later in the rest of the way to travel.
The participations, sometimes active and sometimes passive, of different organs, will modify the
sound up to transform it in a phoneme, that is, the most reduced linguistic expression.
The organs participating in the articulation are called auxiliary organs and they are the
following:
The tongue: its position and form are fundamental in the language articulation. To
demonstrate it, we could simply remember the way in which a drunk man talks: its
speaking incapability derives, fundamentally, from the loss of control over the tongue
movements. It is undoubtedly the most important organ for the speech. We can
distinguish three fundamental parts in the tongue:
The tongue tip that will be used with extreme precision to articulate some
sounds.
The part under the high alveoli, named blade. It has a great mobility
and can get, with the tip, to the lips, teeth, alveoli, etc
The next part, called back, under the hard palate. The possibility to
modify its form, from flatness to concavity, will also modify the quality of
the sound. It can also touch the palate producing a closeness of the air
flow.
The root can also flatten or rise to touch the soft palate.
The soft palate, that can be vertically moved provoking the closeness of the nasal
cavity
The alveoli: the place where the teeth have their roots.
The internal part of the dental pieces that, from the inside, can be used as support
for the tongue, besides a physical barrier in itself.
He/she must help the students to perceive sounds. Students will have a strong
tendency to imitate the sounds of Spanish. The teacher must check that the pupils are
listening to the sounds according to the appropriate categories and help them to
create new categories if necessary.
He/she must help the students to produce sounds not occurring in their mother tongue
(in this case Spanish). If imitation is not enough, the teacher must be able to provide
tricks and techniques helping pupils to produce the new sound.
He/she must give feedback and information about the students performances and the
results.
He/she must be able to recognize possible problems which students can face.
He/she must establish priorities and decide which aspect they should concentrate first.
He/she must design adequate activities for the level and the purpose to reach,
guaranteeing the students progress and motivation.
The objective to reach must be reasonable depending on the necessities of the student. A
reasonable objective for Primary Education is to reach a maximum comprehension, i.e., to be
able to identify accurately the highest number of words.
2.2.- Communication Techniques.
To face students to strange sounds, we should avoid them to be perceived as variants
of already familiar sounds. To do this, they must practice with aural discrimination exercises.
Once they are able to listen to the differences, they can work towards a better pronunciation.
There exist several kinds of discrimination exercises
- Sound identification:
In a familiar context:
Where is it? Come in.
Differentiation of sounds:
English/Spanish
it, it (same
fin, fin (different)
vida, vida (same)
English/English
eat, eat (same)
feel, fill (different)
Variation: Sign the different vowel in read, heat, his, crease, ease.
2.3.- Production Techniques
Through these techniques, the student produces the sounds which he/she can already
discriminate correctly. There are several types.
-
Imitative production exercises, in which the pupil repeats a model, corrects or confirms
its pronunciation.
Student:
constitute a phoneme whose pronunciation can slightly vary as the fundamental limits of
frequency and the corresponding harmonics are not crossed.
Each phoneme has, as it has been mentioned, one or more letters representing
orthographically and, at the same time, it corresponds to a phonological sound which,
sometimes, has not a special letter representing it. Because of this, and to facilitate the correct
acquisition of all the sounds in a language, we should use the representation of them through
special symbols present in the IPA, in which each phoneme as a special graphic representation
that helps to identify it. The phonetic alphabet is, therefore, undoubtedly useful in the language
learning process.
Next The IPA symbols corresponding to each phoneme and their orthographic
representation are specified.
3.2.- Vowels and diphthongs
Vowels are made by voiced air passing through different mouth shapes; the differences in the
shapes of the mouth are caused by different positions of the tongue and the lips.
There are 12 different vowels in English, they are different in the position the tongue takes and in
the rounding or spreading of the lips. Furthermore, they are different in length and all of them have
different realizations or allophones.
These vowels are classified by the place and manner of articulation in Hellwags triangle which
represents the oral cavity and the positions the tongue reach to obtain the pronunciation of a certain
vowel. The triangle of English vowels was ideated by Daniel Jones.
/:/ The front of the tongue is raised to a height slightly below and behind the close front position; the
lips are spread; the tongue is tense:
/H/ Pronounced with a part of the tongue nearer to centre than to front, raised just above the half-close
position, the lips are loosely spread; the tongue is lax.
e.g.: sit, city, poetry, ladies, private.
/ e / The front of the tongue is raised between half-open and half-closed positions; the lips are loosely
spread and are slightly wider apart than for /I/; the tongue may have some tension.
e.g.: set, dead, many
/z/ The mouth is slightly more open than for /e/; the front of the tongue is raised just below the halfopen position, the ips are neutrally open, the tongue itself having rather more tension than in the case for
/e/.
e.g.: sat, plait
/U /
Considerable separation of the jaws and with the lips neutrally open; the centre of the tongue is
/@:/ Considerable separation of the jaws and lips neutrally open; a part of the tongue between the centre
and the back is in the fully open position.
e.g. pass, part, heart, clerk, calm, aunt
/P/ Wide open jaws and slight, open lip-rounding; the back of the tongue is in the fully open position.
e.g. dog, was, cough, because
/N:/ Medium lip-rounding; the back of the tongue is raised between the half open and the half close
positions.
e.g. horse, saw, daughter, salt, before.
/T/ Part of the tongue nearer to centre than to back, raised just above the half-close position (it has a
symmetrical back relationship with the front vowel /I/) the tongue is laxly held.
e.g.: put, woman, good, should
/u:/ Back lose vowel, but the tongue raising is relaxed from the closest position and is somewhat
advanced from back. The lips tend to be closely rounded.
E.g.: food, do, group, rude, chew.
/2:/ Centre of the tongue raised between half close and half open, lips are neutrally spread.
e.g.: bird, her, church, word, journey
/? / Central vowel with neutral lip position. The position of the tongue tends to be in the place the
following consonant must be.
e.g.: very high occurrence in unaccented syllables: possible, gentlemen, woman, suppose, particular,
driver, famous.
DIPHTHONGS
Those sequences of vocalic elements forming a glide are called diphthongs. The glide goes from the first
vocalic element (generally
Characteristics of RP diphthongs:
1.
The length and the stress is mostly concentrated on the first element. They are called
falling diphthongs.
2.
They are equivalent in length to a long vowel and they are subject to the same
variation of quantity: a diphthong will remain untouched in all contexts. However, the
1st element can become slightly lengthened when followed by a lenis consonant in a
stressed position at the end of the word. E.g. :
3.
play
[!pleH]
Place
[!pleHs]
They are particularly susceptible to variation in different regional and social types of
speech.
DIPHTHONGS IN DETAIL
1.
Falling Diphthongs
/eH/ The glide begins from slightly below the half close front position and moves in the direction of
RP
/`H/ It begins at a point slightly behind the front open position and moves in the direction of RP //
although the tongue is not so much raised. The closing movement of the lower jaw is obvious. Lips
change from neutral to loosely spread.
E.g.: time, high, die, either
/NH/ The tongue begins at a point between the back half-open and open position and moves in the
direction of
/H/.
The tongue movement extends from back to centralized front. The movement of jaws
/?T/ It begins at a central position (between half close and half open) and moves in the direction of
RP
/T/ (back close position). Slight closing of lower jaw. The lips are neutral with a tendency to round
/`T/ The glide begins at a point between the back and front open positions (more fronted than the
position for
/@:/) and moves to RP /T/, although the tongue is not raised higher than the half-close
2.
Centring Diphthongs
/H?/ The glide of RP /H?/ begins with a tongue position approximately that used for /H/ (centralized
front half-closed) and moves in the direction of the more open variety of /?/ (when de diphthong is in
final position. When it is not, the variety of // is mid open.) The lips are neutral with a movement
from spread to open.
E.g.: dear, fierce, idea
/e?/ It begins in the half-open position and moves in the direction of the more open variety of
//.(again when it is final positon). Lips neutrally open.
E.g.: care, air, bear
/T?/ RP /T?/ glides from a tongue position similar to that used for /T/ towards the most open type
of
/?/ (when it is in final position). The lips are weakly wounded at the beginning of the glide,
3.
Diphthongs
+ [?]
These diphthongs
followed by
(/dH/, /NT/, /`H/) require an extensive movement of the tongue. All may be
[?] either as an inseparable part of the word, e.g. fire, iron, hire, our, tower; or as a
Labio-dental: if the obstruction takes place between the lips and the lower jaw.
Plosives: The air is compressed and then there is a sudden air escape.
Lateral: The air escapes slowly through the sides of the mouth.
The combination of different places and manners of articulation gives as a result the different
English consonants.
But we can find, for instance, that both /f/ and /v/ are labio-dental and fricative, so whats the
difference between them? The answer lies in the vocal folds (or cords). As we may notice, when we
pronounce a vowel these little tissues vibrate. However, they do not with some consonants and they do
with some others. This is the difference between pairs of consonants having the same place and manner
of articulation, one of them is VOICED (the vocal cords vibrate) and the other one is VOICELESS (the vocal
cords do not vibrate). In this case the phoneme /v/ is voiced and /f/ is voiceless.
And there is one more subtle difference between this two consonants: it is the EFFORT used to
pronounce it. If we make a superior muscular effort to pronounce a consonant, it will be FORTIS, if not, it
will be LENIS. In this case, /f/ is fortis and /v/ is lenis. It is important to notice that there is a coincidence
in fortis/voiceless and lenis/voiced, and although they always coincide, they are not synonyms.
// Glottal Plosive
The glottal plosive is frequently used but it is not a significant sound in the RP system. Its more
extended used in RP are:
/,,/
Reinforcement of finals
Replacement of final
Instead intrusive r
/,,/
pn pneumonia
3.4.- Semivowels
There are two sounds in English which do not fit in any of the described groups.
They are phonemes that linguistically work as consonants but they are realized as vowel
phonetically due to their form of articulation. They are [j] and [w].
- /j/. It is articulated as a brief /I/ with spread or natural lips, passing quickly to the
following sound. This sound is often phonetically realized by ew, ue and ui. Its phonetic
realization mainly responds to the semivowel and the vowel i. The words in sic it occurs must be
specially practised so that its performance is quick enough :yes [jes], new [nju:].
- /w/. It is articulated with a u, realized with rounded lips from which we pass to the
next sound. When the sound following a [w] is a vowel realized with rounded lips, like [o] or [u],
the position of the lips will be more rounded to highlight the difference. It is necessary to take
special care about the realization of this sound without confusing it with the Spanish fricative g,
with which it has no connection. The assimilation is frequent in Spanish speaking people, as it
happens with words like
Spanish.
PRONUNCIATION TABLE
NOUN/ADJECTIVE
VERB
Record
Record
Present
Present
However, when words are put together, the concept of rhythm becomes
important, and words normally stressed may become unstressed or less stressed, or the stress
may be moved onto another syllable. Sentence stress is also called ACCENT.
Sometimes, we use stress at will to express emphasis or contrast in the
sentence. E.g.:
I thought you love her No, I hate her
I thought you hated him No, I hate her
RHYTHM
Rhythm is the regular succession of strong and weak stresses in any utterance. In
English the intervals between strong stresses is hardly equal, the effect of this tendency is to
shorten or lengthen syllables in articulation to fit the rhythm pattern.
Each stressed syllable constitutes the peak of prominence in a rhythmic group, a
succession of sounds in connected speech with alternation of weak and strong syllables
(unstressed and stressed). There are words with two different pronunciations depending on the
stressing. If they are stressed (for special emphasis or contrast) they are called STRONG forms.
If they are not (the normal case) they are called WEAK forms. These words with two forms are
mainly auxiliaries (primary and modals), prepositions and personal pronouns.
INTONATION
Every language has melody in it. The voice goes up and down and the different notes of
the voice combine to make TUNES. In some languages, the tune belongs to the word.
In other languages, like English or Spanish, the tune belongs to the word group. We can
utter a word group hesitantly, angrily or kindly, the words are the same but the tune is not,
neither the meaning interpreted.
The importance of intonation in communication of meaning is basic, it has four mainly
functions:
1. Attitudinal: reflecting the attitudinal or emotional state of a person
E.g.: thank you : real gratitude (starting high and coming low)
Acknowledge of something unimportant (starting low and coming
high)
2. Grammatical: used as a type of oral punctuation to distinguish sentences or parts of
them.
E.g.: My husband is a tailor.
3. Accentual: highlighting the most important words in an utterance in conjunction with
stress.
E.g.:
4. Discourse: D. Brazil states that a fall indicates new information, while a raise refers
to back.
E.g.: That man, as far as I was told, is a thief
______/ _______________/ ______
The SHAPE of a tune is decided partly by the number of important
words in the group and partly by the exact attitude we wish to express. We have several
meanings according to the different tune shapes:
1. THE FALLING TUNE OR GLIDE DOWN
A fall on the voice from a fairly high pitch to a very low one. Usual in short word groups
(of no more than two words) Used in:
a. Statements: Im a teacher
b. Wh questions: Whats up?
c.
Commands: Be quiet!
The native language. The more differences there are, the more difficulties the students
have.
The age factor. Studies demonstrate different conclusions, due to the interaction
between age and other factors like ability, motivation, interest, etc.
Quantity of exposition to the language. The way the student reacts to opportunities to
use and practice the language.
Phonetic ability. Some students distinguish the differences better than others. In any
way, practice can improve their abilities.
Attitude and identity. Imitate a persons speech correctly can be a way to show respect
and interest towards that person and the group he/she represents. People with a
positive attitude towards the language can develop more perfect accents.
Motivation and concern for a good pronunciation. The idea I dont want to say if I cant
do it perfectly.
Those sounds in English which have not equivalent in Spanish like /R , z/ or /f , v/.
Those sounds in English which are apparently similar to some Spanish ones, like
English /tR/ and the Spanish (ch)
Those English sounds that are similar to some Spanish one but have different
distribution, like /C/ in this, but with an allophone in Spanish (in the word dado)