Book Identity Title phonology Writer Year of Publishing Publisher City of Publisher Number of pages : The sounds of English:

Phonetics and for English teachers in Southeast Asia : Deterding, D. and G. Poedjosoedarmo : 1998 : Prentice Hall : Singapore : 298 pp.

1.

Content of the Book This book mostly describes the sounds and sound system of English, but it also provides some descriptions of the sounds in other languages from Southeast Asia and East Asia. It consists of 28 short chapters with an accompanying tape for parts of the exercises given at the end of each chapter. The chapters in the book can be divided into three general parts: the segmental aspects of English sounds, the supra-segmental aspects of English sounds, the sounds and sound systems of major languages of Southeast Asia (also included are Korean and Japanese), and the application of computers in speech analysis and in the teaching of pronunciation. Chapters 1- 8 focus on the segmental aspects of English sounds. Chapter 1 sets the background for the following chapters by introducing and defining some relevant concepts such as descriptive versus prescriptive approaches to language studies, phonetics and phonology, letters, sounds and symbols, and accent. Chapter 2 introduces the basic articulators involved in speech production. Chapter 3 provides a detailed description of the vowels in general and its classifications in terms of quality and length. Chapter 4 discusses vowels in British RP (SSB) while chapter 5 describes and compares the vowels in General American English (GA) with those in SSB. In both chapters 4 and 5, the authors

relate the vowels to their phonetic symbols. Chapter 6 describes the consonants in general and the classifications of consonants based on voicing, place and manner of articulation. An IPA chart upon which consonant symbols in this book are taken is given on page 52. Chapter 7 focuses on English consonants in both SSB and GA, mentioning the differences between them. Chapter 8 provides a detailed description of the sounds of the vowels and consonants in English, and the relationship between their phonetic symbols and spelling. The similarities and differences between SSB and GA in terms of vowel contrasts are pointed out. Chapters 9 and 10 deal more with the phonological structures of English. Chapter 9 defines 'phoneme' and 'allophones' and discusses allophonic variants in SSB and GA. This chapter mentions the need for comparing sounds systems and introduces readers to a basic phonological analysis of sounds using data from Spanish as an example. Chapter 10 describes the syllable, the syllabic structure, phonotactic constraints, and consonant clusters in English, ending with a paragraph on the problems faced in describing syllables in English. Chapters11 -15 are devoted to the supra-segmental aspects of speech. Chapter 11 discusses stress and the effect of heavy/light syllables, parts of speech, suffixation and compounding on stress placement in English while chapter 12 describes further into stress and the rhythmic structure in English, emphasizing the difference between stress and syllable timed languages. Chapter 13 discusses tones and intonation. This includes the difference between tone languages. Chapter 14 gives a description of stress and intonation in English, focusing on stressed syllables that carry a tone (tonic syllable), the function of a tonic syllable, the relationship between tone units and grammatical units and the structure of the tone unit. Chapter 15 explains features found in connected speech such as vowel reduction and other phonological processes in fast speech like assimilation, deletion, and insertion. It also describes progressive voicing assimilation in English, a phonological process that occurs in both slow and fast

speech. For this latter process, the authors focus on voicing assimilation in the suffixes -s and -ed Chapters 16 and 17 discuss language variation. Chapter 16 first defines language, dialect, and accent. Then, it describes three types of language variation; geographical, social and stylistic variation. To exemplify geographical variation, the authors give brief comments on accents in the UK and America. For social variation, they refer to Labov's work on the presence or absence of /r/ in the speech of English speakers in New York City. Singapore English is used to demonstrate stylistic variation. Chapter 17 describes in detail the pronunciation in Singapore English as compared to SSB, a variety of English often regarded as the standard in Singapore. The authors state that Singapore English is not a 'lazy' language as some people assume. Chapters 18- 27 prepare the readers for a contrastive analysis of sound systems. More specifically, Chapter 18 introduces the Contrastive Analysis approach to sound systems and discusses its application to language teaching while chapters 19-27 describe the sound systems of seven major (groups of) languages of Southeast Asia and two other languages of East Asia. The languages described are Malay (and its different varieties), Javanese, Mandarin Chinese, some other Chinese dialects (for example, Hokkien), Thai, Tamil, Tagalog, Japanese and Korean respectively. The authors note in the introductory chapter of the book that 'the presence of Japanese and Korean businesses in the region makes communication with speakers of these languages important'. Thus, an understanding of the sound systems of these languages is necessary. The last two chapters (28 and 29) discuss the use of computers in relation to speech studies. Chapter 28 offers basic information on speech analysis using computers. Concepts such as the speech waveform, spectrogram, vowel formants, and voice onset time (VOT) are introduced with illustrations. Chapter 29 looks at the possibility of using computers for teaching pronunciation. The authors think that although a computer program (CECIL) has the potential of

becoming a tool for teaching and learning pronunciation, at the moment, there is no computer program that is ideal for this purpose. However, the authors are convinced that with rapid advancement in technology, such a program will become available soon. 2. Comments The book is comprehensive in that in addition to the descriptions of the different aspects of the sounds and sound systems of three different varieties of English: British RP, General American and Singapore English, it also covers essential topics on the phonetics of major languages of Southeast Asia (and East Asia) for comparison with English. This is essential information for teachers teaching English language to students in or from this region. The book is also well organized and clearly presented. All technical concepts are appropriately defined and some are gradually introduced as the authors weave their points through the chapters. This prepares the readers for the concepts when a more detailed discussion of them is later presented. The authors also try to relate the description of certain concepts or speech processes to everyday experience. Exercises given at the end of each chapter are useful in enhancing the readers' factual knowledge of phonetics and phonology, and their critical analysis of the teaching and learning of English in their own countries. Answers to the exercises given at the back of the book make it a good source for self-learning. There is one criticism pertaining to the pedagogical usefulness of the book. It may useful if the sounds of the English vowels presented in chapter 4 (SSB) and 5 (GA) are provided in the accompanying tape. In this way, the readers, especially those who are new to this area, can learn to distinguish the vowels, and match the sounds of these vowels to their phonetic symbols because the readers are expected to be able to associate the different vowel sounds with their symbols in the listening exercises at the end of the chapters.

BOOK REVIEW
Submitted to fulfill one of the Assignments of Contrastive and Error Analysis Course Lecturer: Dr. Sujoko, M. A.

1. The sounds of English 2. Errors in Language Learning and Use: Exploring Error Analysis

By Name SIN : Didik Setyawan : S 890908005

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT POSTGRADUATE PROGRAM SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY SURAKARTA 2009