Sounds Symbols And Spellings
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ABSTRACT
JUSTIFICATION
When thinking about this intervention proposal, the formula proposed by Gallego (2001) has been taken into account. This is a list of questions that will help us to reflect and get information for the realization of the same: what has led us to the problem, why it is necessary to solve it, for what, when and how it will be carried out, and where it will be performed.
Let's start by trying to solve the first question we asked about the causes that led us to deal with this problem. The study of foreign languages in primary education is, if we compare it with other countries, very recent, so children find many problems when it comes to understanding and expressing themselves in a language other than L1 or mother tongue.
Due to diverse experiences of intervention and observation in the classrooms during the teaching-learning process of the subject of English and after interviews with teachers from various schools, the hypothesis has been established that the biggest problem encountered in this process is that children correctly identify and reproduce the English phonetic and phonological system applied to reading and writing.
It is observed that children have a great ability to repeat words exactly the same as those they listen to, but when they are presented with a reading, whether of a word or a text, depending on age, if it has not been previously memorized, it is very Probably the student will not face his pronunciation and writing correctly.
As we consider, this is one of the main difficulties, but we believe it is obligatory to mention the psychological-emotional barriers that children present in primary school and even in older adults due to the acute sense of ridicule that is caused by speaking in another language in front of classmates. . But this would be too broad a field to develop in this work, so, although it will be taken into account, it will not be objective of it.
The next question posed at the beginning invites us to reflect on the need to solve this problem. The Common European Framework of Reference establishes an objective for students regarding the learning of foreign languages and is that they are able to progressively reach degrees of linguistic competence (Organic Law 2/2006). This could be the starting point to base ourselves on solving any problem posed by the teaching-learning process of English. However, we should add that if we really want to acquire linguistic competences that are functional in real situations, we can not allow a biased teaching of the foreign language, giving or diminishing importance to some or other aspects of it. Therefore, after several periods of observation in real situations, as well as readings of studies carried out by professors, linguists and pedagogues, we have considered that one of the aspects in which less has been affected up to this moment at the time to teach English is in the phonetic aspects. It is true that bilingual or language immersion programs are encouraged in more and more centers, however, the methodology regarding the teaching of phonetics has changed little or nothing. The students are still asking themselves: "why do not you read the same as you write?" It is possible that few primary school teachers respond to their students in an appropriate way, since even for a phoneticist, it would be difficult to find a capable answer to "convince" a child of these ages. However, we believe that it might be possible to find a methodology adapted to your level and that would facilitate English oral expression and comprehension.
Why should we perform this proposal? As we have said, we believe in the need to work on the oral aspect of the English language in the primary stage. For this, it would be fundamental to begin to study in depth the phonetic aspects on which to deepen as well as the variables with which to work, methodologies, resources, etc. To this last respect we could say that there are resources and activities focused on English phonetics, but we find them mostly unfocused, difficult to understand for children, especially in the first cycle and very easy to forget.
If it was possible for elementary students, from the first cycle, to begin to learn to identify and relate segments of words with their phonetic equivalent, it would be much easier for them to develop their ability to learn a new language, in this case English. It would be a matter of going one step further in terms of the level of demand in this subject and not to summarize it by learning a few words memorized through songs, drawings, etc., which is fine, but we consider it insufficient. However, it has to be mentioned that in this proposal the phonetics part will be left aside, in which aspects of intonation, tone or accentuation are included, which are also very important and necessary, however it would be too much for work that occupies us.
There are factors, the most important the level of knowledge and the stage in which the learners are, which lead us to think that the results obtained with this proposal, will facilitate the adaptation of the same to other levels, both lower and higher.
Finally, we will say that our proposal will be carried out with students from the …..School , during the internship period. The development of the same will be explained in detail in section six, dedicated to the research process
OBJECTIVES
General objective
To analyze the situation regarding the learning of English phonetics (difficulties, errors and causes) and lay the foundations for the development of a methodological proposal of L2 focused on phonetics.
Specific objectives
• Design an effective plan or strategy that allows us to identify in the classroom the main pairs of phonemes that cause greater difficulty in the pronunciation of English in students.
• Inquire and analyze the causal origin of these difficulties.
• Design motivating and effective activities that help to:
– Develop cognitive ability in the student against a new phonetic system unknown to him.
– Introduce the students the sounds of the new linguistic system so that they can later recognize and reproduce them in an autonomous way.
– Develop in the student the articulatory capacity of the new sounds.
– Develop in the student the listening comprehension of these phoneme pairs
Other objectives are based on the:
1. Investigation of teaching methods’ effective use based on sounds, symbols and spellings in English at high school level.
2. Exploration of various methods’ advantages and disadvantages.
3. Identification the effectively use of sounds, symbols and spellings in English.
METHODOLOGY
Nowadays there is a wide offer in terms of material resources for teachers of English as a foreign language, based on didactics, methodologies and grammar, as well as auditory resources. However, there are few materials that we find focused on didactics applied to phonetics.
It is important to note that the study of this area of English can be complicated and unattractive depending on the age of the students and the methodology used. Even more so, if we take into account the factors that, according to Lynn Cameron, influence the learning of English as a foreign language being these: "the nature of the written forms of the mother tongue or L1; the ability to read and write the L1 of the learner; his knowledge about the L2 or second language and the age of it ". One woul also explain how, when learning a new language, our brain tends to look for correspondences with the mother tongue, which causes a competitive model between L1-L2. That is, the linguistic patterns acquired when we learn our first language make us understand it when we speak or write. When we introduce a new language, we are transferring new grammatical structures that try to adjust to some pattern already known to be understood. The problem of transferring knowledge from L2 to L1 is that in many cases such correspondences do not exist, but in the same way they are adapted, so in most cases they become linguistic errors. One of the most common cases is that in Spanish we do not have the initial consanthic grouping "sp" or "st" as in English (speech, strike) so when Romanian students read this type of words they adapt them to their schemas or patterns adding the vowel "e" to the beginning of the word (e-speech, e-strike). This allows them to read in a more "natural" register.
With this proposal we want to ensure that our students are able to distinguish, identify and assimilate phonemes of English, to facilitate good practice of this language. For this we have worked on the development of this proposal, starting with the bibliographic search until we reach the general conclusions. Then we will explain in detail the entire methodological process.
COLLECTION OF EXPERIENCES
In this section we will briefly explain the process by which we collected experiences that led us to awaken our interest to get into the problematic that entails phonetics. As we have commented at some point, the personal experiences together with the acquisition of knowledge about the subject to study, are the ones that most help to understand the reality on which you want to work. A few years ago, it was very common for students to finish their careers and when they entered the work world they would say that "this has nothing to do with what I have studied", and that is that we all know that a good theory must be complemented by its practice and that this requires time and effort. When studying the master's degree, a few hours of practice in real centers are required, with real professors and students and real parents. This is, in our opinion, one of the most important parts of the study of this career. It is during this experience, where you have the option of observing the educational reality and then consult it or study it with your teachers. It is true that it depends on the interest of the professor in internships, but it is a unique moment in which, because your responsibility with the center is not the same as that of your internship tutor, much more time can be devoted to the analysis of behavior, attitude, cognitive ability of students and the methodology used by teachers. In our case, it was a perfect moment to make our proposal, since we had in the first instance the time, space and human resources needed for all phases, both observation and intervention. Moreover, we can say that already during the realization of Practicum I, there was a noticeable deficiency in the level of English of the primary students, calling us much attention and more specifically the deficit so great found in the oral expression and comprehension . Oblivious to the real educational environment of primary schools, we could think that with so much effort to equate our young people with young Europeans in a second language as English is concerned, in addition to all the efforts by the centers themselves and the government to include programs that help it, as we say we might think that the level of English currently in primary school is markedly better than a few years ago. This, however, would be after consulting and collecting experiences that are less questionable and worthy of a deeper study.
The present research is designed to investigate the effective use of teaching methods related to Sounds, Symbols and Spellings in English based on assessment, at high-school level.
In this respect, the present paper is divided into three chapters, as following:
Chapter no. 1 highlights the problem of Sounds, respectively: phonic competence and its importance for communication, learning vs. acquisition, The English phonological system.
In the second chapter, one would observe an analysis of the phonetic aspect of the English language, the sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the articulatory description, the phonological oppositions, the use of phonetic symbols.
In chapter no. 3, respectively spellings, the basics of spelling, the Alphabet, typical letter-sounds, historical evolution of writing and spelling, spelling rules, false friends, confusable words, why you need to work at spelling mnemonics. Also, this chapter involves a study applied to students from ……………….School.
In this respect, my contribution is related to the fact that I believe that we all know that the pronunciation of English can be difficult, but why? The difficulty lies in the differences between how some words are written and how they are pronounced. In the most phonetic languages, the words are pronounced as they are written. In English, how a word is spelled does not necessarily indicate to the speaker how it should be pronounced. In this respect, believe that there are many complexities within the English language that affect pronunciation. Also, I appreciate that in general, this study is very important for teachers as it has collected plenty of information concerning teaching methods, their effectiveness and appropriateness of the English grammar. Furthermore, it will guide teachers in exploring adequate methodologies for teaching, while its significance may also be for planners and education managers in policy formulation of teacher education programs.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The realization of this thesis research was possible, in the first place, to the cooperation provided by Prof. …………., who in his performance as ……………….. sought the participation of faculty, administrative staff and students. I would also like to thank to Prof., then to the……………….., who was in charge of the coordination of teachers and students in performing the investigation. For them, infinite thanks. Likewise, the students and teachers are thanked for their willingness and confidence, that without them it would not have been possible to collect the necessary data in this study.
We also thank the faculty of …………………… for their cooperation in the critical thinking skills for validation the research and for the support they always provided. Special thanks to Prof………….. for his ingenious search of data through the computer on a number of files of students who participated in this study.
As is to be understood, we thank the Committee, particularly to Prof…………. for his guidance and constant help, especially for his methodological guidance and for his continuous encouragement throughout the process until the end of it. Prof………….. is also thanked, especially for his theoretical approach in critical thinking, which based the conceptual framework of this research and Prof……………….. for his correct corrections.
We should also thank Prof…………….. and Prof………….. for their kindness and cooperation in serving as readers and for their constant support in this research.
We thank all those people who directly or indirectly contributed to this research work could be performed. Finally, a deep thanks to my family and to my friends for their constant patience and support that they always showed.
INTRODUCTION
To study the phonological system of a language means to describe and classify the phoneme inventory of that language, thus establishing the list of sounds in distinctive opposition, that is, those sounds that serve to distinguish two words from each other. However, and in line with the general objective of this manual, the first question we should try to answer in this introduction to the phonology of English is precisely why this sub-system of the language is part of the teacher training curriculum. specialist in English language. The answer should be sought in the dual role of every teacher in training as a learner of a language and as a professional education. As a professional education, the future performance of the teacher is framed within a very clear regulatory context. In a brief analysis of the current legislation, and considering that the teaching of a foreign language for international communication represents the general objective of its activity, we find clear references in the L.O.G.S.E. to the oral skills of the foreign language, as in the following argument: If the learning of a foreign language is a process of creative construction from the received language (heard, read) the receptive activities acquire a paramount importance in this stage and especially the auditory because oral communication is the most direct among human beings and especially among children.
The use of phonological or phonetic transcription in the foreign language class is ruled out by many teachers, who believe that teaching phonetic symbols is like teaching another language, even another language. The fact that transcription alone can not develop either auditory perception or articulation habits helps sustain this argument. However, in the case of / dʒ / and the diphthongs, the two symbols, when visualizing the sound, favor their conscious assimilation and distance the student from the error (this is partly the reason why in this thesis we transcribe / eɪ / and / oʊ / with two symbols and not as Anglo-Saxon phoneticians usually do). Phonological transcription is also very useful in working with the secondary accent. Not only the different marks distinguish the secondary accent of the primary or the weak, but the symbols of the sounds themselves are very illustrative of the clear quality of the vowels in accented syllables, as opposed to their obscuration in unstressed syllables. The learning of a phonetic alphabet is very useful not only for the teaching of phonetics, but also for the individual learning of pronunciation: the number of words whose pronunciation we learn in the dictionary is very high if we usually consult it. But "looking in the dictionary does not have to be the first step. Students can predict the pronunciation of difficult words first and then use the dictionary for checking. The combination of both approaches is a valuable contribution to the independence of students in their work with the pronunciation of English.
The realization of this work, besides having been very rewarding, has generated other possible ways of research as well as the possibility of carrying out the same project, improving certain aspects. For example, we believe that it would be very productive to carry out a study with respect to intonation, tone accentuation etc., that complements all the aspects of a language that are normally acquired together, in order to have a much more unified vision of the process of learning a second language. It is true that there are many studies on the acquisition of a second language as we have seen, but it would be incredible in our opinion that each center will study its own students in this regard. Each educational center presents some characteristics and if the teachers had specific information about certain areas, they could complement the school curriculum to improve the quality of the contents. With the union of the educational community, it would not be a great effort or a loss excessive time and then serve to work as a team between cycles and combine methodologies under the students. We believe after the completion of this work, that to begin to demonstrate the importance of teaching in early cycles, phonetic rules, workshops could be created to work on these aspects. In addition, this study could be performed in other cycles to analyze the possibility of including them. Perhaps another debate that would open with this idea is the situation of these classes in the annual programming.
CHAPTER I. SOUNDS
1.1 Phonic competence and its importance for communication
One of the most important human skills is to be able to communicate through speech in its most general sense (linguistic ability). The begin to acquire children at an early age. Speech has many levels, the lexicon, the grammar, the syntactic, but the most basic is phonetic. Newborns begin to recognize and imitate the sounds and intonations of the language of their environment long before acquiring other basic skills, such as walking. This level of speech unites us with other people who speak the same language and identifies us geographically and socially. Dalton and Seidlhofer (1994) indicate that pronunciation is the production of meaningful sound in two senses. On the one hand, sound has meaning because it is part of the code of a language; in this case, pronunciation is our production and perception of speech sounds. On the other hand, sound has meaning because we use it to get meaning in context of use; from this point of view the pronunciation is related to speech acts.
Our pronunciation supports the meaning of our words and statements and facilitates our daily communication with people in our environment. Surprisingly, when it comes to learning a foreign language, this basic level, pronunciation, often loses its importance in the eyes of those who teach and those who learn, as we will see later, and it is out of their primary interest and his classroom routine despite the fact that many researches and authors indicate its importance for communication. Bartolí Rigol (2005: 792) emphasizes that knowing the pronunciation of a foreign language is basic to speak in that language and understand the natives. For this we have to acquire, among others, a competition called phonics. Huensch (2018: 47) indicates that phonic competence means the ability to produce and recognize the phonic units of the language at all levels (sounds, phonemes, rhythmic and intonational units). Read (1986: 235), based on the European Reference Framework for Language Learning, Teaching and Assessment, hereinafter The Framework, proposes an expanded version of the concept of phonic competence for learners of a foreign language: phonic competition involves recognizing the elements of a language and identifying those that are not; likewise, it supposes the skill in the perception and the production of:
▪ the units of the language (phonemes) and their realization in specific sounds (allophones);
▪ the vowel and consonant groups;
▪ the phonetic features that distinguish phonemes from each other;
▪ the phonetic composition of the words (syllabic structure, accentual sequence, etc.);
▪ the phonetics of sentences (prosody);
▪ the phenomena of assimilation to the point of articulation, the reduction of the unstressed vowels, the articulatory relaxation and the elision of consonant sounds;
▪ the accent and rhythm of the sentences;
▪ intonation
As one can observe, the phonic competence supposes a quite wide knowledge of the pronunciation of a foreign language to which we have to dedicate a considerable time and effort. The pronunciation is taken into account in The Framework, as one more element of oral skills (comprehension, expression and interaction). The Framework distinguishes between speech pronunciation (phonological competence) and pronunciation of a written text (orthopedic competence). In spite of all this, as indicated by Bartolí Rigol (2005) almost all the proposals to develop the ability to pronounce are aimed at improving orthopedic competence and although El Marco collects the content of quite complete pronunciation, it does not have proposals for the integration of the pronunciation in the communicative class. Later we will return to this topic of teaching problems. As Morley (1991: 512) emphasizes, it is clear that pronunciation can not be ignored; Nowadays, intelligible pronunciation is seen as an essential component of communicative competence. The challenge for teachers and researchers is to develop an experience aimed at facilitating the development of communicative pronunciation / speech patterns on the part of the learners.
1.2 Learning vs. acquisition
It is interesting that in the research literature on FL / L2 the terms acquisition and learning are used as synonyms and as elements of different meaning. The opposition of these terms appears in the works of Krashen. According to his theory of the Monitor (Krashen 1981: 12), adult learners of a foreign language have two independent systems for the development capacity of new languages: subconscious acquisition and conscious learning; and these two systems meet and interrelate in a definitive way: subconscious acquisition is much more important. The acquisition of a new language is similar to the process of acquisition of a mother tongue by a child; it requires natural communication; the correction of errors and the explicit instructions of rules are not relevant to the acquisition, the rules are acquired unconsciously; attention is focused on the use of the language for communication and not on the specific forms of this language; the "feeling" of the right appears. On the other hand, learning is formal, implies knowledge of rules and their conscious use; the correction of errors is necessary. Krashen proposes in his theory of the Monitor that conscious learning is available to the performer only as a Monitor: the system already acquired "initiates" production and the "formal" knowledge can be used by the executor to change this production (before or after the completion) to improve production. This theory assumes that formal learning plays a very limited role in the execution of the foreign language, since it has to meet three conditions for the Monitor to interfere in production:
▪ time (to think and use the rules),
▪ emphasis on the form (think about the right thing),
▪ knowledge of rules (learners do not usually have full knowledge of the language).
When a learner monitors their production and can approach the native level, that means they have learned the monitored element. When the learner produces it without monitoring, without paying attention, automatically and regularly, that means that he has acquired this element. It must be borne in mind that initial level learners use their mother tongue and monitor for the production of foreign language elements without yet acquiring any competence of the latter, until the elements are gradually acquired through exposure to the target language and other factors. The communicative approach in the teaching of foreign languages, so popular in recent decades, seems to have as its objective the acquisition of a language rather than learning. According to Rigol (2005), the objective is that students achieve a communicative competence, understood as the underlying systems of knowledge and skill required for communication; that students not only have to have knowledge about the foreign language (formal learning) but also must know how to use it for communication (acquisition). On the other hand, Monson and Brown (2004: 300) comment that pronunciation is a very important factor; It can not be considered that a learner has acquired a good level of knowledge of a foreign language if its pronunciation is very defective, sometimes to the point of hindering communication (which is the main sample of acquisition) because native speakers can not get to understand him According to Iruela (2004, 51), the phonic acquisition of the foreign language comprises four dimensions: phonology, phonetics, motor in the articulation (we understand that it is the articulatory basis or articulatory adjustments) and auditory perception. According to Bartolí Rigol (2005) so that a phonic acquisition process is triggered, learning must rely on oral language (exposure to the target language); If this exposure is limited and mediated by the written language, it is very difficult to acquire a required phonic competence. Learners do not need to study the sounds of the foreign language or make transcriptions (rules), but to know how to pronounce in that language, relying exclusively on oral support (exposure to the language).
1.3 The English phonological system
Reasons for learning English phonetics and phonology
The objective of this part is the study of the phonological system of English. To study the phonological system of a language means to describe and classify the phoneme inventory of that language, thus establishing the list of sounds in distinctive opposition, that is, those sounds that serve to distinguish two words from each other (Laver, J., 1994: 30). However, and in line with the general objective of this manual, the first question we should try to answer in this introduction to the phonology of English is precisely why this sub-system of the language is part of the teacher training curriculum. specialist in English language. The answer should be sought in the dual role of every teacher in training as a learner of a language and as a professional education. As a professional education, the future performance of the teacher is framed within a very clear regulatory context. In a brief analysis of the current legislation, and considering that the teaching of a foreign language for international communication represents the general objective of its activity, we find clear references in the L.O.G.S.E. to the oral skills of the foreign language, as in the following argument: If the learning of a foreign language is a process of creative construction from the received language (heard, read) the receptive activities acquire a paramount importance in this stage and especially the auditory because oral communication is the most direct among human beings and especially among children. (Laver, J., 1994: 48)
This appreciation of auditory receptive skills is complemented by the general objectives for the foreign language specialty at the primary level. These objectives emphasize the importance of both oral language and establish a relationship between pronunciation, spelling and meaning. The objectives referred to are the following:
– Objective number 1. To use the foreign language orally to communicate with the teacher and other students in the usual classroom activities and communication situations created for this purpose (…)
– Objective number 2. To establish relationships between the meaning, pronunciation and graphic representation of some words and simple phrases of the foreign language, as well as recognize sound, rhythmic and intonation aspects characteristic of it.
Likewise, the contents related to these objectives, the "Uses and Forms of Oral Communication", present a clear focus of interest on the sounds and suprasegmental elements of oral communication:
– Familiarization and recognition of the characteristic sounds of the foreign language and the patterns of rhythm and intonation of it. Finally, the evaluation criteria, which allow to observe if those objectives have been reached, are expressed in the following way, making explicit mention of the concepts of "phoneme", "rhythm" and "intonation": – Recognize and reproduce the phonemes characteristics of the foreign language as well as the basic rhythm and intonation patterns, in words and sentences that appear in the context of a real use of the language. This criterion aims to verify if the student has become familiar with the sounds of the language and the patterns of rhythm and intonation, that is, to evaluate their production.
Thus, considering this legislative framework, the teacher needs to have a knowledge base in phonetics and phonology of the foreign language for at least three reasons:
– To be able to plan the teaching of phonic aspects of the foreign language.
– To be able to teach and explain accurately the phonic aspects of the foreign language.
– To be able to monitor and evaluate the use of the phonic resources of the language by their students.
But, in addition, one would comment on the double role of the teacher in training, as a future professional of education and as an apprentice of the language. (Roach, 1992: 475) In this second sense, a knowledge base of phonetics and phonology of the foreign language can help in the first place to monitor and evaluate their own use of the language and, secondly, to develop and maintain a continuous learning of the foreign language by means of the detailed and analytical hearing of the language in contexts of real use. In addition, as we will discuss later, by reading the transcript that appears in most dictionaries, the student achieves autonomy from the teacher as a unique model of pronunciation. (Berg, 1994: 63-65) In summary, the knowledge of phonetics and phonology of the foreign language become not only a mere object of study in themselves but also a learning tool.
Varieties of English
From its origin and thanks to its expansion and extension, English is a language with a great diversity of accents and dialects (Laver, J., 1994: 55).. One of the fundamental differences between these accents refers, precisely, to the list of phonemes that it has. For example, the consonantal system of English is fairly uniform in all varieties of the language, but not the vowel system or the phonetic realization of the vowels. The two most important accents of the English-speaking context are those known as 'R.P.' (Received Pronunciation) and 'G.A.' (General American). The first of these is related in its geographic origin to the accent of southeastern Britain, but at present it is not an accent with geographical linkage but rather with social value (Giegerich, 1992: 44) . The second of these accents, General American, refers to those accents that do not present regional marks typical of the eastern or southern United States (Giegerich, 1992: 43.. Obviously, there are some differences between both accents. For example, the phonological system of RP has 24 consonants and 20 vowels, while the GA system has 24 consonants and 15 to 16 vowels according to the GA accent sub-type that is taken as reference (Laver, 1994: 62). Both the RP and the GA are the two accents that have received more attention from linguistics and of which we have, therefore, the most complete descriptions. This has also favored the accents normally proposed as models for the teaching of English as a foreign language (not to mention social reasons sometimes argued to defend the use of RP or GA in the language class over other accents).
Of course, there are other accents within the English-speaking world. Among them we could list the Scottish accent, the Australian accent, the New Zealand accent, the South African accent and the accents of Southern and Northern Ireland. All of them present features that allow us to speak of differentiated accents in a systematic way, although it is also true that in several aspects these accents are related to British English or American English. From a linguistic point of view, it is very common to establish a difference between accents of English according to whether or not they present a characteristic mark, the pronunciation of / r / preceded by a tonic vowel. Those accents that pronounce the / r / in this context (preceded by a tonic vowel) are called accents, such as GA, Standard Scottish and West Country English. In contrast, those accents that do not have / r / in this context are called non-rotic, such as RP, Australian, New Zealand, South African or accents of the south and east coast of the United States. Well, this difference between rhythmic and non-rhythmic accents is especially relevant in relation to the phonetic inventory of these accents, as we shall see later.
Finally, an interesting line of work has recently appeared in the field of teaching English that is called English as an International Language or English as Lingua Franca. Sponsored by names like H.G. Widdowson, B. Seidlhofer or J. Jenkins, the reference to English as an international language is increasingly common in journals and specialized conferences, and is presented as a new way of understanding both the presence of English in the world and the teaching of English to speakers of other languages, and especially the pronunciation of English by these speakers of other languages. In our introduction to the phonological system of English we have made two decisions that make up the general approach to the object of study. On the one hand, we have opted for the RP as a reference model for the description of the phonological system of English. On the other hand, we will insert references to other accents of English as well as to English as an international language. One would try to justify both decisions.
The exercise of justifying the choice of the RP (Received Pronunciation) accent for the teaching of English is almost an obligation, or a tradition, in any introduction to the phonology of English. The following three reasons have been argued, among others:
a) it is the most exhaustively described accent;
b) it is the accent used by most of the educational materials of our environment;
c) it is an accent of social prestige extended thanks to the media and the educational system throughout Great Britain, although its origin is usually associated with the south east of England. To these we must add a fourth, which has been the accent mainly used in teacher training up to the present day. In summary, the choice of RP as a model accent for the teaching of English is justified by the tradition of both linguistic description and the teaching of the language itself. Therefore, a variant used by a relatively small number of native speakers is, nevertheless, chosen as a model for the study of the phonological system and, by extension, for the teaching of English. However, as we mentioned before, it is necessary to incorporate other accents as well as English as an international language in this description of the phonological system for teaching the language. Considering that the objective of English teaching today is to enable students to communicate in real situations with both native speakers of English and, mainly, with speakers of other languages, (Kiparsky, 1985: 86) it is important to familiarize students with other accents of English ( in a very special way with the accent GA) as well as with those elements that can facilitate communication in English with speakers of other languages. In this sense, the work of Jennifer Jenkins (2000; 2002) is especially interesting. Jenkins presents us with a scenario different from the traditional one for the teaching of language, in which there is a majority of "non-native" speakers of English over "native" speakers, especially of RP speakers. Therefore, the English we teach today will be used with great probability for communication between "non-native", that is, for international communication. Given this situation, Jenkins has two objectives to combat communication problems: in terms of production, it is proposed to design a syllabus or fundamental curriculum for English as an international language; As for reception, a didactic of pronunciation is proposed that favours raising the threshold of comprehension and "receptive flexibility". Both proposals will appear in our text both in the description of the phonological system and in the approach to the didactic of pronunciation. (Clark, Yallop, 1990: 57) With these clarifications our intention is clear: to describe and classify the list of English phonemes taking the RP variant as a model but adding information of other accents when appropriate and showing those elements of the international English program that can facilitate communication. In this way we adjust our linguistic intention to our didactic objective.
The phonological system of English
As one discussed above, the objective is to establish the list of English phonemes. That is, we will limit ourselves to the phonological or phonemic study of the language, which contains, in the words of Giegerich (1992: 39), "a skeleton of information crucial to the identification of words, no more and no less." We will show, Therefore, the fundamental features that make up each phoneme and that allow us to both describe and classify it. A basic distinction in the study of English phonemes is the pair of vowel-consonant terms. We will use two criteria to distinguish vowels and consonants (Gimson, 1989, 29-31). The most frequently argued is the obstruction of the air, present in the consonants and not present in the vowels (Gimson, 1989: 30).
However, although consonants normally occur with a greater narrowing of the vocal tract and vowels have greater prominence, these articulatory criteria are controversial in English because phonemes are usually characterized as consonants (as, for example, phonemes / h / y / w / at the beginning of happy and water) do not present air obstruction greater than some vowels. The second criterion is the distribution of vowels and consonants in the syllable, in which the vowels occupy the nuclear or central position and the consonants the marginal or peripheral position (Giegerich, 1992: 94). In this study, one would use both criteria in a general way, as they provide greater clarity to the exhibition.
The vowel system
The traditional characterization of the vowels is based on the non-obstruction of the air flow. Thus, a vowel sound is produced by a current of egresive air that passes through the folds or vocal cords – vocal folds – and makes them vibrate, passing, later, through the vocal tract, where it is modified by the position of the tongue and lips. Therefore, all vowels can be characterized as sounds with the feature [+ sound] and [+ continuous]. As we have already pointed out, among the consonants there are sounds that do not present these features and sounds that do share these features (typically the so-called "approximants"), which makes us question this same definition of vowels. Going into detail the study of vowels we must now establish a relevant distinction in most varieties of English.
Vocal phonemes, at least in RP and GA, are organized in pairs according to the features of tension and quantity, expressed as a vowel [+ long / + tense] or [- long / – tense]. Although these features are not exempt from criticism, we can affirm that the vowels [+ long / + tense] are produced with greater muscular effort (and greater articulatory definition) and are more of greater duration or quantity (Giegerich, 1992: 95-101.). In our case we will use precisely the amount to refer to the vowels of one or the other group for the simple fact of being this feature more known in the non-specialized context, although we can not fail to indicate that it is, on the contrary, the trait of tension the preferred in specialized contexts.
However, it is interesting to choose one or the other since we can find differences in the transcription: the symbols – reflects the difference in tension between the two phonemes while the pair – is based on the quantity (Giegerich, 1992: 99). The second feature for the study of vowels is the relative position of the tongue in the vocal tract. For this reason, for the study of vowels, it is common to use a scheme, designed by Daniel Jones, in which the position of the language is simplified in a two-axis scheme. The vertical axis represents the height at which the tongue is placed (considering the highest point of the tongue and palate) and the horizontal axis represents the advanced, middle or backward position of the tongue (also taking as reference the highest point). of the tongue). The achievement of Daniel Jones was to place in this scheme 16 points that represent the "cardinal vowels", that is, the vowel sounds that represent the reference points for the vowels of the different vowel systems (Clark, Yallop, 1990: 64).
Thus, taking this scheme of the cardinal vowels as a reference we can place the vowels of the English phonological system RP.
According to this classification we have frontal, central and back vowels, and also closed, open, semi-open and semi-closed vowels. In addition, a last important feature for the study of vowels is the shape of the lips. Thus, we distinguish between those vowels that occur with a rounding of the lips of those that occur without this rounding. We could group all the features of the vowels in the following table (Giegerich, 1999: 110):
Table 1: Classification of vowel features
According to this, one would appreciate the following vowel sounds in English (Gimson, 1989: 100-149):
/ i: / is a previous sound, closed, not rounded and long / tense, as in see, be, field, receive or these.
/ x / is a previous and closed sound (although not as much as / i: /), not rounded and short / relaxed, as in rich or tin.
/ e / is an earlier sound, half [-closed and -open], without rounding, tense but short (Gimson, 1989: 106), as in bed, head or many.
/ s: / is a central sound, long / tense, without rounding, as in bird, turn, word or learn (Jenkins, 2000: 145).
/ æ / is a previous sound, open, short / relaxed and without rounding, as in hand, man or bag.
/ a: / is a later sound, open, long / tense and without rounding, as in car, heart, calm or aunt.
/ u: / is a later sound, closed, long / tense and with rounding, as in spoon, soup, flu, shoe or suit.
/ u / is also posterior, closed and with rounding, but with a lesser degree of rounding, more open and more central than / u: /. It's a short / relaxed sound, like in put, book or could.
/ x / is a central sound, open, short / relaxed and without rounding, as in sun, eat, young or blood. It never appears in open final syllables. We can find variants that tend to be more backward than central (Gimson, 1989: 110).
/ s: / is a later sound, medium, long / tense and with rounding, as in horse, more, saw, board, bought, four or all.
/ d / is a later and short / relaxed sound, slightly more open and with less rounding than / s: /, as in box, want or because.
/ e /, normally known as 'schwa', is a medium, central sound, short / relaxed and without rounding; this sound never appears in tonic syllable and therefore we will never find a contrast based on this sound, that is, it does not have a minimum pair. One can find it in the unstressed syllables (underlined here) of the following words: character /' kærekte / or human / 'hju: men /.
One of the most interesting aspects about vowels is their relationship with the tonic and unstressed syllables. In English there are three types of syllables according to the accent they carry: fully accented or with a primary accent (marked with the symbol '), with a minor accent or secondary accent (marked with the symbol .) and without stress. Well, in the syllables without an accent only four types of vowel sounds appear, always shorter and of lesser intensity:
the central vowel / e /, as in pentagram / 'pentegræm /.
a front vowel closed, not rounded, around / i: / o / x /, as in penny / 'penx /.
a posterior vowel closed and rounded around / u: / o / u /, as in mouthful / máwθfəl /.
a syllabic consonant, as in movable / 'mu: vebl /.
Of all these sounds, the most frequent is the vowel "schwa", a central sound produced with a neutral position of the articulators and with little energy in the articulation (Roach, 1991: 75).
A final aspect to be considered in this introduction to the English vowel system are diphthongs and triphthongs. When during the articulation of a vowel sound a movement of the articulators is made, fundamentally of the tongue (Jenkins, 2000: 147), a change occurs in the auditory quality of the sound. In this respect, we obtain only one sound but with two articulatory positions.
In this sense, diphthongs that occur with a movement of the tongue from open or semi-open positions to closed positions are called "closing diphthongs", while those that occur with a movement of the tongue from peripheral positions to a position central are called "central diphthongs" (Clark, Yallop, 1990: 74) (see table 2).
Table .2 Diphthongs
In general terms, diphthongs resemble long vowels in terms of quantity, with the first part always being longer than the second.
Finally, a triphthong is a glide of the articulators from one vowel sound to another and later to a third without any interruption. In the following table 14 we can see how the triphthongs are formed from the closing diphthongs with the addition of the vowel schwa:
Table 3: Triphthongs
The triphthongs in English have a very unstable character, which normally entails the loss of auditory qualities of the second triphthong vowel, so that sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish between a triphthongs and a diphthong, or even a long vowel (Roach, 1991: 23.).
The consonantal system of English
In English it is possible to recognize 24 consonant sounds both for their function (they do not occupy the centre of the syllable, reserved for the vowels) (Jenkins, 2000: 137) and for their phonetic features in most cases (obstruction or narrowing of the vocal tract) (Gimson, 1989: 150). Traditionally these consonants have been grouped in a double-entry table in which two fundamental articulatory features are expressed: the place of articulation in the horizontal and the mode of articulation in the vertical. In addition, some other features are added to this table, such as the sonority of the consonants. The first of these features, the point of articulation (Gimson, 1989: 31-32), refers to the area where the vocal tract is obstructed or narrowed, understanding that it is an approximate demarcation more than a specific point of the vocal tract. The terms that are used to name the different points of articulation are the following:
▪ 'Labial', distinguishing between 'bilabial' and 'lip-dental';
▪ 'Dental';
▪ 'Alveolar';
▪ 'Postalveolar';
▪ 'Palatal';
▪ 'Watch';
▪ 'Uvular';
▪ 'Faringeal' and
▪ 'Glotal'. (Clark, Yallop, 1990: 78-79)
The mode of articulation (Gimson, 1989: 32-33) refers both to the degree of airflow obstruction and to the manner in which the constriction occurs. Thus, to qualify a sound as 'occlusive' means that there is a total obstruction of the air flow and that it has been produced by a closing of the vocal tract and its sudden opening (Clark, Yallop, 1990: 81.).
Four basic modes of articulation are usually distinguished: the total closure or occlusion, the fricative articulation, the more open articulation of the approximants (Gimson, 1989: 33-34) (very close in some cases to the vowels) and nasality. We can define these four modes of articulation in the following way:
1. An occlusive ('plosive') is produced by the total closure at some point of the vocal tract (from the glottis to the lips) and its subsequent opening.
2. A fricative ('fricative') is produced by the narrowing of the vocal tract in such a way that turbulence is created in the air stream.
3. An approximant is produced by a greater narrowing than in the vowels but not so much as to produce the turbulence of the fricatives.
4. A nasal involves the occlusion of the air stream in the vocal tract and the descent of the veil to allow the expulsion of air through the nasal cavity.
Some other terms related to the mode of articulation can be interesting, such as 'flap' or 'trill', articulation modes that differentiate the vibrant consonants simple / r / and multiple / r¯ /.
An important feature in the study of the phonological system of English is the strong-weak pair (fortis-lenis). These features refer to the different articulation of two groups of sounds, with the strong ones presenting more tension in the articulators74. The presence of one or the other of these features determines some values of the phoneme in question. A) Yes,
1. strong phonemes are deaf in intervocalic position (upper / 'xpe /) while weak phonemes are voiced in the same context (abbot /' æbet /);
2. the strong stops / p /, / t / and / k / are aspirated and deaf in the initial position of the tonic syllable (postman / 'p¹eustmen /, where the symbol / ¹ / indicates aspiration), while the weak stops / b /, / d / and / g / are not aspirated and also lose loudness considerably in initial position (boatman / 'beutmen /) or after a dull consonant (compare the relative loudness of the consonant / g / after the strong consonant / t / in nightgown in relation to the word gown)
3. all strong consonants cause reduction of the amount of the preceding vowel or of the lateral and nasal phonemes, as in beat / bi: t / in comparison with bead / bi: d /, where the quantity of the phoneme / i: / is older.
The occlusive consonants constitute a set of six phonemes divided into three pairs according to the criteria of articulation point and articulation force or loudness (see table 4):
Table 4: Occlusive consonants
A feature to be noted for its distinctive function is the aspiration of strong / deaf stops at the beginning of the tonic syllable. In other positions (unstressed syllable and syllable ending, or preceded by / s /) the aspiration is very weak, as in happen / 'hæpen / in comparison with pocket /' pdkxt /. We say that this aspiration has a distinctive function because the dull / sonorous feature does not serve to differentiate, for example, / b / from / p / if / b / appears in the initial or final position, in which case it loses its sonority. In the same sense, those syllables that are closed with a strong consonant are shorter than the open syllables or the syllables closed by a weak consonant (Clark, Yallop, 1990: 81-87.). These two characteristics of the loud / soft distinction of the stops are especially important for the teaching of English (Jenkins, 2000: 141). Finally, an increasingly common feature is the reinforcement of the strong stop by a glottal stop [1] (Gimson, 1989: 158) if it appears followed by a consonant or at the end of a word (Wells, 2000: 327.), as in April / eiprel / or in "You are right!" pronounced as / ra:1t /.
The fricative consonants are phonemes that do not imply the total closing of the vocal tract (they are 'continuantes', in front of the occlusivas that are not 'continuantes'). The air escapes through a small space in the vocal tract, producing a characteristic sound of friction. We found four pairs of consonant fricative sounds and a glottal sound; strong fricative consonants, as with occlusives, shorten the preceding vowel, while weak fricative consonants are only voiced in intervocalic position (table 5):
Table 5: Fricative consonants
The affricate consonants can be described as consonant sounds that begin as stops and end as fricatives, always using the same articulator (homorganic sounds) (Roach, 1991: 48). These consonants are complex from the phonetic point of view but a single entity from the phonemic point of view (Gimson, 1989: 174). One found two affinant consonantal phonemes in English according to table 6:
Table 6: Affected consonants
The nasal consonants have the same point of articulation as the occlusive, bilabial, alveolar and velar, and also present a total occlusion of the vocal tract; However, the soft palate drops allowing air to escape through the nasal cavity, thus causing a special resonance because, as already explained in the chapter on articulatory phonetics, this new intervention of the nasal resonant chamber adds nuances to the timbre of the glottal wave. These consonants resemble the vowels for their ability to be syllable-core (Gimson, 1989: 195-196.).
Table 7: Nasal consonants
The lateral consonant / l / is produced thanks to the total closure of the vocal tract in its central part but leaving a clear path for the exit of air through the side of the tongue. The consonantal lateral phoneme in English is / l /, a sonorous and frictionless sound that can also be a syllabic nucleus. This phoneme / l / has three allophones (Gimson, 1989: 202-203.):
[l] clear at the beginning of the word, preceded by a weak consonant at the beginning of the word, in an intervocalic middle position and in the final word position in an intervocal context: leave, let, blow, silly.
[l +] deaf after strong consonant: play, clean.
[l ~] dark in final position after a consonant, between vowel and consonant and as syllabic sound after a consonant86: feel, fill, help, salt, table.
Approximate consonants are special in that the articulators approximate but not enough to create an occlusive or a fricative. Thus, in the articulation of the consonant / r / the language approaches the alveolar zone where / t / or / d / is produced, but never reaches the alveolus.
The pronunciation of the consonantal phoneme / r / is very important in that it marks the difference between the rhomatic and non-rotic varieties, already mentioned. In non-rotic variants the disappearance of this phoneme, which occurred between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, caused changes in the pronunciation of the vowels in terms of quantity, quality and the phenomenon of diphthongization. Thus, the words arm, birch and here in Middle English (English in use of the year 1100 to 1500 approximately) were pronounced / arm /, / bxrt (/ and / he: r / while in modern English (non-rotic) they are pronounced / a: m /, / bs: t (/ y / hxe / 87.
Undoubtedly one of the most important difficulties of the RP accent for the student of English as a foreign language is to ignore the graphic information in those words in which the letter "r" has to be understood as a quantity sign, as in car or hurt. (Barber, 2000: 210-211) Maybe Jennifer Jenkins' suggestion for English as an international language, adopt the approximation [4] of the GA accent, helping solve this difficulty without a loss in comprehensibility (Jenkins, 2000: 139-140).
Finally, in English we find two semi-consonants, / j / and / w /. Phonetically these two sounds are like vowels (Gimson, 1989: 213-216), but from the phonological point of view they are consonants, that is, they do not occupy the central position of the syllable, as in you / ju: / or where / wee /. / j / and / w / appear in the initial position preceding the syllabic sound and when the indefinite article precedes it, it takes its preconsonant form 'a': a university (/ e .ju: nx'vs: setx /).
Chapter 2. Symbols
2.1 The phonetic aspect of the English Language
The phonetic aspect of the English Language will play an important role in the elaborate educational product, since it will guide the classes to the oral production of the students. To that end, one should know that "phonetics is the study of the sounds of human speech" (Bronstein, 1960: 126), for example, the question of the extension of the vowel, the letters that are voiced (voiced) and voiceless (voiced), among others. Phonetics are represented in the dictionaries by the letters / symbols between brackets [] or bars / /.
A confusion that is caused by regular students during English Language classes is the misconception of pronouncing the phoneme as their grapheme, that is, performing the speaking of a English word as it is in its written form. For this reason, "the importance of learning phonetics when studying a language is due to the fact that we generally think of the word as it is written and not as it is said or perceived by a listener." (Souza, 2009, p.37). The first linguistic contribution to the teaching of pronunciation came from the Reform Movement in language teaching, influenced by phoneticists who created the International Association of Phonetics in 1886 and developed the International Alphabet of Phonetics (IPA – International Phonetic Alphabet), a result of the establishment of phonetics as a science dedicated to describing and analyzing the systems of sounds of languages (Souza, 2009, p.35). This phonetic alphabet is an instrument used to describe and analyze the sound system of the language, with emphasis in the English language. The symbols present in IPA seek to represent speech through writing so that the speakers of a Foreign Language do not confuse the phoneme with the grapheme.
For IPA to be used efficiently, when transcribing a word from the English language, one must think of its sound form and not of spelling. Thus, to question "How many vowels are there in the English Language?" If it is first thought in terms of spelling, we have as answer five – a, e, i, o, u. But if we analyze through the sounds, there will be much more "(Watt, 2018: 219). In addition to the scholars of the area, the authors applied the teaching of English to foreigners in the classroom (Brinton et al., 2010: 25). For this elaboration, its creators defended the following notions and practices:
The oral form of a language is primary and should be taught first.
Discoveries about phonetics should be applied to language teaching.
Teachers must have sound learning in phonetics
The learners should have training on phonetics to establish good habits in their speech (Brinton et al., 2010, p.3).
For the application of this material, the student should be aware of the existence of this alphabet and the symbols present in it; to facilitate this learning, the didactic unit will focus on relevant sounds, and there is no need to require the pupil to decorate these symbols.
2.2 The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
The following tables contains all the sounds (phonemes) used in the English language.
For each sound one will find:
1. symbol of the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), as it is used in the phonetic transcriptions that one can find in modern dictionaries for English learners.
This means that a symbol can indicate a different phoneme in American English, and a different one in British. See the notes for explanations of exclusive symbols for British pronunciation, and exclusive symbols for American pronunciation.
2. Two words in English that use sound. The words will be underlined in the part where the respective sound occurs.
3.The British version only occurs if the pronunciation is different from the American one.
Vowels:
Consonants:
Notes:
1. Almost all dictionaries use the / e / symbol for the vowel in bed.
The problem with this convention is that the / e / in the IPA is not the vowel in bed; this is a different vowel found, for example, in the German word Seele.
The "appropriate" symbol for the vowel in bed is / ɛ / (do not confuse it with / ɜ: /). The same in the case of / eə / vs. / ɛə /.
2. In the symbols / əʳ / and / ɜ: ʳ /, the / ʳ / is not pronounced in British English, unless the sound comes before a vowel (as in answering, answer it) ).
In American English the / ʳ / is always pronounced, and sometimes the sounds are written as / ɚ / and / ɝ /.
3. In American English the / ɑ: / and / ɒ / are a vowel, so calm (calm) and cot (cot) have the same vowel.
In the American transcriptions, hot is written / hɑ: t /.
4. About 40% of Americans pronounce / ɔ: / in the same way as / ɑ: /, so they caught (caught / trapped) and cot would have the same vowel. Search for cot-caught merger in Wikipedia.
5. In American transcripts, / ɔ: / is usually written as / ɒ: / (for example: law = / lɒ: /), unless followed by / r /, in which case it would remain / ɔ: /.
6. In British transcriptions, / oʊ / is usually represented as / əʊ /.
For some speakers of British English, / oʊ / is more appropriate (they use a rounded vowel – for others, the appropriate symbol is / əʊ /.
For American speakers, / oʊ / is usually more accurate).
7. In / eəʳ / / ɪəʳ / / ʊəʳ /, the / r / is not pronounced in British English, unless the sound comes after a vowel (as in dearest ((mi) most beloved), dear Ann ( dear Ann)).
In American English the / r / is always pronounced, and sounds are usually written / er / / ɪr / / ʊr /.
8. All dictionaries use the / r / symbol for the first network sound.
The problem with this convention is that the / r / in the IPA does not correspond to the / r / British or American; corresponds to the / r / "hard" found, for example, in the Spanish word rey or in the Italian word vero.
The "appropriate" symbol for the red consonant is / ɹ /.
9. In American English, / t / is sometimes pronounced as a vibrant t (flap t), which sounds similar to a / d /, and more precisely as a / ɹ / hard and fast.
The word letter is an example of a word that is pronounced with vibrant t. Some dictionaries use the symbol / t ̬ / (the / t / with a curve below) to represent the vibrating t.
Special symbols
/ / – The vertical line () is used to indicate the accent of a word. This is put before the syllable with accent in a word.
For example, / kɒntrækt / has the accent at the beginning of the word, and / kəntrækt / has the accent in the middle. We explain how accent works in our article on phonetic transcription.
/ ʳ / – The / ʳ / is not a sound, but rather the short form of saying that / r / is pronounced only in American English.
For example, if one writes that the bar pronunciation is / bɑ: ʳ /, that means that in American English it is pronounced / bɑ: r /, and in the British it is pronounced / bɑ: /.
However, in British English, the / r / will be heard if the / ʳ / is followed by a vowel.
For example, far gone ("very gone already") is pronounced / fɑ: gɒn / in British English, but far out ("far away") is pronounced / fɑ: raʊt /.
/ i / – The / i / is usually pronounced as a shorter version than the / i: /, but sometimes (especially when speaking with an old-fashioned British accent) it may sound like / ɪ /.
Examples: very (very) / veri /, create (create) / krieɪt /, previous (previous) / pri: viəs /, ability (skill) / əbɪlɪti /.
/ əl / – The symbol / əl / means that the consonant / l / is pronounced as a separate syllable (the syllabic l, which sounds like a vowel), or that there is a short sound / ə / before it.
For example: little (small) / lɪtəl /, uncle (uncle) / ʌŋkəl /.
Instead of the / əl / symbol some dictionaries use a / l / with a small vertical line below it, or use / l / alone, as in / lɪtl /.
/ ən / – This symbol means that the consonant / n / is pronounced as a separate syllable (the syllabic n, which sounds like a vowel), or that there is a short sound / ə / before it.
For example: written (written) / rɪtən /, listen (listening) / lɪsən /.
Instead of the symbol / ən / some dictionaries use a / n / with a small vertical line below it, or use / n / alone, as in / rɪtn /.
2.3 The articulatory description
The description of the articulatory movements necessary to produce a sound has received criticism as a teaching procedure and correction of pronunciation for not taking into account the auditory perception: the student can correctly pronounce a foreign phoneme by conscious movements of their articulatory organs and, However, we do not get to hear the difference between this phoneme and another similar one (foreign or of their own language). The articulatory descriptions as the only solution to the difficulties of pronunciation constitute an obvious simplification of the learning process of a new phonological system. Another disadvantage of this procedure is that it ignores the prosody of the foreign language and the effects of combinatorial phonetics. On the one hand, the use of the suprasegmental elements of the first language prevents the correct pronunciation of the new sounds; on the other, the sounds of the second or foreign language are modified by the phonic context in which they appear and their pronunciation depends on those that precede or follow them. It is also said that the student should never stop to think, for example, touching with the tip of the tongue the lower edge of the upper teeth when pronouncing / Ɵ / or / ð /, as this would inhibit the spontaneity of his speech. This is objectionable because, although the student we refer to in this work can not consciously avoid using one sound or another to express his ideas as he can do with words or syntactic structures that he does not master, we must remember that the language The foreign student learns in an institution and not in the way in which the child acquires his first language, which imposes the need for a high dose of awareness of the articulatory movements to be used to communicate in the foreign language.
An important element that must be taken into account when evaluating this procedure is that its effectiveness varies when we work with consonants and when we do it with vowels. The distinctive features of the consonants – vibration or not of the vocal cords, exact point (s), and between which organs obstruction or constriction occurs, etc. – are more easily described – and, therefore, can be be more easily apprehended – than those of the vowels, given mainly by very subtle variations in the position of the tongue and lips. Something else to consider is that, in the same way that, during the development of the activity in the class, an articulatory description can be replaced by the mimicry whenever the organs involved in the articulation of the sound are visible, in the manuals it can be represented by a facial diagram. It is known that the human being perceives a greater proportion of reality through sight than through hearing and, in fact, some authors do not miss the advantage provided by the diagrams to show the student how a sound is produced ( Brown, 1995: 20)
2.4 The phonological oppositions
The phonological oppositions base their operation on pairs of words in the foreign language that differ in a single sound. In its most simplistic application, students are asked to listen and read a "minimal pair" in order to establish the contrast between two sounds. The use of this procedure with isolated words leads to obviate the prosody of the foreign language, which favors the perception of individual sounds. As in the case of the articulatory procedure, the student returns to the incorrect pronunciation by continuing to use the prosodic elements of their first language. In addition, the paradigmatic analysis that involves the use of phonological oppositions causes an interruption of the syntagmatic chain and inhibits the spontaneity of expression. Another criticism that can be made to the use of phonological oppositions is that it does not consider allophonic variants: opposing another, we can not guarantee the identification and reproduction of all possible realizations of a phoneme. Now, this argument, irrefutable at first sight, loses solidity if we think about the variety of allophones that appear in lists of "minimum pairs" like think-sink, thought-sought, path-pass, etc. On the other hand, if we put the words in a unit of major meaning, we automatically create more allophonic variants by causing new combinatorial possibilities. In spite of all this, care should be taken that the context designed for the practice of a sound does not neutralize precisely the trait to be worked on: there are many unfortunate exercises in which the phonic context imposes a different pronunciation from the one they demand. his instructions (think only as an example in the natural deafening of the voiced consonants before the deaf ones or in absolute final position in an exercise whose instructions call for precisely the opposite: the production of a sound).
Up to here our analysis of the most obvious limitations presented by the use of phonological oppositions in the teaching of foreign languages. There are, however, other considerations that have not yet been given the importance they require, as, for example, the fact that the oppositions used in the manuals are almost always established between foreign sounds and the student may feel overwhelmed having to learn two sounds at the same time, the one that does not know how to pronounce and the one that opposes it in the exercise.
In many contrasts of English consonants, one of the sounds presented corresponds or is very similar to the sound produced by the student in the error (/ dʒ / – / j /, / v / – / b /, / v / – / f /, / ð / – / d /, / Ɵ / – / s /, / z / – / s /, / ʃ / – / tʃ /, / n / – / ŋ /), but the only vowel contrasts that show Such a degree of similarity are / ɪ / – / i / and / ʊ / – / u /. The use of phonological oppositions is not advisable if the error is not represented in the opposition, be it consonants or vowels. On the other hand, a mutation that is introduced in the plane of the expression may or may not generate a correlative mutation in the content plane. Louis Hjiemslev (1974: 105-6) distinguishes between "commutations" and "substitutions", and explains that only the first ones generate changes of direction (commutations: "mouse" – "house", "think" – "sink", substitutions: "Heel" pronounced with an alveolar nasal, "victory" with a bilabial stop). If we wish to link the teaching of pronunciation to the communicative function of language, we should give priority to the use of phonological oppositions in those cases in which the tendency in student pronunciation -its "error" – implies a change of meaning.
We will finish our comments on the phonological oppositions pointing out that in the manuals of English as a foreign language interesting variations of its use are being seen. Bowen and Marks (1992: 31), to mention only one example, invert the roles in the class by allowing students to "examine the teacher": a student speaks a word and, according to the instructions in the teacher's tutorial, this The last one points out (on the board or other medium) the word you have heard. The student says "yes" if the indicated word is correct and "no" if it is not. If the teacher is not sure that he has heard one or the other sound, he points between the two; if you hear something very different, point to another place. The students take control of the activity and the teacher receives the "no" for being wrong, which implies few risks for the first ones, who are expected to enjoy the activity while trying to reach an exact articulation.
2.5 The use of phonetic symbols
The use of phonological or phonetic transcription in the foreign language class is ruled out by many teachers, who believe that teaching phonetic symbols is like teaching another language, even another language. The fact that transcription alone can not develop either auditory perception or articulation habits helps sustain this argument. However, in the case of / dʒ / and the diphthongs, the two symbols, when visualizing the sound, favor their conscious assimilation and distance the student from the error (this is partly the reason why in this thesis we transcribe / eɪ / and / oʊ / with two symbols and not as Anglo-Saxon phoneticians usually do). Phonological transcription is also very useful in working with the secondary accent. Not only the different marks distinguish the secondary accent of the primary or the weak, but the symbols of the sounds themselves are very illustrative of the clear quality of the vowels in accented syllables, as opposed to their obscuration in unstressed syllables. The learning of a phonetic alphabet is very useful not only for the teaching of phonetics, but also for the individual learning of pronunciation: the number of words whose pronunciation we learn in the dictionary is very high if we usually consult it. But "looking in the dictionary does not have to be the first step. Students can predict the pronunciation of difficult words first and then use the dictionary for checking. The combination of both approaches is a valuable contribution to the independence of students in their work with the pronunciation of English "(Bowen and Marks, 1992: 14). We agree with MacCarthy (1978: 30) that "a phonetic notation should not be taught by itself, but as a means to an end. When the end can be achieved by other equally effective means and in less time, there is no merit in learning to handle the phonetic symbols. " But we also have no objection to the use of a simple symbology as a visual aid for the student to achieve greater control over their pronunciation, since the phonetic symbols constitute a not insignificant reference -as fast and systemic- to the pronunciation of the multiple combinations of graphemes that are given in a language like English. The activities that Bowen and Marks (1992: 41-50) propose -Sound Maze, Phonemic Snap, Sounds Search, Sounds Scrabble, Using Sounds for Word Building, Sounds Crosswords and Phonemic Word Race- are happy examples of this use.
Chapter 3. Spellings
3.1 The Basics of spelling
3.1.1 The Alphabet
The Economic Culture Fund reissued last year the History of the alphabet, by A. e. Moorhouse. This collection volume was edited for the first time: z. in English in 1953 and in Spanish in 1961. Despite being written more than forty years ago, it continues to be of great interest and usefulness to lean into the fascinating history of language and writing. Although I have never fully understood the guidelines governing the reissues of the Fund, in this case there is no more to recognize the great success that means to reproduce this edition again. As you can imagine, in a pocket volume the scope of this work can not be exhaustive, especially considering the length and complexity of the subject. In fact, the purpose of this text is precisely to allow access to this subject to all those who are not familiar with it or who make their first incursions in this field. Gough (1992: 221) divides the history of writing into four phases:
1) Direct pictographic writing;
2) Pictograms;
3) Ideograms,
4) Phonograms.
The first phase can be identified with the practice of rock painting, where the graphic representation of objects and animals gives the viewer a direct idea of the thought that occupies the author of these paintings. However, it could not be said that this type of representation clearly constitutes an act of communication, since its purpose consisted mainly of the attempt to seize the object or animal in question or, at least, to influence it in some way; which is more a part of magical thinking than of abstract, necessary to establish a communication through signs. Indeed, language and writing constitute one of the highest levels of abstraction that the human being makes of material world. So, the pictograms are the first link of that sequence that leads to the specialized modern communication systems. The pictograms are graphic representations of objects external to the human being; However, unlike direct pictography, the intention is to represent a single object and to communicate the idea that one has in mind through the succession and interrelation of several of them. This means that if in the previous phase the author concentrated on the creation of a plastic image that, despite containing several elements, referred only to one idea, in this stage each object is represented independently, and through a grammar of the images it is communicated, thought in question. This type of writing can be clearly illustrated with an example of many codices that survived the Spanish conquest of America, where many of the native civilizations used it, although in several of them it was already beginning to occur.
Next step was took towards the ideograms. The most notable example of ideograms is found in Chinese writing. This is formed from graphic signs that originally were pictograms, but that with the diffusion of writing and the step they adopted less realistic forms and they became mere conventional representations. It can be seen how up to this level of development the writing is completely separate from language; both are forms of communication, but each uses its own means and code, so that there is no greater contact between them. The advent of the fourth phase, that of phonograms, constitutes the point of confluence between the language and writing. Phonograms are graphic signs that if at some point they were representations of real objects, at the moment of becoming phonograms they have essentially lost that characteristic, and then its utility lies precisely in being only a conventional sign that is connected to a specific sound, which corresponds to or is part of a word that in the language refers to a specific object. In this way, while the number of pictograms can be infinite given the extension of reality and the number of ideograms can reach several thousand to serve correctly the purposes of communication.
In the 18th century, a series of almost fifty thousand Chinese ideograms was enumerated, many of which were not used, certainly, although at present it is considered that around eight thousand- are used, phonograms, in so far as they represent a sound emitted down the throat of human being, do not require more than a few tens, which properly articulated can express any idea that lodges the human thinking Asr, when taking this step, the appearance of the alphabet was only a foreseeable consequence. Alphabet is understood as the set of graphic signs in that each of them has a phonetic value, whose combination forms words with a specific sense. There are other graphic signs with phonetic value, such as the case of the Chinese ideograms or of certain subareas that have been used in different times and places. However, the Alphabet is an unique phonetic writing system in which by means of a reduced number of all the necessary words can be produced to describe the outer and inner world of man – to the extent that this is possible, of course.
The Semitic alphabet is the Oldest one. Although it is very difficult to establish the time in which it originated, it can be conjectured that it could appear at the beginning of second millennium before Christ, in the seventeenth century date the first known inscriptions that use it. Most likely, this alphabet has been influenced by Egyptian writing systems: the hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic. These consisted mainly of ideographic systems, of which the first was that had a greater number of signs and therefore was the least widespread, which contrasted with the demotic, whose smaller number of characters and more conventional use made it more popular. The Semitic alphabet consisted of 22 characters that represented consonant sounds, that is, there were no vowels. Each character had a name, whose first sound was the same as that of its phonetic value, that is, the phonetic value of the Semitic characters was extracted from the acro-phonic principle. In addition, the names of the characters have a specific meaning; they correspond to the name of a certain object, which, in many cases, is vaguely represented by the graphic form of the character itself, which gives an idea of the concatenation of abstractions that led to the alphabet.
Moorhouse (1975) claims that the origin of Semitic alphabet should be attributed more to invention than to Egyptian influence. For ones part, they can not accept that statement, because although it is true that "someone" drew the characters in the way they appear in the inscriptions, it is also necessary to recognize the enormous influence of the Egyptian ideograms, for which it is enough to observe the table where Moorhouse himself compares the characters of one system and another and, where he finds very little resemblance, a more insightful look can find notorious similarities. The Greek alphabet follows directly from Semitic and it is very possible that this derivation occurs between the end of the second millennium and the beginning of the first one. This alphabet has the enormous advantage of including both phonograms with consonantal and vowel values; that is, the Greeks create the vowels.
Also, progress is made in the process of abstraction, because the very form of the characters is removed from the idea that recalls a specific material object and, in addition, their names have no additional meaning. The decisive step in the history of writing occurs with the formation of the Latin alphabet, which is created in Rome under the influence of the Etruscan alphabet, a condition of which many aspects are unknown but which received a great Greek influence, from which it derived your alphabet. The Latin alphabet is the direct origin of the modern alphabet used in Western Europe and the countries that adopted one of the languages of this region. The spelling of its characters is completely conventional and is even further from ideography than the Greek alphabet. In addition, the names of the letters of the Latin are phonetic, that is to say, in the case of the vowels their name corresponds directly to their phonetics and with the consonants the same happens, although they are accompanied by one or two vowels to give them greater sonority and clarity.
The shape of the Latin letters was essentially square and straight lines. This is because the Romans used to make inscriptions on monuments and buildings, which meant to outline those characters on stone, and the straight lines lent themselves much better to it than the curved lines. This style of monumental capital letters came to be complemented by another style called cursive, which modified the spelling of the capital letters to reduce their angles and straight shapes and allow them to be drawn more easily when instead of sculpting they had to write on paper, where the hand can more easily delineate the curved lines. Thus the cursive letters were born, which with the passage of time were combined with monumental capitals and gave rise to modern graphics. However, another great step in the spelling of Latin alphabet was given around the fifteenth century, with the development of the printing press. From that moment began to extend the use of a spelling that took the old Roman capitals but instead of using cursive style resorted to one of much more clarity and definition for the reader: Caroline style. It received this name because it was created in the times of Charlemagne; although it was very similar to the cursive style, its clearer and sharper design was worth to be used in the edition of books and printed literature, which has remained without major changes since those times. Since then The alphabet has not changed almost at all and has allowed a large part of the population of Latin America and of the countries that use languages originated there to learn relatively easily to communicate by this means, that is, to become literate. Something that is not so simple for the Chinese, for example, who to be able to read and write fairly well require learning approximately three thousand characters.
Moorhouse's review of this story is necessarily general, since the purpose is none other than to give a panoramic view of this process, which is achieved in a very satisfactory way. In the text, questions are raised that are not so simple to solve, since the discussion about the adaptability of the Latin alphabet is introduced to express the range of sounds that are used in each language.
In this respect, Moorhouse (1975) describes how each language has certain phonetic requirements that are not the same for the others, so each one had to have an alphabet that directly reflected its variety of consonantal and vowel sounds, in order to achieve that the writing of the words that really had a phonetic correspondence. Being English-speaking, Moorhouse (1975) exemplifies with this language and shows how there is a great disparity between his writing and his pronunciation, which although it is very noticeable in this language also occurs in others, although to different degrees. However, the extension of the Latin alphabet, the etymological roots of modern languages, the literary tradition of all peoples and a host of additional complications make it very difficult to conceive that any country ventures to make a radical change of the alphabet it has used during centuries, so it is perfectly feasible that we continue using this alphabet for a long time.
The exact shape of the printed letters varies depending on the type of letter. The form of the handwritten letters can differ significantly from the norm in printed form (and between the individual ones), especially when it is written in cursive style.
3.1.2 Typical letter-sounds
Written English also uses a series of dialects, such as Ch, Ph, Sh, Th, Wh, Bb, Dd, Ff, Gg, Ll, Rr, Ss and Tt, but they are not considered part of the alphabet.
3.2 Historical evolution of writing and spelling
The deciphering of ancient writings is one of the most important human inventions. Through the knowledge of the history of the peoples, we have been able to get an accurate idea of the genesis of our civilization. The writing systems originated about five thousand years ago, after the evolution of the drawings towards logographic forms, in Asia Minor. Later, the writing was syllabic, until Greece, where we already found a true alphabet. The history of writing evolved remarkably when one went from representing an idea through symbols (ideographic writing) to doing it in the form of signs. But the great leap forward appears, above all, when man discovered phonetic writing, that is, the one that graphically represents oral language. Indeed, as we see throughout the history of writing, the Sumerians wrote the names of their export products on labels or mud posters attached to packages; his cuneiform writing was formed by signs corresponding to objects, people, ideas, etc. The need to write the names of the senders and recipients led them to advance in their writing system, inventing a way to represent these proper names, since until then they only had a sign for the terms person, man and woman. The resource used was to transcribe the set of verbal sounds that were issued when pronouncing the proper name of a person. This concrete example clearly illustrates the social nature of the different writing systems that have led to the current phonetic system of our culture.
Synthetic writing
Synthetic writing suggests, in a single drawing, that the eye can encompass from a glance, a whole sentence or a phrase or a group of phrases. This type of writing communicates facts and intentions, and is characterized by two features: first, each image is equivalent in principle not to a word but to a phrase: "I go in canoe", "I hunt the lion," I return home ". Each of these images represents a copy, either of the object or of the person in question or of the sign that corresponds to the gestural language. The passage from synthetic writing, or writing of ideas, to analytical writing or words, represents a great progress; in this case, it is a notation or record and not a pure suggestion. Being limited the number of words, a different sign can affect each word, thus avoiding errors of interpretation, while fixing the exact text of the spoken phrase and not only its general meaning. Probably the oldest analytic writings we know, namely, Sumerian and Egyptian, are already retouched scriptures.
Chinese writing
When contemplating Chinese writing, we are not already faced with a type of ideography, since there was a very important number of hexagrams -64 in total- that corresponded to a concept. The hexagrams do not seem to result from the schematization of primitive images; the expression of an idea was not entrusted to a figurative representation but to a geometric drawing. It was not, however, a true writing, since each hexagram did not refer only to a word but to a group of ideas referring to a base concept. From the beginning, in the writings of the Ying dynasty, many of these characters were already used in a phonetic way, that is, they were used to write other words that were pronounced in the same way. There already existed handwritten books, in which the figure was stylized, as it appears, in the way of representing the book with vertical strokes and a slight curve that links them, above and below, representing, in this way, and at the same time the wooden or bamboo boards and the leaves tied together by a cord. The figure was stylized to be able to signify. The number of signs did not then exceed 2,500. This form was already characteristic in the twelfth to the eleventh century BC. The use of the brush affects the type of writing, just as it happened among the Egyptians with the brush and the papyrus. The discovery of the brush and then of paper, in China, had as a consequence that the characters soon lost all their resemblance to the objects originally represented. The brush was not normally used until 200 years BC; It was used to draw characters in Chinese ink on a type of paper made with silk fluff. At the end of the first century of this Era, the director of an imperial arsenal found a way to make real paper; thus the official writing appeared, that soon yielded the step to the typical writing, used at the moment. In its root it has only eight or nine strokes with different variants.
Korean writing
Towards the thirteenth-fourteenth century of our era, Korean writing was established, implanted by the Mongol emperor Kuvilai, to pinpoint the pronunciation of Chinese characters, breaking them down into their sounds. Create complementary vowels and consonants to define Korean writing, and not only to transcribe the writing of the Chinese. Set the number of consonants in fourteen and in eleven the number of vowels. At present we must add other signs. Koreans, like the Chinese, write from top to bottom and from right to left. The following can be observed at a glance in the tracing of the signs:
1) It uses fundamentally whole circles, just stylized parts of them, and orthogonal strokes to define letter shapes sometimes with closed parts.
2) The obliques that it uses are primitive in a double sense: or because they are part of a figure, closed or open, with supporting references; or because they are very simple and appendicular, for example, forming the angle of a roof, with the vertex at the top, meaning just one more step on the figure of the triangle. It is noteworthy that the modern alphabet contains more oblique than the old and more complex. Since the invasion of the Japanese (1894), in official documents and increasingly in books, is written with the help of Chinese ideograms to present the radical words, and reserve the use of Korean characters for the phonetic notation of silences and particles, approaching Japanese writing in this way.
Japanese writing
The expansion of Buddhism to Japan in the sixth century motivates the need for interpretation of Chinese texts. Theoretically, nothing is easier: Chinese writing notes ideas rather than sounds, nothing prevents therefore pronounce every word in Japanese and not in Chinese. The syllabic system, however, is different, since in Japanese there are polysyllables and not just monosyllables like in Chinese. A simplification of Chinese writing takes the form of Katakana and another of Hirakana. Both have the peculiarity of constituting a simplification of the Chinese signs. The very name of Katakana means "edge writing", since only the edge of the primitive drawing has been preserved.
Nothing prevented the Japanese, who had such practical syllabaries, from renouncing the use of Chinese characters and adopting a purely phonetic script. It did not happen that way, however: they did not pass this decisive step. Along with the syllabic signs, they used and continue to use the Chinese ideograms. In this way, Japanese writing is a mixed writing of ideographic and phonetic, with a style found frequently in the Ancient Orient. Thus, syllabic signs have a double function: interspersed in the text, behind the ideogram, indicate the endings, suffixes and particles; they play in short, the role of phonetic complements of writing. But they have a second function, which is to write down and specify, for the use of those who do not know how to write well, the pronunciation of the ideogram itself, then placing itself to the right of the ideogram.
Cuneiform writing
It comes in the form of triangular wedges aligned in clay tablets. The scribe used a bezel carved in a bevel that he held in his hand, and sank it with rapid blows on a tablet of fresh clay. The cuneiform appearance is not primitive, and results from a transformation of the writing mode, of a substitution of one material for another. Actually it is writing because it means something with signs, but it is not in the sense of being directly traced by the hand. As for the origin, he has not hesitated to attribute to it, as a precursor, a pictographic form. It is assumed that objects were first drawn and then replaced by stylized forms. In principle, there is hardly anything else in primitive texts that ideograms, giving rise to a pictographic or ideographic writing. Being the monosyllabic Sumerian language, the transformation into signs was facilitated by reducing the vowels to four and the consonants to fourteen. This step from the pictographic state to the linear state, first by juxtaposition and then cuneiform, made the initial drawings less recognizable, but it made it easier for these signs to adopt the phonetic function.
The Egyptian script
This type of writing uses the hieroglyph, which means: «sacred recording». Clement of Alexandria distinguishes three types of writings:
1) Hieroglyph: recorded writing, sacred.
2) Hieratic: writing for the use of priests.
3) Epistolographic: ordinary writing, also called Demotic.
Since each of the symbols is an ideogram, in the sense of indicating the idea of an isolated object, the juxtaposition of some of these symbols does not constitute true writing. Between the action of suggesting a word and that of faithfully expressing an entire sentence, a difficult stage passes through. Indeed, the faithful transcription of a phrase implies a very complete set of ideograms that allows the annotation of all the important words, and also a system of phonetic transcription of the particles (prepositions, conjunctions, etc.) to indicate the reflection of the names and verbs. After the hieroglyphic or monumental writing, appears the one of linear hieroglyphs designated thus by Champollion, that simplifies them and juxtaposes them like a simple monumental writing. The hieratic was cursive and was written with the help of a cane dipped in black or red ink, on flexible material, such as leather, cloth and especially papyrus. The hieratic writing, says Sottas, is but a deformation of the hieroglyphs, with ligatures in variable number but always relatively scarce. The transcription in hieroglyphics is always possible. The general tendency of the hieratic signs is threefold: first, simplification of the layout; second, highlight the characteristic details, to avoid confusion with other signs; and, third, the addition, for the same reason, of diacritical features. The demotic writing comes from the hieratic and simplifies more the spelling. Solves various elements of certain groups; it creates real acronyms that can not be decomposed, and reduces the number of homophones, that is, characters of different forms that have the same phonetic value. In this way, each phoneme ordinarily corresponds to one or two different signs, rarely more. It was an administrative and literary script. Religious traditions were transmitted by hieroglyphics or by hieratic writing, when addressing the initiates. The Egyptian language, written in special signs derived from the Greek alphabet, to which were added certain characters taken from the demotic, forms the Coptic alphabet.
Cretan script
In this writing A. Evans distinguishes a hieroglyphic form and a linear one, each one subdivided into A and B. The hieroglyphic uses drawings, which are stylized in the linear. The ideographic or phonetic character of the signs is unknown. The most archaic (millennium iii-n a.C.) represent parts of the human body, objects of ordinary use, etc. The texts in linear form, are manifested in the Middle and recent Minóico, that is, between 1660 and 1450 a.C.
The syllabism
It is difficult to separate ideographic writings, that is, "from words", from syllabic writings. At one end you can place the Chinese script and at the other end the Cypriot syllabary, but the consistency of ideograms and syllabic signs is almost the rule. Cypriot writing is purely syllabic. In the Mycenaean script, the ideograms were used sometimes loose and sometimes as determinative of a written word phonetically. One of the particularities of its use is the addition of a syllabic sign to an ideogram, so that they imply each other, similar to what happens with the keys in Chinese writing. In the syllabary they just appear oblique, outside the ideographic representation that gives strength to the feature. Around the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries BC, a new syllabic script appeared, elaborated by the Achaeans, starting with Mycenaean. This new writing is the Cypriot, superior to the linear B. This already does not contain a single ideogram (argument of the sequence: ideographic-syllabic-alphabetic). It consists of fifty identified signs: first, five vowels (a, e, i, o, u); second, twelve consonants followed by these vowels, which have few oblique features.
Semantic-consonantal writing
It presents the interest of constituting the medium in which the Phoenician alphabet was incubated. The excavations in Ras Shamra (Syria) exposed tablets written in cuneiform characters of a type unknown until then. Although the number of characters is scarce, it seems that it is an alphabetic writing. Some, like Berinot, believe it to be a primitive form of the Phoenician, a proto-phenomenon. The similarity with the scriptures coming from the Sumerian is limited to the cuneiform signs that both make use of. The Ugaritic alphabet differs by the shape of the characters and, above all, because it is a consonant script, just like the classic Phoenician alphabet, and not a semi-syllabic and semi-graphic script. It comprises thirty signs, being therefore the most complete of all the Semitic alphabets.
Libyan script
If the hypothesis of obliquity is correct, we should think that the Byblos alphabet represents not only a revolutionary step, by assigning each sign a sound or by representing the consonants in addition to the vowels, but also by the fact of incorporating oblique strokes as a resource. normal. This would suggest an advanced stage in the literacy phase, and also in the drawing or layout phase. It would be possible that this alphabet was either the product of a significantly more cultured and evolved people, or the fruit of some renovator of writing, and perhaps of a genius, discoverer of the correspondence of signs with sounds. The invention would not consist in the selection of signs in small numbers, but rather in the discovery and conscious, precise and scientific formulation of the fact that the fundamental articulations of language existed in small numbers and could each be expressed by a sign. There is a tendency in linear writings to resort to schematic or geometric drawings, relapsing into the same forms. The pseudo-hieroglyphic writing of Byblos may have influenced by providing signs, although it was the Phoenicians who established the general principle of the correspondence of the sign with the elemental sound. The perception of the consonant sign, isolated from the vowel, means a definitive step for the generalization of the correspondence of each symbol with its sound. It disables, for example, the syllabic procedure.
Phoenician alphabet
The archaic Phoenician alphabet comprises twenty-two letters, which are only consonants. It is rid of not only ideograms and determinants but also all traces of syllabism. The impression of complex and oblique strokes is evident. In spite of everything, the Phoenician alphabet is not exactly an alphabet as we understand it, that is to say, a writing that decomposes each word in its elements, consonants and vowels, assigning a special sign to each sound, and thus allowing not only to recognize a word familiar but to decompose it in its essential parts, although the language to which the word belongs is ignored, being able to reconstruct approximately its pronunciation. All this was not achieved by Phoenician writing, nor by other Semitic writings, engendered by it, while the Greeks did.
Arabic writing
With respect to this writing, in the papyri there is a round writing used for the text itself, and a more massive, heavier- related graphic that was used only for the protocols. It is plausible that the round writing, which appeared very early, already existed in the pre-Islamic era. The Arabic script completely rejects the oblique lines. It follows in this a trajectory initiated by the Nabatean alphabet, whose twenty-two signs are reduced to seventeen. Hence, the possibility of reading a Kufic text is difficult, and that it resorts to diacritic points up to the number of three. A characteristic also of the Arabic letter is that of ligatures.
Neosilabism
All ideography (that is, all analytical writing, all writing of words) tends to syllabism, as has been shown in relation to Sumerian-Akkadian writing and Egyptian writing. The use of hieroglyphs is typical of all sketches of spelling, and it is possible that this natural tendency has been reinforced by special reasons or for religious reasons. There is only an approximately ideographic script, which is the Chinese, and even to this one the definition does not fit in an absolute way. The syllabism is different depending on what distinguishes the "consonant element" that is common to the vowel variables of the syllable or that does not distinguish it. The common element will make easy the analytical transformation of the syllables into their phonetic components. In other words, the neosyllabic writing implies an effort of phonetic analysis that leads to conceive the consonant as an element of the syllable, but which refuses to express it graphically in an autonomous way. In most cases, the neosyllabic writings have been formed from the Semitic consonant script, but the important thing is that they represent an advance over the old syllabic forms.
Greek and Latin script
The Greek alphabet appears around the year 900 a.C. By adapting the Egyptian consonant script to their own language the Greeks solved a double problem: they modified the value of certain consonants and decomposed every syllable into consonants and vowels thus completely eliminating the syllabic notation. They also added the complementary signs phi, gi, psi (Φ, χ, ψ) and epsilon (ε), to the twenty-two Phoenician letters.
As for the origin of the Greek, it must be considered that it does not come directly from the Phoenician, but from the protofenicio in its origins, standing out the Phoenician of its predecessor around 1100 a.C. This and other considerations recommend the aforementioned date of 900 a.C. as the origin of the Greek alphabet. This is an important time, since Paleohebraic and Aramaic eschatology also begin to separate from the Phoenician. The ninth century BC It is, therefore, a milestone in the history of writing. The passage from lapidary or monumental writing to that of papyrus and paper, and the predominance of bureaucracy from the time of Alexander the Great, make the alphabet more flexible and supple, adopting the cursive form and softening the angles. As for the predominance of the vertical sensation over the horizontal, it may have been influenced by the fact that the Greeks wrote in papyrus, like the Egyptians, and that they decided to write in the direction of the fibers, rather than crossing them, especially given that the Greeks used a calamus tip finer than the Egyptian or Aramaic, and with this instrument they found greater difficulty in tracing features facing the direction of the fibers. Anyway, if they adopted this utensil it would be because it lent itself better to reproduce the prominent and angular silhouette of the Greek letters. The Etruscan alphabet copies the twenty-two Phoenician letters and adds other letters, probably taken from the western Greek, and according to some authors it seems to also take letters from the Cumas dialect, near Naples.
The appearance of this alphabet is very similar to that of the Phoenician with a certain abundance of oblique features, some of which close solid forms, such as the rhombus. This same character can be noticed in the italic scriptures. The oblique and inclined that predominate are primitive, either because they close figures or because they are simple angles with the vertex generally upwards, although sometimes below, left or right. Also the Latin alphabet is, like all the Etruscan and Italic alphabets, originally a Greek alphabet of Western and non-Oriental type. Instead of the letters gamna, delta, lambda, epsilon (γ, δ, λ, ρ, ε), the forms c, d, 1, r, v are adopted; the uppercase pi and sigma (Γ, Σ) already resemble the current ρ and s Latinas.
Contemplating the historical panorama, one has the impression that in the material evolution of writing operate two large collective psychological processes:
1) Ό not of progressive ability in the drawing, which encourages moving from the use of square and round shapes to the rhomboids, and from the filled figures to the stylized lines.
2) Another that accumulates discriminative clues in the primitive figures, to distinguish a greater number of phonetic nuances with the smallest number of simple forms. The first process reveals a generalizing resource: similar forms for similar effects. The second tends to discriminate nuances between similar stimuli.
Modern writing
Latin writing was done on papyrus and on parchment (the latter term comes from Pergamum, in Asia Minor, which had been a cultural, literary and artistic centre). The hurried notes were taken on a tablet, with a style, sharpened by one end and blunt by the other, with which it was erased. The expeditious procedures had more and more to deform the writing, and to the creation of a cursive letter. Towards the ninth century of our era, the triumph of the tiny Carolina takes place. In the monuments the capital or capital was used. In the first century the cursive letter appeared in Pompeii on wax tablets. Towards the ni, samples of uncial and semi-uncial letter are found, called precisely primitive minuscule or new common writing. It is distinguished from the capital or capital letter by the predominance of curved and rectilinear features, by a minimum regularity in its alienation, as well as by the absence of crossbar at the base and at the top of vertical and oblique, and finally, by its tendency to pass above and below the horizontals of the body of the letters. This last character only outlined in the uncial is affirmed in the semi-social.
The appearance of the Carolingian or Carolina, in the eighth century, whose first example is a gospel written by Godesscale in the year 781, is a major event in the history of Latin writing.
When the printing was invented, this letter acquired a great diffusion, and at the moment it is the letter of current use, being used the capital letters or capitals for the beginning of paragraph and for the proper names. The letters have rounded shapes, the ligatures here are a little numerous and do not present serious difficulties. Later it was called a tiny diplomatic or Merovingian, and by the influence of the notaries of the palace it was implanted in the pontifical chancellery and eventually dominated the curia. His creation is attributed to Alcunio, a monk friend of Charlemagne and creator of the school of Tours, although according to other authors his influence was less direct, since he had already been training in French cloisters, especially in Corbie. The success is not only due to the layout, but to the cultural expansion of Charlemagne's period. Subsequently, Gothic writing represents a period of deformation of the Carolingian. The letters are cut in the protruding parts, joining straight strokes instead of continuing the curve, hence it is also called broken or broken letter. In the fourteenth century, the so-called letter of form triumphed, complicated by the lower part, where the vertical lines are twisted at the base, adopting the appearance of a sharp line on the upper part. It has been used a lot in manuscripts and liturgical books. The distorted vertical lines of this letter introduce some reading difficulty, clarified, in part, by the point that overlaps the letter i. Also, put together the letters within each words. Among the material causes that have led to this evolution of the spelling, it should be mentioned, in the foreground, the adoption of the pen to replace the calamus. Against the Gothic letter reacts humanistic writing, which arises from Italy, and is a round letter, less angular. Later appears the Florentine bastard, which introduces more cursive elements. Then the scholars rediscovered the letter Carolina minuscule, in manuscripts of classical authors, and believed that it was the authentic writing of antiquity. They proposed to resuscitate it and popularized it in the fifteenth century. It was this writing that received the name of humanistic or ancient, and from it a cursive writing of bookstore was developed, which was characterized by the inclination on the line and by the finesse and continuity, which contrasts with the juxtaposed thick lines of the Gothic This led to Italian scribes using pointed pens, while the Gothic was drawn with short and wide tip pens. The discovery of the printing press spread the type of letter in the places where it was printed. In Italy, France and England, the humanistic letter and the form letter were used. In Germany they chose the Gothic type, used by Guttenberg in the edition of the Bible. The development of the printing press was conditioned by the discovery of paper. The Chinese used it old, and certain prisoners revealed in Samarkand the secret, which was soon assimilated and spread by the Arabs in their empire and, later, in Europe. Later the introduction of English steel pens, more resistant than the other goose, accentuated the tendency to standardize the thickness of the letter, which has confirmed the pen and fountain pen to this day. The primitive Germanic alphabets seem to contradict the norm that begins with orthogonal or curved lines, and is continued by the oblique ones. The mere contemplation of the letters emphasizes the obliquity or, at least, inclination of certain lines. The Germans used, for divination, sticks on which were engraved certain signs that symbolized very general ideas.
When they came into contact with the southern alphabets, they accepted the principle and even adopted the material form of the characters, but retained, at least at the beginning, the habit of writing on wood, assigning each sign an idea, and grouping these, in large categories. The origin would come from the contact with the Greek in the original residences of the gothic people, to the south of Russia. Hence Phoenician and Greek reminiscences as well as Latinas and Etruscans. The ogymic writing, from the south of Ireland, is expressed by nicks or notches that consist of adding simple elements, usually straight lines in different directions. They are usually parallel or crossed, and some oblique, almost all descending from left to right. This writing added the x, and the circle or ellipse. This last sign, it seems, was invented by a character named Ogma, warrior at the same time wise. The writing was not phonetic originally, but it was becoming over the millennia an instrument of phonetic notation of language. First the phonetic notation slipped fortuitously in favour of the hieroglyph and gained ground in the ancient syllabic scripts. Its principle is affirmed in Semitic consonant writing, but incompletely, since only consonants are recorded. The Greek alphabet introduces the transcription of vowels, insinuated less elegantly into syllabic systems. A regression to the ideographic writing system is currently registered. This is the case of mathematical notation, traffic signage and acronyms of all kinds. All this blurs the phonetic nature of the writing. This, without mentioning that there are scripts in which sound is not translated accurately, such as English and French, adhered to the tradition that ensures the preservation of ancient documents, etymological roots, etc. In tending to a universal script, the Latin alphabet is used as a base, which takes the name of Romanization.
After the revision and comparison of the alphabets, together with the different contributions and theories of the researchers in this field, some conclusions can be gathered, pertinent to our approach:
– There seems to be a development in the form of signs from an iconic stage to a linear stage.
– There is an apparent development of the signs from the round to the angular figures.
– The development of writing has followed in a general way a process of simplification and stylization of signs. The figure tends to be reduced to its outline.
– The use of writing has followed an automation process. Resources are mechanically executed that, in the beginning, were the product of intelligence and genius.
– At the starting point of the scriptures, the signs have been rotating approximately 90 ° towards their back. This phenomenon, which in the period of the papyrus would be explained by the difficulty of crossing the veins of the vegetable leaf, is subsequently maintained by the ease it brings to agglutinate signs in less space, by placing them vertically.
– From the point of view of the Theory of Writing, the evolution goes from a logo-syllabic script, through the syllabic, to the alphabetic writing.
– There is a certain parallelism between the development of the writing in the child and the process followed by the different civilizations, in the acquisition of the same, suggesting the law of recapitulation of Haeckel. From the above, a genetic criterion, complementary to the methodology of writing, according to which it would be advisable to follow the evolution of the alphabets throughout history, taking an example of what has been learned by mankind.
3.3 Spelling rules
Vowels and Spelling: the five basic spelling rules
One of the distinctive features of the vowels is their length. English vowel (pure) phonemes can be divided into short and long. The latter (namely: / i: ɜ: ɑ: ɔ: u: /) require a greater articulatory effort than short phonemes, so they are often described as tense (tense).
One of the biggest problems we encounter when learning English as a foreign language is the fact that there is no stable relationship between English spelling and pronunciation. In the case of vowels this problem is even more obvious, since in English there are 12 pure vowel phonemes, plus 8 diphthongs that can only be represented by combining 5 letters (A, E, I, O, U).
For the foreign apprentice the spelling of English seems chaotic and irregular and as a result it is very difficult to predict how a word is pronounced when we read it for the first time. In spite of this, a series of basic pronunciation rules can be established that are very helpful for both the foreign apprentice and the native speaker of short age.
In order to clarify the relationship between spelling and pronunciation, we often use a popular terminology that establishes at least two possible pronunciations for each of the 5 written vowels: a long pronunciation and a short pronunciation.
As one can see in the previous table, the pronunciation popularly known as "short" of the A is / æ /, and the "long" is / eɪ /. According to this principle in England, young children are taught that: Cons + A + Cons is pronounced / æ /, Cons + E + Cons is pronounced / e / and so on.
The classification of the vowels that we have just done is not a scientific classification, but it is a great help to relate the pronunciation of a word with its spelling. Using this distinction we can propose the following basic rules of pronunciation of the vowels in accented syllables:
Rule number 1: When we find a single vowel followed by a consonant in final accented syllable, the pronunciation of that vowel will remain short, which we can summarize as follows: (Cons + 1 Voc + Cons). For example, the E of bet or re'gret will be pronounced short / e / and the I of sick or com'mit will be short / I /, etc. (This rule is exemplified in the first column of the previous table)
Rule number 2: When in the final accented syllable we find: a single vowel followed by a single consonant and an E (Cons + 1 Voc +1 Cons + E), the vowel will be pronounced "long": the E in full is / i : /, while the I in bite is / aI /.
Rule number 3: Unlike the previous two, this rule applies to the penultimate syllables. The pronunciation of a vowel in a penultimate and accented syllable will be "long" if it is followed by a single consonant, while it will be "short" if several consonants follow it.
It should also be borne in mind that the letter L in the ending -LE is considered as vowel (it functions as the core of the syllable). Therefore, how will the letter I pronounce the letter I? / /. One of the implications of this rule is that to maintain the pronunciation of the vowel in words such as run or swim, when adding a suffix we have to duplicate the final consonant; in this way they become for example runner or swimmer, something that you already learned to do years ago without knowing that it was due to a pronunciation rule.
The first three rules that we have just explained explain how a single vowel is pronounced syllable. The following rules 4 and 5 can, instead, help to pronounce sequences of two vowels (vowel digraphs):
Rule number 4: A sequence of two vowels (vowel digraph) in stressed syllable will normally adopt a "long" pronunciation. This pronunciation usually matches the "long" pronunciation (the "name") of the first vowel (eg receive, deep, load, Spain, etc.). To learn this rule, English children are made to memorize the following rhyme: "When two vowels go out walking, the first one does the talking", what we could translate as: "the first is the one that is heard".
Rule number 5: There is a group of words that contain a sequence of two vowels but do not follow rule 4 exactly, since in these words the two vowels are pronounced: the pronunciation of the first vowel usually coincides with the "name" of the vowel ("long" pronunciation) while the pronunciation of the second is usually that of a weak vowel. In this way, the resulting pronunciation is sometimes considered as a triphthong.
There are not many words that follow this pronunciation; among the most common are: chaos, neon, dial, dialect, diamond (and other words with DIA), giant, psychiatry, client, science, society, variety, violent, violin, heroic, poem, boa, cruel, dual, fluent , ruin, suicide, continuity.
Pre-fortis clipping
In English there are 5 vowel phonemes that are called "long" (long vowels) since, with equal context, tend to be articulated (and perceived) with a length greater than that of the other 7 vowel phonemes (for this reason are represented with two points ":"). However, we must bear in mind that the absolute duration in the articulation of a phoneme varies enormously depending on the speed with which each person speaks, the own rhythm characteristic of English and the context in which the phoneme appears.
One of the factors that most influence the length of a vowel and that affect more significantly the intelligibility of the word is the so-called pre-fortis clipping. As its name indicates (To clip: to cut, to shorten), a long vowel in accented syllable sees considerably its length reduced when it is preceding a deaf consonant (fortis); thus for example the / i: / of beat is approximately half as long as that of bead.
This same shortening also takes place with the diphthongs (eg road Vs wrote) and with the short vowels (bid Vs bit), although in the latter case the shortening is much less obvious.
According to Gimson (p.96), there are scientific studies that show that vowels closed by a consonant are really shorter. In the following table we can see a summary of the results contributed by the work carried out by Wiik in 1965:
The shortening of the vowels before a deaf consonant is also a very useful phenomenon to differentiate minimum pairs where the opposition between the two words is due to the distinctive deaf-sound feature, like some of those that appear in the following list:
Although the spelling in English is noticeably irregular, there are a large number of rules or rules of pronunciation of the vowels that you must discover and assimilate. As we have seen, the pronunciation of the vowels in English depends on factors such as the accent (accented / unstressed syllable), if it is followed by a consonant (one / two consonants) or if two consecutive vowels or one vowel appear.
Throughout this course we will review these and other regularities that exist in the pronunciation of the English language.
On the other hand, it is important that we pay attention to the phenomenon called pre-fortis clipping, since it will help us identify certain consonants in final position (eg bit / bid) that otherwise would be difficult to distinguish, besides providing a more pronounced next to the authentic one.
3.4 False friends
The creation of the term false friends or cognate was in the year 1928 by Maxime Koesler and Jules Deroc in his book Les Faux Amis or Les Trahisons du Vocabulaire Anglais. Since then, this term has been used to refer to the words of two languages that are the same or very similar, but that have different meaning and use, sometimes very different, which is the result of their semantic evolution. It is called true friends, two words that have the same etymology and maintain an identical meaning in both languages. You can compare this phenomenon with the case of synonyms within the same language, for example chair and seat or walking and walking. However, it is exceptional to find pure cognates between two languages (Penny, 2009), as I explained at the beginning with the example of the English word fan. Penny (2009) makes two distinctions, he concentrates his research on (a): (a) false friends (or pseudocognids as he calls them) by spelling, (b) false friends for meaning.
The orthographic cognates
Two cognates are orthographically true when the two have exactly the same spelling in the two languages because they have the same etymology (for example: patio, current or agenda). However, many false friends have spellings with minimal differences, that is ascribed to two factors: (i) phonetic idiosyncrasies of each language, and (ii) morphological preferences of each language. In case of (i), the phonetic rules of a language determine the spelling of the words. Orthographically English is more conservative than other languages and therefore more complicated. Some examples of differences between the spelling of English and other languages are the use of the tilde, which is almost non-existent in English; the use of double consonants in English (ff, gg, mm): for example, mission – mission; and the exchange of vowels (e / a Spanish is i in English, or Spanish is parallel to u in English, etc), for example feminine – feminine or pardon – pardon, and bulletin – bulletin . English and other languages also have many similarities in their use of prefixes and suffixes. These sometimes maintain obvious spelling differences. The transfer between two false friends is greater when the difference is minimal, while two words that are very different are memorized as separate elements and do not mix (Collins, 2010: 89).
Chen (2016), in turn, makes two other distinctions in false friends: (a) false accidental friends, and (b) false semantic friends.
False Accidental and Semantic Friends
False accidental friends define it as words that are similar or equivalent (orthographically and / or phonetically) in two or more languages, but without there being a semantic or etymological reason for that similarity. These false friends can be compared with homonyms within the same language, for example doll that can mean a child's toy or an area of the arm. False semantic friends are words that are orthographically and / or phonologically similar in several languages, but their meanings are different. These false friends can be compared to polysemic. Taylor (1995) defines polysemy as "the association of two or more meanings related to a single linguistic form." As for example metro that can be as much a measure of distance as the suburban train.
False semantic friends can be divided into two groups: (i) false pure friends, and (ii) false partial friends. (i) includes words that differ greatly in their different meanings, (ii) includes words whose several meanings sometimes coincide in the two languages ( Dinnsen, 1995: 132).
In the linguistic studies that concentrate on discovering the types of semantic changes in languages, the phenomena of metaphors, metonymy, generalization and specialization are studied above all. Metaphors are words that are used to compare one thing with another that have no relation at all. For example, compare a person with an animal by the best known characteristic of that animal, in the culture or language of the speaker. When these metaphorical uses do not coincide in two or more languages, false friends appear. For example the word e spañola camel, which has etymological relations with the French chameau, the German Kamel and the Portuguese camel, all mean the same animal, then those words are not false friends. But yes when the word is used as a metaphor. For example the Germans when they use the word Kamel to refer to a person, means stupid or idiotic, while the English means drug trafficker, which in English and French are referred to as mules or the Spanish word donkey.
Metonymy is the situation similar to metaphor, when a concept is used not by its proper name, but by the meaning associated with it. For example, the word bathroom in English and bagne in French. Both come from the Latin balneum (bathroom, bath house), but bathroom means bathroom while bagne has meaning of jail or hard work. However, in the past bath also meant jail, because the Turks imprisoned their prisoners inside bathhouses. In this case the French has maintained the reference to the prison, while the English returned to the original meaning.
Generalization is the phenomenon in which a word with specific meaning transforms into a term used with broader meaning. For example, the French arriver verb that originally meant reaching the river's edge, but now means reaching any destination. Instead, specialization is the phenomenon in which a word with a broad meaning is transformed into a term with specific meaning such as the word queen (queen) that now means the woman of the king or sovereign, but coincides with the Scandinavian word kvinna which means simply woman just like the English word that old woman
.
Loans
Another process that creates false friends is that of loans. According to Chen (2016: 172 ) this can occur in three ways. (a) Loans hold only one of several meanings, for example the French word maître, which is a loan in almost all European languages, whose meaning in those has been limited to the kitchen and restaurant terrain. (b) Loans can get more meaning than they had in the original language, for example the Spanish word guerrilla, which is used in English to say guerrilla. (c) the meaning of the loans can differ from the meaning or original by metaphorical use, for example the Spanish word rally that comes from the English meeting.
Both the English meaning gathering has been reduced to a meeting where the audience listens to the speeches of some character of political and social relevance (RAE dictionary), as the vulgar English added another metaphorical meaning of anger (the reprimand).
False friends complicate the learning of a foreign language and that is why they are the cause of numerous misunderstandings and imperfect translations by speakers at a fairly high level. For example in the case of my research of English speakers, a language that have many similarities in the spelling of words with the same etymological origin.
3.5 Confusable words
English can be a difficult language to study and speak. When one movesto London, for example, he always would have trouble with these words; though, thought, tough, through, and thorough.
Leaving aside the complicated grammar that sometimes drives us crazy, or struggling with the past, future, perfect continuous present, and many other things, for me spelling and pronunciation are even more complicated than grammar. There are words that are written almost the same, but you have to read them differently and they mean completely different things. How easy is it to be confused with though and tough? One would want to write "this is tough" and he ends up writing though, which does not make any sense. The same goes for 'recommend'. Why do we have two 'ms' and one 'c'? When we pronounce it, it sounds like it should carry two 'cs' and one 'm'!
The words tree and three, for example, were impossible for me to separate. He used to say "It's three pounds" and everyone understood 'tree'.
Sensible and sensitive are words that confuse us. Many words in English have a sound or a very similar spelling and can be very confusing. In this series "Do you get confused …?" I will pay attention to different groups of words that can cause confusion and I will help you remember the differences between them.
Some of these words are: Sensitive and sensitive. So let's see how they are used.
'Sensible': A sensible person makes logical decisions and does not take risks. E.g. Sam is very sensible with his money. Normally sensible is a positive adjective. It is considered good to be sensible. Sometimes, we use it in a friendly way to joke about someone a little bored: E.g. Sam: I can not come to the party tonight. Steve: Come on, Sam. You should eat. Do not be so sensitive.
'Sensitive': It can be both positive and negative referred to the personality: I love Simon, he's so sensitive. I have really understands my feelings and does not say anything to upset me. It is a positive comment about Simon. Let's now see a negative use of 'sensitive': Lucy is so sensitive. It's very easy to upset her. We can also use sensitive to express physical sensations. For example: I have sensitive teeth; they hurt if I try to eat something very cold or very hot.
In short: 'Sensible' – a person who makes good decisions and does not like to take risks. 'Sensitive' – person who understands very well the feelings of others, who is often sad or for parts of the body that easily experience sensations.
3.6 Why you need to work at spelling?
Having a good spelling positively influences our professional image, it is useless to know how to express ourselves or communicate excellently if at the time of writing we have supreme errors. And it's not only about the image one projects, but also about the level of preparation we have, here are some benefits.
1. Having a good spelling demonstrates the level of out mental order and security, since through writing we see structures as a text, if we have clear ideas or if we are scattered. These characteristics also apply and are associated in different areas of life.
2. A well-done text reflects our level of professionalism and gives another type of validity, the better the text is structured, the greater impression that the writer is reliable and knowledgeable.
3. Although it is a short text message, writing correctly makes the recipient feel valued as we give due importance.
4. By writing correctly you encourage good example, it is a way to serve and help others to improve their spelling.
5. Knowing that we have the skills and tools necessary to express ourselves, this would give us security, usually when we do not know how to start a text we are filled with frustration and anxiety.
6. Wherever we go as a professional we have to demonstrate the basic domains of a language: speaking, reading, writing and listening. If we are a connoisseur of these four areas, we will transmit a pleasant feeling and perception in others, everyone likes to listen to a good conversation or read well-written content. The recruiters of works before contacting us visualize our resume or cover letter, for them that simple study serves to give us a perception of our professional image, for that reason it is necessary that we have an exemplary spelling, otherwise we could put in a play our careers.
7. Having a good spelling is key to improving the professional image, it helps us to assume and accept new challenges within the labor market. It is important to enhance this ability and not have as much of the correct, research or use the dictionary to find appropriate words. In the jobs we look for professionals who know how to communicate and if we know how to write well that will help us to be clear on the goals, objectives, plans and ideas of an organization.
8. Show attention to the small details, which are often the most important. If the writer constantly worries about enriching his vocabulary, doing things better and enhancing the quality of his texts, it is denoting concern for his readers.
9. The spell checkers and programs are not 100 percent effective, we have the need to perfect our writing to perform in different areas of life. This feature is synonymous with quality as it reinforces your range of skills.
10. Enrich the tongue.
11. Preparing constantly in writing also helps in our level of communication.
3.7 Mnemonics
Throughout history, researchers have focused on explaining more thoroughly the concept of mnemonics and its involvement in memory tasks. The term mnemotecnia derives from the word "Mnemosyne", name of the ancient Greek goddess of memory. In general, it is defined as the set of methods that help memory. Scruggs (1991: 220) defines it as that technique by which memory is reinforced and improved. Other authors consider mnemonics as any mechanism or strategy that is related to the memory of memory (Hoffman and Senter, 1978: 14). However, Collins (2010: 110) includes the learning process in the use of mnemonics. Thus, it describes it as the set of learning strategies in order to increase this cognitive process and the subsequent recall of the information.
Emphasizing most of the researchers' opinions, Higbee (1997: 148) defines mnemonics, in a more restricted sense, as a rather unusual or artificial memory aid, to distinguish it from other learning strategies that also help the memory, but they are not included in the definition of mnemonics. Therefore, Higbee (1997: 149) tries to distinguish between mnemonic individuals, which are those people who possess a high memory capacity due to the repeated use of mnemonic methods, and rhetoricians, who are individuals who have an innate ability to memory.
There are multiple forms of presentation of mnemonics, although the most important and used are visual and verbal mnemonics. The visual consists of the use of mental images to associate the elements of the material that must be remembered; whereas the verbal one uses associations of words (Collins, 2010: 93).
Mnemonic methods that employ visual mediators have proven to be more effective in learning and remembering the concrete material; while verbal mediators are more effective when working with abstract material. According to personal characteristics, participants prefer the use of one of the modalities over others. In this way, some individuals rely on verbal associations; while others base their mnemonics on visual mediators (Richardson, 1983: 58). This possibility has turned out to be very useful for the learning of all the participants, since they are the ones that according to their characteristics or the characteristics of the task (Higbee, 1998: 162) choose the mnemonic method that suits them best (Scruggs, 1991:69).
Therefore, we must bear in mind that both the aptitude of the individual (innate) as the method that uses (acquired) or the interaction between the two are involved in the ability to remember a certain amount of information (Collins, 2010: 102). Despite this, it is worth mentioning that most of the mnemonic strategies are based on mental images .
Mnemonic rules
Rules are memory aid systems that are used to learn and remember specific data. Its main characteristics are: they do not have an intrinsic connection with the material that must be learned, generally some element is added to the material object of learning both to memorize it and to remember it better, and they lack the possibility of generalization. For this reason, many researchers call them verbal or visual elaborations (Higbee, 1998: 160) because they create logical associations between what should be learned and what is already known .
Both verbal and visual mnemotechnics increase the memory that people have about a set of information, although each of them is more useful for retaining a certain type of information. Verbal mnemonics is more appropriate for learning abstract material; while the visual one obtains better results when applied to concrete material (Higbee, 1998: 163).
The most used are: associations of mnemonic images, face-name technique and keyword mnemonics.
Mnemonic images associations
Several investigations have shown that the presence of three factors favour the effectiveness of visual associations: interaction, vivacity and strangeness (Higbee, 1998: 165).
In the interaction, it is convenient to emphasize that visual imagery alone does not have maximum effectiveness. To make the images effective, they must meet two main requirements: be visual and include the "association"; that is, both elements must be interacting in some way. It is not enough that one element is on top of or next to the other.
There are many tests that confirm the effect of the interaction. Some research conducted with kindergartners and older adults has shown that when images are presented in interaction, they are better remembered than when they are not (Bergfeld, Choate and Kroll, 1982: 314).
In another study, participants created their own images in order to remember different ones. Thus, also, in this case, it has been proven that the interaction image is more effective than the separated images in both serial and associated pairs (Richardson, 1980: 99). On the other hand, primary school students benefit more from the image in interaction when they are shown these images than when they are taught to make their own (Hunt and Marschark, 1987: 89).
One of the reasons for the effectiveness of interacting images is that the images of separate elements can become a single image, being remembered as a unit; that is, each of the fragments helps to remember the rest of the unit. According to this, segmentation is very important when associating the images in interaction. However, when the pairs of words already have a logical relationship because they already represent a single unit, the imagery of interaction is not more effective than the images of separate elements
Referring to liveliness, we can say that a vivid visual image has the closest possible resemblance to the real image. At the same time it must be different, clear and strong. For this reason, it is suggested that the greater the vividness of the image, the greater effect it will have on memory.
Ritchey and Beal (1980: 66) consider it very useful to elaborate the image in detail, trying also to visualize the characteristics of each element separately, their interaction and the context in which the action takes place. To achieve greater liveliness of the image we must take into account three other factors: movement (see the image in action), substitution (visualize an element in the place of the other) and exaggeration (see one or both elements in an exaggerated way either in number or size). This essential element is familiarity. Hence, the existence of a direct relationship between liveliness and familiarity (the more familiar the images become, the more alive and therefore, the better they are remembered).
The results of Ahsen's study (1986: 588) on the effectiveness of the images in the learning of associated pairs, demonstrated that the participants remembered better the images that were considered like more vivid. In another of the studies, it was concluded that the group of participants trained to elaborate active and living visual images, remembered better a list of words than those that only elaborated them (Reisberg, Culver, Heuer and Fischman, 1986: 385). In addition, it was shown that people who are able to create vivid visual images of other people not only remember their appearance more effectively but also their history, values and attitudes (Swann and Miller, 1982: 475).
Another factor that favours the effectiveness of visual associations is strangeness. A strange image is that visual image, illogical, incongruous, rare and unusual (Higbee, 1998: 86).
Strange images are effective when they also incorporate certain factors that help memory, such as interaction, vivacity, singularity and time. In addition, it has been shown that strangeness can be confused with interaction. Therefore, two interacting objects that do not have any relationship, causes a strange interaction, giving rise to a more vivid, attractive and surprising image than any logical image (Higbee, 1998: 125).
Whenever new visual associations between objects are logical, they will be more effective than common associations. In general, strange images compared to logical images, require both more time and more effort when preparing them. Thus, the time and effort it takes to create the images will help to remember them better and in an easier way.
Some older people have certain difficulties when creating strange images. For them, normal interactive images show equally good results. Therefore, it is recommended to form living images in interaction, without being present in them, the strangeness .
Name-face technique
One of the most frequent complaints of the memory is the forgetting of the names of the people we know, but with whom we do not maintain a relationship so assiduous as to have their name machined.
The name-face technique is a visual character task based on associated pairs. It consists of relating the names of people with the most relevant features or characteristics of their faces. Therefore, the face will be the stimulus and the name, the response to that stimulus. In memory, faces are treated differently than names. Therefore, faces, being images, are easier to remember than the names of people. This is because the memorization of faces is a task of recognition and that of names involves a task of free recall or recovery.
Each expert usually proposes its own system to remember names. Hence, there are many different systems and all of them have the same basic strategies, but differing in their division.
The awareness and practice of the steps used in the system of memorizing names and faces is the main factor.
Higbee (1998) points out five main steps to remember more easily the association between the name and the face: grasp the name, get the name becomes significant, focus on the face, associate the name with the face and review the association.
The first step is to capture the name. When we are introduced to someone, we forget the name of the person because we do not pay enough attention to remember it later. Generally, we pay less attention to names than to appearances (Reed, 1979: 114). On the other hand, very self-centered people remember names better than those who are not, because they direct more attention to themselves than to other people.
In order to better capture the name of a person, various techniques have been used, such as: using it during the conversation, repeating it, pronouncing it out loud, asking for it and, when possible, recording it (Higbee, 1998). This annotation forces us to pay more attention. In addition, it has been shown that we remember words better when we see them and hear them than when we only use one of the senses. This will help to fix it better in the memory. All these tasks involve the application of basic principles of learning such as attention, repetition and recitation (Higbee, 1998: 127).
Simply by focusing on the name and paying attention to it, without using any concrete memorization technique, memory for the names can be improved (McCarty, 1980: 75).
The next step is to get the name to become meaningful and concrete. Some names have meaning for themselves, but others acquire it through an association with something that is. The principle of word substitution is used for those names that in principle have no meaning.
When we find it difficult to create substitution words, we can practice using the names of a phone book or use a book about memorizing people (Lorayne, 1975: 110). In this way, we will be able to give meaning to the name in order to facilitate its remembrance.
Collins (2010: 104) states that if we can not make a name meaningful, the simple fact of directing all our attention to it will be enough to remember it.
The third step would be to focus on the face of the person to find an outstanding feature on his face or appearance that is significant and important enough to attract our attention when we see him again.
Various investigations performed with children, adults and the elderly have shown that making judgments about personality traits improves facial recognition, rather than assessments made about their physical characteristics. We must base the recognition on permanent features, since these are the ones that will be present when we see the person again. Some features such as smiling or wearing glasses will not be valid, since they are characterized as non-permanent features (Higbee, 1998: 117).
Other studies reveal that the eyes are a very representative feature of people. However, Pezdek and Reynolds (1987: 270) have not discovered a clear predominance of any facial feature over another.
In a meta-analysis on the identification of eyewitnesses and face recognition it was concluded that the ability to identify faces is affected by some variables such as the particularity of the face and its elaboration when coding it, the reinstallation of the context and the depth of the strategies of processing (Shapiro and Penrod, 1986: 225). Next, a conscious visual association between the name and the distinctive feature of the face must be developed. Sometimes, it happens that we remember the substitute word without remembering the name it represents. This is one of the risks of using this system, because although it improves memory, it does not make it perfect. Lorayne (1975: 47) states that this problem can occur, but in practice it is not very likely. Normally, errors are due to a weak association between the surrogate word and the name. The success of this system consists in practicing this ability to convert the name into an easily remembered substitute word (Loftus, 1980: 114).
The last step is to review this association. To remember a long-term name, it is essential to review it after meeting the person and then, occasionally. Landauer and Bjork (1978: 75) suggest that to improve the memory, we have to repeat the name of the person immediately, then say it for yourself for 10 or 15 seconds, review it again after 1 minute or more and finally, for several minutes later. The gradually spaced intervals between the reps turned out to be very effective. On the other hand, a proactive interference was found for both the verbal material and the faces (Yarmey, 1974). Therefore, such interference seems to affect the memory of faces and names. To reduce this effect, presentations should be made at different locations, be temporarily spaced and reviewed. You can also write the names to make it easier to review (Higbee, 1998). However, Brant (1982) showed that, once the conversation started, more attention was paid, more clues were available for the association of the name and as a result, less interference was experienced.
Keyword mnemonics
Atkinson and his collaborators (Atkinson, 1975: 27, Atkinson and Raugh, 1975: 117, Raugh and Atkinson, 1975: 123-126, Raugh, Schupbach and Atkinson, 1977: 78) coined the concept of "keyword" in order to describe the use of this type of mnemonics to Learn vocabulary in foreign languages. This author was the first to create systematic research on this mnemonic rule, although some of the steps of this technique have already been used in previous studies.
In 1973, Ott, Butler, Blake and Ball performed a work in which the participants had to learn names and adjectives in German, whose sound was very similar to the English language, their mother tongue. The results allowed to emphasize the relevance of the use of mnemonics with image to transform the foreign word into an English family word or, failing that, to facilitate the learning of foreign vocabulary. The fact of associating the unknown word with a family member for the participant was very useful both for learning the information presented in the task and for later recall (Feinaigle, 1813: 427).
Although this technique was developed and used by other people before 1975, Atkinson was considered the first psychologist who focused on the use and knowledge of this mnemonic rule, in addition to controlling it empirically. Its origin was to provide an effective method of learning to learn and remember vocabulary of foreign languages in adult individuals (Atkinson, 1975: 78, Atkinson and Raugh, 1975: 117). It was also beneficial to learn other types of information such as: scientific and social material, abstract concepts, unknown words of the language itself, etc. It was evidenced that its use not only facilitated learning in adults but also it was directed to another type of population.
The principle of association is on which the mnemonics of the keyword is based; that is, it is about associating a non-familiar word for the participant with another word known by him, in which there must be an acoustic similarity. Levin and Pressley (1983: 138) suggest that this method will be composed of verbal and / or visual mediators according to the preferences of the individual and the characteristics of the material. The mnemotecnique of the key word is divided in two fundamental steps: verbal and visual. In the first one, it is a question of elaborating a concrete keyword to represent that foreign word that is object of learning, establishing a phonetic or orthographic similarity between both. For example: if we want to learn the association between the Latin word "manicae" and the English translation "glove", we must first look for a concrete English word that sounds as similar as possible to the Latin word, as in this case "hand".
The second step is to create a visual and interactive image between the keyword and the meaning of the word we must learn. For example: forming an image in which the words "hand" and "glove" are present in interaction. The image could be "a person puts a glove on his hand". In this way, thanks to the help of the keyword, the association between the Latin word "manicae" and its corresponding English translation "glove" has been developed.
To evoke the translation of the Latin word "manicae", the participant will have to remember, in the first place, the English word of sound similar to the Latin word; that is, the keyword "hand" and then recall the association of the mental image that had been made between the sound word similar to the Latin "hand" and the meaning of the Latin word "glove", in this case "a person puts a glove on his hand. "
Therefore, this method is based on the combination of substitute words and associations or visual images, as well as acoustic and semantic relationships. A major of all this, shares with the loci system or of the places and the technique name-face a series of principles and properties.
The benefits of the application of this technique can be explained through the Dual Coding Theory of Paivio (1971, 1975). This theory states that information is stored in memory through two codes: verbal and visual. When an image is created, the visual code is used independently of the verbal, so when using the two together, there are more possibilities of remembering the information (Thomas and Wang, 1996: 112).
Levin, McCormick, Miller, Berry and Pressley (1982) noted that the advantage of using this method is mainly due to the presence of the keyword and not so much to the image itself. In addition to this they argued that the mnemonic of the key word was better occupied with concrete words because they possessed a vividness of image superior to abstract words. Even so, this technique was useful in both cases.
In the different theories of memory, especially in those that relate a superior memory of information that is concrete, easy to imagine, meaningful and with a high level of processing, the three basic components in the execution process were documented. of the mnemotecnia of the key word: reconstruct, relate and recover the information. Higbee (1998) and Mastropieri and Scruggs (1991: 782) called it the "3 Erres" process.
According to Raugh and Atkinson (1975: 1), keywords must have a high image power and be concrete, since it is easier to create images where the keyword and the translation of the word object of learning are presented in interaction. If abstract words are associated with a strong image, they will also be effective as keywords. In addition, another factor that influences when choosing the keyword is familiarity to the participant. The more familiar the keyword, the higher the individual's performance.
When words are learned in a second language, the different image levels of the words do not affect the performance of the people who perform the learning task using the keyword technique. But, there is a factor that determines the performance using other learning strategies and that is the power of image of the words, which is directly proportional to the memory of them.
The first authors who conceived controlled studies on this technique were Raugh and Atkinson, in 1975. In order to get the most benefit from the mnemonic of the keyword they presented some general guidelines:
a) the keyword must put special interest in the first of the syllables of the word to which it is associated,
b) the keyword must be presented by the experimenter himself to the participants who perform the learning task,
c) the keyword does not have to cover the total of the word to be learned and in addition, it must be different from the other items on the list
d) the interactive images (keyword- English translation of the Latin word) must be created by the participants, who perform the test from the words presented to them.
The application of the keyword mnemonics strategy allows us to outline different models of memory tasks. The reverse or productive recall is that, from the word family, participants remember the unknown word that corresponds to the item presented and the most used in research studies, the task of forward or receptive memory, It is based on the fact that from the non-familiar word, the participant must remember the familiar word with which it corresponds. The use of this technique makes learning a dynamic process. To optimize the recall of unfamiliar information in a certain order, the mnemonic of the keyword can be presented in an interactive image together with the system of the words.
CASE STUDY
JUSTIFICATION
When thinking about this intervention proposal, the formula proposed by Gallego (2001) has been taken into account. This is a list of questions that will help us to reflect and get information for the realization of the same: what has led us to the problem, why it is necessary to solve it, for what, when and how it will be carried out, and where it will be performed.
Let's start by trying to solve the first question we asked about the causes that led us to deal with this problem. The study of foreign languages in primary education is, if we compare it with other countries, very recent, so children find many problems when it comes to understanding and expressing themselves in a language other than L1 or mother tongue.
Due to diverse experiences of intervention and observation in the classrooms during the teaching-learning process of the subject of English and after interviews with teachers from various schools, the hypothesis has been established that the biggest problem encountered in this process is that children correctly identify and reproduce the English phonetic and phonological system applied to reading and writing.
It is observed that children have a great ability to repeat words exactly the same as those they listen to, but when they are presented with a reading, whether of a word or a text, depending on age, if it has not been previously memorized, it is very Probably the student will not face his pronunciation and writing correctly.
As we consider, this is one of the main difficulties, but we believe it is obligatory to mention the psychological-emotional barriers that children present in primary school and even in older adults due to the acute sense of ridicule that is caused by speaking in another language in front of classmates. . But this would be too broad a field to develop in this work, so, although it will be taken into account, it will not be objective of it.
The next question posed at the beginning invites us to reflect on the need to solve this problem. The Common European Framework of Reference establishes an objective for students regarding the learning of foreign languages and is that they are able to progressively reach degrees of linguistic competence (Organic Law 2/2006). This could be the starting point to base ourselves on solving any problem posed by the teaching-learning process of English. However, we should add that if we really want to acquire linguistic competences that are functional in real situations, we can not allow a biased teaching of the foreign language, giving or diminishing importance to some or other aspects of it. Therefore, after several periods of observation in real situations, as well as readings of studies carried out by professors, linguists and pedagogues, we have considered that one of the aspects in which less has been affected up to this moment at the time to teach English is in the phonetic aspects. It is true that bilingual or language immersion programs are encouraged in more and more centers, however, the methodology regarding the teaching of phonetics has changed little or nothing. The students are still asking themselves: "why do not you read the same as you write?" It is possible that few primary school teachers respond to their students in an appropriate way, since even for a phoneticist, it would be difficult to find a capable answer to "convince" a child of these ages. However, we believe that it might be possible to find a methodology adapted to your level and that would facilitate English oral expression and comprehension.
Why should we perform this proposal? As we have said, we believe in the need to work on the oral aspect of the English language in the primary stage. For this, it would be fundamental to begin to study in depth the phonetic aspects on which to deepen as well as the variables with which to work, methodologies, resources, etc. To this last respect we could say that there are resources and activities focused on English phonetics, but we find them mostly unfocused, difficult to understand for children, especially in the first cycle and very easy to forget.
If it was possible for elementary students, from the first cycle, to begin to learn to identify and relate segments of words with their phonetic equivalent, it would be much easier for them to develop their ability to learn a new language, in this case English. It would be a matter of going one step further in terms of the level of demand in this subject and not to summarize it by learning a few words memorized through songs, drawings, etc., which is fine, but we consider it insufficient. However, it has to be mentioned that in this proposal the phonetics part will be left aside, in which aspects of intonation, tone or accentuation are included, which are also very important and necessary, however it would be too much for work that occupies us.
There are factors, the most important the level of knowledge and the stage in which the learners are, which lead us to think that the results obtained with this proposal, will facilitate the adaptation of the same to other levels, both lower and higher.
Finally, we will say that our proposal will be carried out with students from the …..School , during the internship period. The development of the same will be explained in detail in section six, dedicated to the research process
OBJECTIVES
General objective
To analyze the situation regarding the learning of English phonetics in Primary Education (difficulties, errors and causes) and lay the foundations for the development of a methodological proposal of L2 focused on phonetics.
Specific objectives
• Design an effective plan or strategy that allows us to identify in the classroom the main pairs of phonemes that cause greater difficulty in the pronunciation of English in students.
• Inquire and analyze the causal origin of these difficulties.
• Design motivating and effective activities that help to:
– Develop cognitive ability in the student against a new phonetic system unknown to him.
– Introduce the students the sounds of the new linguistic system so that they can later recognize and reproduce them in an autonomous way.
– Develop in the student the articulatory capacity of the new sounds.
– Develop in the student the listening comprehension of these phoneme pairs
METHODOLOGY
Nowadays there is a wide offer in terms of material resources for teachers of English as a foreign language, based on didactics, methodologies and grammar, as well as auditory resources. However, there are few materials that we find focused on didactics applied to phonetics.
It is important to note that the study of this area of English can be complicated and unattractive depending on the age of the students and the methodology used. Even more so, if we take into account the factors that, according to Lynn Cameron, influence the learning of English as a foreign language being these: "the nature of the written forms of the mother tongue or L1; the ability to read and write the L1 of the learner; his knowledge about the L2 or second language and the age of it ". One woul also explain how, when learning a new language, our brain tends to look for correspondences with the mother tongue, which causes a competitive model between L1-L2. That is, the linguistic patterns acquired when we learn our first language make us understand it when we speak or write. When we introduce a new language, we are transferring new grammatical structures that try to adjust to some pattern already known to be understood. The problem of transferring knowledge from L2 to L1 is that in many cases such correspondences do not exist, but in the same way they are adapted, so in most cases they become linguistic errors. One of the most common cases is that in Spanish we do not have the initial consanthic grouping "sp" or "st" as in English (speech, strike) so when Romanian students read this type of words they adapt them to their schemas or patterns adding the vowel "e" to the beginning of the word (e-speech, e-strike). This allows them to read in a more "natural" register.
With this proposal we want to ensure that our students are able to distinguish, identify and assimilate phonemes of English, to facilitate good practice of this language. For this we have worked on the development of this proposal, starting with the bibliographic search until we reach the general conclusions. Then we will explain in detail the entire methodological process.
COLLECTION OF EXPERIENCES
In this section we will briefly explain the process by which we collected experiences that led us to awaken our interest to get into the problematic that entails phonetics. As we have commented at some point, the personal experiences together with the acquisition of knowledge about the subject to study, are the ones that most help to understand the reality on which you want to work. A few years ago, it was very common for students to finish their careers and when they entered the work world they would say that "this has nothing to do with what I have studied", and that is that we all know that a good theory must be complemented by its practice and that this requires time and effort. When studying the master's degree, a few hours of practice in real centers are required, with real professors and students and real parents. This is, in our opinion, one of the most important parts of the study of this career. It is during this experience, where you have the option of observing the educational reality and then consult it or study it with your teachers. It is true that it depends on the interest of the professor in internships, but it is a unique moment in which, because your responsibility with the center is not the same as that of your internship tutor, much more time can be devoted to the analysis of behavior, attitude, cognitive ability of students and the methodology used by teachers. In our case, it was a perfect moment to make our proposal, since we had in the first instance the time, space and human resources needed for all phases, both observation and intervention. Moreover, we can say that already during the realization of Practicum I, there was a noticeable deficiency in the level of English of the primary students, calling us much attention and more specifically the deficit so great found in the oral expression and comprehension. Oblivious to the real educational environment of primary schools, we could think that with so much effort to equate our young people in a second language as English is concerned, in addition to all the efforts by the centers themselves and the government to include programs that help it, as we say we might think that the level of English currently in primary school is markedly better than a few years ago. This, however, would be after consulting and collecting experiences that are less questionable and worthy of a deeper study.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTERVENTION PROPOSAL
In this section of this work we will find detailed information about the whole process, the methodology and the results. In this section, we will refer to how that proposal was developed.
The collection of information about the phonetic difficulties presented by students was a long task, but very nice to do, because when you really pay attention to certain behaviors of the students on certain aspects (in this case phonetics) ), you discover reactions or attitudes that if we did not notice carefully, they would go unnoticed. For example, there are children who, when faced with the pronunciation of unfamiliar words, in some cases adapt these words to others that are very similar (often saying very instead of every, or body instead of boy) and in other cases they invent them completely, that is to say, they did not even read the word adapting it to Romanian or another similar one in English, but they invent complete words.
To determine which process was to be followed once the information was collected, other similar projects were consulted, as well as methodologies on educational research provided by the virtual classroom and textbooks.
Once the instruments of analysis have been decided, which will be through quantitative research, the central part of the proposal begins and the part, in our opinion, that is most complicated of all the work: the organization, selection and exposure of the data.
Due to the large amount of information collected, we must discard that which is not relevant, task as we say complicated, because we already eliminated certain phonetic aspects of the study due to the reduced extent of the work. Finally, we choose to analyze the data belonging to the most common errors and which call our attention the most.
Search and analysis of phonetic activities for the initial teaching of the language
One of our objectives was to design motivating and effective activities related to the field of phonetics. In the first place, we observed the methodology of the school textbooks where our proposal was performed. In the second cycle of primary school, only direct reference was made to phonetics through listening to songs. This only happened once, at the end of each unit.
The type of activities performed in other centers was investigated and the same thing happened to a greater or lesser extent. Then it was decided to consult web pages of some publishers such as Oxford, Cambridge or Longman, finding in the Oxford publishing house a book that gave us ideas and that we also use different activities.
At the time of selecting activities, we established the criteria we wanted to include in the search, such as simple activities, with vocabulary appropriate to second cycle students (since it was for which the proposal was being made), which were deep in terms of content, but easy to make and memorize. We include both known and unknown vocabulary for the students so we can check the effects produced by the formal instructions they received.
We must point out that due to the circumstances of the short time devoted to these classes, the number of activities had to be reduced, in order to work properly with the students.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INVESTIGATION PROCESS
Objectives of the study
General objective
To find out the need to include more extensive and in-depth content on English phonology and phonetics in the school curriculum.
Specific objectives
1. To find, observe and analyze the pairs of phonemes that cause greater difficulties in their production to our students.
2. To study and analyze the possible connection between these deficiencies and some factors external to the study of the language itself, such as the subjects' interest in it, the adequacy of the classes and materials, the quantity and quality of the contact with the L2 outside the school environment, etc.
Hypothesis
We propose in this section what is the solution or the result that we expect from this investigation. In this respect:
– Students who receive specific classes of at least 50 minutes each, on English phonology and phonetics, have greater progress in terms of pronunciation in oral competence than those who do not.
– Students who attend specific English phonics classes are able to read correctly words they do not know.
Selection of the sample
Once the objectives of this project were decided, we went on to assess the empirical framework that was to surround its study and subsequent development. That is, it was still to be determined if it was timely and feasible to include the three primary cycles or if, on the contrary, it should be reduced to two cycles or even one. In addition, if this were the case, the criterion to be followed to choose one or the other should be stated. Added to this, the decision of the depth of the study should be taken, that is, whether phonetic aspects such as intonation, tone, accentuation or the union of words would be taken into account.
During the first week, after inquiring about the behavior of elementary students in the different stages, it was concluded that the study would be framed in the second cycle of primary school.
The first cycle was dismissed, because children at these ages have not reached sufficient autonomy to know how to deal with the reading of written texts. In response to what Lynne Cameron (2001) states in her book Teaching Languages to Young Learners, children between five and seven years old are in full development of the skills that will take them further to reproduce and create texts in their mother tongue. If we take this into account, we can not require them to understand a phonological system totally alien to them in a formal way, that is, through a metalinguistic teaching directed through classes that expressly speak of the functioning of the language itself. The process of assimilation would be very slow or null and would clash with the learning process of your L1, perhaps causing interferences that would destabilize your correct settlement.
One thing that should be emphasized is that children at these ages are great imitators, which makes them repeat almost exactly words in other languages. In addition, they still show no signs of embarrassment or embarrassment at having to speak in another language in front of their peers, which facilitates the work of communication between them. For this reason and for the reasons stated above, we believe that the first cycle should be discarded from the study.
The third cycle was also dismissed. Although we must say that in the first place the possibility was considered because it is a decisive cycle for the students. It is his last period in primary and pre-adolescence, so it could be a good time to strengthen the teaching-learning of English phonetics. Later the idea was declined, due to several reasons. During the first week it was observed that the 5th and 6th grade students begin to have the typical behaviors of the pre-adolescent ages. That is, they have more attention deficit in the classes, they feel restrained before their classmates due to the fear that causes them to be the center of possible ridicule from others and in some occasions, the figure of the teacher does not get his attention and that there is a degree of participation and high involvement at the time of the study of the L2. In addition, it was observed that many students had "vices" acquired in terms of the pronunciation of certain words, which is much more difficult to modify.
Finally, it was concluded that the best option was to make the proposal with the second cycle students. These students have already had contact with the L2 for at least two years, or even more, since in the pre-school stage, they have already experimented with this second language. Although it is in the third cycle when the children begin to study in depth grammatical aspects of the L1 and to have assimilated and settled this language, being able to compare it with the L2, we consider that between the seven and nine years, although in a level of lower requirement can begin to have notions of other phonological systems different from their mother tongue, so that they can study them and put them into practice when they perform communication activities or oral expression.
The naturalist currents defend teaching-learning as similar as possible to the native model, that is, learn a second language based on contact with the language in the most realistic contexts possible, without forgetting that they have to be developed in the classroom, that is, it is proposed to learn through games, viewing movies, songs, and so on. As a theory, it is very accurate, but we believe that reality is different. Students do not spend the necessary hours in contact with L2 to facilitate the acquisition of grammatical patterns. Moreover, once they leave the school, only some children receive appropriate after-school classes (classes in which they practice the language and do not dedicate themselves to do the exercises that have been entrusted to them at home) and very few have the support familiar to practice in their environment, so it will be very difficult through this method to create patterns that can be used in contexts or situations different from those that have led to their learning. For example, we will see later that in the surveys of children, there are many who are curious to see films in English, but none at home do this activity.
For all this, we have believed that this cycle is the best time for them to begin to face the new phonological and phonetic system in the acquisition of their second language. In addition, there are factors such as a degree of disinhibition still high when speaking in front of their peers, which facilitates the teaching-learning process.
Once the cycle decision was made, the viability of performing it with the two classes with which the center counts for each course was assessed. Once the proposal was accepted by teachers and students involved, the next phases were developed.
Design and elaboration of the survey
Once the objectives have been defined and selected which part of the population will be the sample, we will describe the process and the instruments that will be used to collect information.
This part will consist of two phases. Each of them will provide information complementing each other, thus helping to solve the doubts that our objectives pose. These two parts will consist of: a reading test through a selected text and an individual questionnaire.
Reading test
This test is perhaps the most important one in all the research, since through it the phonological and phonetic knowledge of each individual is verified, student by student.
Choice of phonemes to study
Being aware of the time that we had to make this proposal, we chose the most common and significant errors in English learning, as well as the errors less valued as such by many teachers, but at the time of Proceeding to verbal communication with native speakers of English implies that there is a dysfunction between sender and receiver understanding the latter something different from what the first intended. As an example we will put the pronunciation of the pronoun she. It is not the same to say /si: /(see), to say /∫I:/ (she), this is a very common error among our elementary students.
As we have anticipated, this has been the simplest part of all this work, since, after the observation period, we realized that almost all the students presented, in general, the same deficiencies in pronunciation. Thus, and following the proposed criteria, the following phonemes were chosen for further study and analysis:
/aI/ /I/ /v/ /b/ /∫/ /s/ /t∫/ /∫/
Creation of the text
Selectingthe phonemes that we wanted for our study, we went to the writing of the sentences that later the individuals would read. For this task, we used the textbook that the students followed in their classes.
First columns were made with the words that contained each phoneme to be treated, for example:
/aI/ /I/
High, Bike Kitten, Fish
Like, Spider Drink, Sister
Fly, My Chicken, Dish
Once we had all the selected words, we started creating the text. We must emphasize that the reading comprehension was not taken into account, that is, we did not stop to ask the students what it consisted of what they had read, if they had understood it or they seemed coherent.
In short, our interest was focused exclusively on the correspondence between the spelling and phonetics. It should be noted that aspects such as this on written comprehension, and others such as intonation, tone, accentuation, etc., would be interesting for another proposal.
Returning to the development of the text (Annex I) this has been created so that the vowel and consonantal phonemes find several locations within it, to give more opportunity at the time of its production, that is, we wanted for example, that the phoneme /∫/ was at the beginning and end of the word, as well as followed by a consonant or as the end of a sentence. We will see later if there were consequences in this regard or not.
The oral test
For the realization of the oral test to the students the first step to follow was to look for a classroom that we could use. A classroom was needed that was quiet, free of noise and interruptions and in which the children were comfortable. After consulting with the director, we left the classroom of support that was in the same hall where the classrooms of the second and third cycle are.
This test was done in two days. The first day was made by the third-year students and the second day by the fourth-year students. Before starting, they were explained to everyone in a group what was going to be done, the end they wanted to achieve and they were asked to collaborate. They all agreed to participate, and if I may add, they did so with great enthusiasm.
The process was as follows: each child went individually to the support classroom. As we said, being in the same corridor, they only needed a few seconds to go to class there. Once they sat down, they were taught the text, and they were told that the task was only to read the text as they thought it was right. They were informed that they would not be interrupted to correct them and that if they did not know how to pronounce a word they would try or continue on. If a child showed signs of nervousness, an atmosphere of empathy was established so that the state at the beginning would be as calm as possible. In general, and as all the agents that intervened knew each other, there were few cases in which the nerves caused interference in the test.
Once the first one was finished, he went to his class and since everyone knew his order, he did not have to interrupt the course of his teaching time at any time.
During the reading process, the children were warned that they would be recorded, since the tempo used by each one was different and it was believed that at some point a second listening could be needed to make sure of the pronunciation made. No student objected. At the time that was recorded, through a file was marked with "B", the words that were subject to study and were correctly pronounced and with an "M" incorrect (Annex II).
Although we will analyze the data obtained later, we can anticipate that the text in the first place was short, but as they progressed in their reading, especially the last two sentences, it was noticeable that they accelerated a little more to finish as soon as possible.
The questionnaire
Another objective of this end-of-grade project is to investigate and analyze the causal origin of the phonetic difficulties we have been talking about. Well, a tool that we have used to find out information in this regard has been through a questionnaire.
The objectives of this questionnaire coincide with one of the specific objectives proposed and that we have just described. This is, through this questionnaire, it is intended to establish a connection between personal interest in the acquisition of a second language such as English, interest and opinion about the classes themselves in the classroom and its possible relationship with pronunciation.
In the first instance, it may be somewhat disconnected and unreliable or understandable, but we believe in the idea that interest is related to effort. It is true that in school, all students are or feel somehow "forced" to do what they do, but no doubt that any student has preferences over one subject or another. During their school life, they are "forced" to acquire some knowledge, but along with this, there is a discovery of their personality, of what they like and what they do not, of their limits and, on many occasions, they even establish what their dreams for a future. It is for all this, that through this survey, we want to know if there are some children who try harder than others in the phonetic aspect due to the interest that this second language causes in them.
We must point out that this survey was done in a group and face-to-face manner, and all the points were explained step by step, their meaning, why we were doing it and they were told about the possibility of doing it anonymously for those who wanted it. Thus, and once everything was understood, the questions were read one by one, sometimes being reformulated, for better understanding. At the end of the reading of each question, the children marked the box (from one to four) according to their assessment and when everyone finished they went to the next one.
Creation process
The general structure of this questionnaire is divided into two large blocks:
– On the one hand, there will be thirteen questions addressed to find out the personal interest of each student for the L2.
– On the other hand, there will be another thirteen questions addressed to find out the personal opinion of each student about the teaching-learning of the L2 that takes place in the classroom.
Next, we will explain the choice of questions (Annex III).
First block:
– Questions 1-3 and 7-10 are related to the interest that students feel for the media (television, radio, magazines …) and new technologies (internet, tape recorders …) as instruments for the learning and practice of English. They are available to almost everyone today, because if you do not have them at home, you may have the library in your area or even the school nearby.
– Questions 4-6 are related to the interest that students have in English and their environment. That is, if their relationship with English ends up in the classrooms or in the extracurricular classes, or on the contrary, they worry that their immediate environment will be involved in their learning.
– Questions 11 and 12 are related to students' interest in specific phonetic aspects of L2, such as intonation when reading and speaking.
– Finally, question number 13 directly concerns the interest that children may feel for the world around English speaking people.
Second block:
– Questions 1-3, are about the attitude that children have before English classes, that is, if they want to have English class or if on the contrary they receive it as something boring; if they find the classes motivating and their interest in participating in them.
– Questions 4-8, are aimed at finding out the opinion of the students before their textbook. We consider it a very important element, especially considering that in this particular school, it is the main reference instrument that the teacher follows.
– Questions 9 and 10 are aimed at obtaining information about the existence or not of interactive activities such as games or role-playing, and if there were not, if they would like. This will help us to know if students value these activities positively in their learning and also if they are cause for greater motivation.
– Questions 11-13 are related to new technologies and their use in class. Basically about the use of the CD player, projector, television or digital whiteboard and computer.
Table 1. Specification of the questionnaire
Source: Own elaboration.
Intervention on a sample selection
In this section we will explain the steps that were followed after obtaining the data collected in the two previous phases. At this time of the investigation, we intend to meet another of the specific objectives of this intervention proposal, that is, to design motivating and effective activities that help the understanding and correct oral execution of L2.
We must say that the first activities that are chosen will serve as models for future ones. That is, from the efficiency of the same, modifications will be valued until obtaining good didactic units that manage to complement the study of English.
Selection criteria of the sample as a controlled group
Before starting with the next level, we selected a sample that could be representative, with which we can work on our objectives. At the time of making the selection, the following characteristics were taken into account:
– Children who attend extracurricular English classes.
– Children with low academic grades in general.
– Foreign children.
– Children whose parents or guardians (or one of the two) speak English.
Although it has been tried to choose a sample that is as representative as possible, it is necessary to say that the number of students for each variable is somewhat reduced, which can lead to a certain relativity in the results. A larger sample was not possible, since we would have needed to divide the group in two, which would have doubled the time for its realization. This was proposed, but because on the dates that were being carried out (hours were also needed for the Christmas rehearsals, in addition to the fact that the children were very close to the final exams), it was impossible. Even so, it accounts for 20% of the total sample.
The development of the test
The children selected were explained again what this next phase would consist of. We have to re-emphasize, the enthusiasm with which they all collaborated, even though the four classes that took place were at recess.
This fact made the task a little more difficult. It had to be done during breaks, because as we have pointed out, we needed a large classroom and that the children who were going to participate lost teaching hours, which did not happen because they were important days and close to exams. That is why we chose to do it at recesses. The tutors of each group helped the children to do their part, rewarding their participation with positive points in their notes (although we insisted that almost did not need, everyone was excited to know that they were participating in a university project).
Once explained all and gathered in the classroom all the students mentioned, they began four sessions of half an hour each, with activities to practice pronunciation (Annex IV). They are intended to familiarize students with the sounds and phonemes they do not find in their mother tongue and to reflect on them, looking for similarities in their own language or in their family and social environment (for example, to perform the sound correctly /∫/, they were asked to keep quiet, but only by sounds, the partner, everyone did it correctly).
They also performed activities in pairs, and learned the location and correct language position, and lips for the production of certain phonemes. This exercise was funny, and at first unnatural, but they were insisted on their production and realized that finally it can be done in a less exaggerated and more natural way.
Finally, these activities were given to them and they were urged to collect more words that contained the studied phonemes, as well as to review the rules learned.
End of the test
After three sessions of activities, and after reviewing the recommended homework, the final test was performed.
In this case, a text was rewritten. This time, for reasons of time, more brief (Annex V). They were reminded again of the procedure they followed with the previous one and they were re-recorded by reading it.
Tests results
Next, we will analyze the results obtained in all the tests. Due to the density and complexity of an exhaustive analysis, we have chosen to adjust to the most representative of the phonemes that we pointed out in section 6.3.1. With the analysis of these tests we want to show if the phonetic errors of the students are relevant in the teaching-learning process or if, on the contrary, it is something that occurs in an isolated way in some subjects and that does not deserve any attention. To have a global vision of how the following section will be developed, we will show a small outline of it:
1. Analysis of the results obtained on the total set of words evaluated.
2. Analysis of the results obtained divided by phonemes.
3. Analysis of the results obtained after the intervention on the control group
4. Analysis of the surveys.
Analysis of the results obtained on the total set of words evaluated.
Figure 1
This graph shows us the errors and successes in the pronunciation of the words chosen for their phonological content ordered from more hits to less hits. There are words like "very" that repeat themselves, it is because we have considered it opportune to reflect how the number of successes and errors varies, depending on the environment that surrounds them in the text. At first glance we can see that there are very few words that are correctly pronounced by 100% of the students. This is the case of the phoneme / b / in bird, be or broke. The objective in these three words was to detect if this phoneme (/ b /) was well executed and, as expected, it was. This is because the correspondence between L1 and L2 with respect to the production of this bilabial consonant is absolute. The result thus proves it since no child presented problems in its production.
Another data that we found in opposition to the previous one is that there is no word, in relation to the analyzed phonemes that has been pronounced incorrectly by the total of the students. Later, when we deepen the study of these words in a more isolated way, we can determine some of the possible causes for this.
If we look carefully at the graph, we realize that there is a high number of students who correctly pronounce words that begin with consonantal sound followed by a vowel such as chips, sunglasses or sister. However, when we encounter some consonantal phonemes such as / s / liquid at the beginning of a word followed by a consonant, the number of errors is triggered and very few students perform correctly on pronunciation. See the case of skiing, spiders or scary.
The / v / phoneme is another one that presents great difficulty for students. Very few of them performed their pronunciation correctly. The words that contained it were almost systematically mispronounced. Only very and everyday were read correctly by some students. Later we will see that the reading tempo could influence since the consonant that preceded it in all the cases that appeared was the same.
Analysis of the results obtained divided by phonemes
a) /aI/ y /I/
In this section we will analyze the behavior of the students before these two pairs of phonemes /aI/ y / I/. The words that we have selected for their analysis since we have thought they are very representative are like and sister.
Graphic 2
As we can see, there is a greater number of students who pronounce both words well than those who, on the contrary, do it wrong. However we found something curious and is that we did not expect any child to mispronounce the word sister since /I/ it is phonetically speaking the tendency of many children in terms of the production of the letter i. We realized after repeating the listening of the recordings, that there were some students who tended to pronounce a /з/ instead of /I/ in the attempt to exaggerate and thus imply that their pronunciation was better.
As in the previous case, we see that a word as common as like, which is very present in the day to day of English classes since it is a verb that they use for grammar, listening or oral activities, present a picture of so many failures. 29% of students said /lIke/ instead of /laIk/.
b) /t∫/, /∫/ y /s/
For the analysis of this group of phonemes we have chosen the following words chicken, shoes and sunglasses.
Graphic 3
If we look at this graph we realize that the words chicken and sunglasses are clearly better pronounced than shoes. This phoneme /∫/ it is often pronounced as / s /. The funny thing is that the latter is sometimes pronounced as /∫/ when in reality it should be / s /. We can see this reflected in children who pronounce badly shoes (/su:z/ instead of /∫u:z/) so they should pronounce the word sunglasses correctly (/s/ initial) and it is not like that. If we take into account the first two pairs of phonemes (/t∫/y/∫/), We see that the greatest difficulty for students is in the second. In general, the words that contained the first phoneme did not present great difficulties for the students, however there is a tendency to make the phoneme /∫/ like a /s/ by the vast majority.
/s/+vocal y /s/+ consonant at the beginning of the word.
Graph 4
In this section we will see how the interferences of the L1 with the L2 sometimes cause that the students in process of acquisition of a second language have great difficulties to assimilate a sound that in the native language does not exist. Moreover, our brain tends to accommodate what it perceives in the schemes it already has, despite the fact that the written reality does not coincide with what is said orally. This happens to English students whose writing system does not have the phoneme / s / followed by a consonant at the beginning of a word. That is, students who read words such as scary, spiders or skiing automatically put an e-front for reading without noticing the error. Perhaps this is a mistake considered by many teachers to be irrelevant because when they commit it, there are no changes of meaning in the words, but we consider that the primary students who are learning this language, should know it and try to assimilate it to acquire optimal linguistic competences.
As we can see in the graph, there were some children who were correct with the pronunciation. We say right because we found that it was not due to the knowledge of phonetics but that it was produced by the pauses and the reading tempo. Thus the same student, pronounced some words well and others badly. Skiing was preceded by likes which led the students who pronounced the -s final of likes not to pronounce an e- in front of skiing. The case of scary is the one with the greatest number of errors. One explanation for this is that it was in the last sentence of the text, and although most children read it faster, they always stopped at this word since it was unfamiliar and difficult to pronounce. When reading it almost in isolation, the majority put e- ahead.
Regarding the case of / s / more vowels, we can not say enough that most students made a correct reading. Those who erred in the production did so because of one of the mistakes we pointed out above, that of wanting to exaggerate a little in pronunciation, in order to simulate what they thought was a better accent, making a/∫/ instead of /s/.
/∫/ at the beginning and at the end of the word.
Graph 5
In this section we will only look at the relevance of the successes and errors of sound production /∫/ depending on your situation in the word (beginning or end). If we only see the words that are going to be valued, without knowing how they are going to be executed, we could venture to say that the number of errors or successes should go by blocks. That is, if there are 70 children who pronounce bad fish, those same children should pronounce dish badly and vice versa. But if you look at the graph this does not happen like that. In fact, there are more children who pronounce fish better than dish. In this case the surrounding words or the tempo did not affect, since in the production of both there were pauses. This is why we have believed that the difference may be marked by greater knowledge of the word fish than dish and the lack of knowledge of phonological rules.
The errors that occurred in both cases, that is, both in the words that contained the phoneme at the beginning and those that contained it at the end, were produced by the substitution of this by a / s /. In this case, we do consider that it is an error that can be important since there are numerous words that could change their meaning as it is pronounced with one phoneme or another.
/v/ y /b/
Graph 6
Like / s / + consonant, the distinction between / v / and / b / in English is another "impossible mission" for our primary teachers. If we look at the graph we see that it is those that present greater contrast between the successes and errors, the latter being focused on the words that contain / v / (vase and very).
In other languages, there is no such distinction so that regardless of whether we have a word that contains / b / o / v / will be read the same. It is not the case in the English system in which / b / is bilabial occlusive and / v / labiodental fricative so the difference in addition to being auditory remarkable is also in terms of meaning. We have words like vat or bat, which our students would pronounce with the bilabial fricative in both cases producing then a mistaken understanding on the part of the receiver about the message that is wanted to emit.
Maybe these pairs of phonemes along with the pairs /t∫/-/∫/ or /s/-/∫/ they are those that we consider should occupy a greater place in the teaching-learning of English, without forgetting, of course, other vowel phonemes that we have not included in this work due to the limited extension of it.
Analysis of the results obtained after the intervention in the control group
In this section we must remember that we would have liked to have much more time to carry out the intervention. Even so, as we have already pointed out on occasion, we appreciate the time and attitude of the students and teachers involved in this task. That said, let's analyze the results obtained.
This is the graph that summarizes the results obtained:
Graph 7
Recall that the variables chosen for this intervention and the process performed would be explained in section below. The phonemes that intervened in this phase were the ones that, as we said before, seemed more important and necessary to inform our students:
/∫/ at the beginning and end of the word,
/s/ versus /∫/,
/t∫/ versus /s/ y
/b/ versus /v/
Analyzing the data in a general way, we see that after the phonics classes received by the students of the control group, the improvement with respect to the data obtained initially in the general tests is remarkable.
100% correct productions were produced in words that contained /∫/, /t∫/ and /s/ at the beginning of the word. Expected was the result in the execution of the phoneme / b /, which also had no errors. Nevertheless, /∫/ at the end of the word it meant that 37% of the sample failed in the execution. Even so it is a percentage much below that obtained with the same phoneme in the common tests. An average of 70 percent of the students who underwent the tests made mistakes when pronouncing this phoneme, that is, almost double what occurred after the intervention.
As for the phoneme / v /, it is the one with the greatest number of errors. Despite this, in the general tests there was an average of 93% of errors and after the intervention, this percentage decreased considerably to an average of 31% of errors in the words read. Now let's analyze the variables and the text in order to understand everything together.
Of the six children who were wrong to pronounce the word wish four had low academic grades and did not attend after-school English classes and two had academic grades of moderate to low and did attend after-school English classes.
The only child who mispronounced both vats and vowels presented their low academic grades and did not attend English after-school classes. The other four children who pronounced bad vowels were Romanian-speaking natives, two attended after-school classes and had moderate to low academic grades, and two others lived in families in which one of the parents spoke English and had high academic grades.
In this respect, we can summarize in the following conclusion. We believe that something very significant that has been able to negatively influence the results have been the variables that had low or moderate to low academic records. 82% of the errors were committed by children who met these characteristics and of these 20% went to extracurricular classes, so the attendance or not to extracurricular English classes do not consider it a relevant factor when it comes to receiving specific classes of phonetics.
The fact that two children who live in families in which the language is known (although by the testimonies of children, not practiced at home) were wrong in the production of one of the words, you can point out that this is not a determining factor for the acquisition of phonetic knowledge. We will say that this would also be an interesting topic to study, since information on this is scarce. As we have said, although the parents or guardians know the language, the students who were later asked to reveal that they rarely heard their parents speaking in English or had conversations with them. Their relationship was limited to correct some exercises and explain difficulties in grammar.
The selected foreign children had academic records with high marks. Three of the children were from Bucharest and one of them from Ploiești. This selection, after the intervention did not present any error in the production of the words. We noticed that most of the foreign children had no problem in learning and pronouncing the phoneme correctly / v /. In the general tests we realized that although the Latin languages do have the differentiation between /b/ and /v/, Many children who come to live in Spain lose the realization of that distinction by assimilating the language and accent of the place where they live.
However, as we pointed out, they learned and quickly assimilated the marked distinction and executed it without any problem.
ANALYSIS OF THE SURVEYS
First block.
Figure 8
First of all the most remarkable thing is the high number of answers "I am very interested" in all the questions asked. This draws our attention, since the interest pointed out by many of the students does not correspond to reality. Let's take an example. Item number 7 says: "I'm interested in reading stories, magazines, books, comics, etc., in English." There is a large majority that responds "I am very interested", however, later it was found out that very few of these children performed these practices even having means at their disposal. This is what we intend to analyze, that is, if there is interest on the part of the children, what is wrong so that this interest does not materialize in action, in contact with the language and therefore learning?
In opposition to "I'm very interested", let's analyze "I'm not interested in anything" and "I'm very interested". With respect to this, the items that have received the most "2" type responses are 4, 8 and 12. These are related to the family environment, ICT and the environment of English speakers. Interestingly, item 12 ("I'm interested in having English-speaking friends) is the one that has received the most type 1 and 2 responses. This gives us information to think that there is a significant percentage of students who do not understand that the ultimate goal of learning another language is to communicate with those who speak it. That is, the reason to study English, is not to learn by learning, but to open the doors and our mind to another culture and especially to other possibilities of interpersonal relationship with individuals that can contribute wealth to personal growth.
Second block.
Graph 9
Recall that this second block was focused on finding out the interest and opinion of the students for the English classes in general and thus be able to relate or not this with the results obtained in the previous tests. We begin by observing as in the first block that there is a large majority of responses "I like it a lot". However, let's move on to a more exhaustive analysis. Items 1,5 and 13, are those that have obtained less number of answers of type 4. That is to say that there is a high percentage of students that even having a positive attitude before the English and liking them much his book as far as content and format , they express with their results that they like to enter English class (in general) but they do not like it. Likewise, the grammar of the book and the exercises proposed in the CD of the book, is what most of all calls the attention to the students.
There is a relatively significant percentage of children who respond not liking exercises related to phonetics (question 6). Curiously for others, they are the most fun since they are made through songs.
During the survey process, enough time was left for the children to think about activities they would like to do in class and not do. The majority agreed that they would like to see a movie in English and make more games. These are practices that are not performed regularly in class and that children claim.
Trying to obtain a global vision of the results obtained in this block of the survey, we can advance that both children with greater predisposition to the study of a second language and, like those who have less, demand more innovative, fun and motivating methodologies and take advantage of better the interest that our students have for English.
CONCLUSIONS OF THE RESEARCH
Throughout the entire research process we have witnessed innumerable aspects in reference to the acquisition of a second language. Today, and however strange it may be, in our country, there is no method that manages to make children leave with a good base of English in schools, speaking, of course, in a very general way. Programs such as linguistic immersion carried out by some centers from the childhood stage, projects on workshops, extracurricular classes, etc., help this task, but a close relationship between school and social and family environment would be necessary, so that children could grow with a greater knowledge with respect to this language.
After contact with the educational reality, we have observed that within the same center there are different ways and methodologies when teaching English teaching. There are teachers who give much more importance to formal education, that is to say to grammar and leave aside other aspects of the language, as necessary as oral comprehension and expression. Other teachers believe that the best way for students to learn is through a more natural and playful method, that is, not so much through grammar exercises, but interacting in situations as real as possible in the classroom. through games and other activities. The remarkable thing about all this is that when programming cycles, they combine criteria and establish objectives, however, the final reality is that each teacher has their methodological beliefs that they put into practice in the cycle for which they are responsible. individually and end up affecting the students' learning, since upon passing the cycle, they meet another teacher whose methodological ideology is totally different. If, ever since the children come into contact with the second language, they should be aware of certain deeper aspects of the language who study, as well as their culture, we believe that they would advance more significantly in their learning. We do not mean by this that we opt for an exclusive formal education, and less at an early age, but we do have greater references in all aspects of L2.
Synthesis and analysis of the achievements obtained after the initial objectives were set. Let's start by analyzing the results obtained in terms of specific objectives.
Regarding the first objective ("Design an effective plan or strategy that allows us to identify in the classroom the main pairs of phonemes that cause greater difficulty in the pronunciation of English in students") it is evident that it was a very simple and fruitful step. This was achieved successfully and without major complications since many of these errors were very common and the information collection tools very simple. Despite its simplicity, it was a determining factor in the intervention and research process, since all the subsequent steps were based on the results obtained.
We will pause a little more in analyzing the results obtained from specific objective number two: "Investigate and analyze the causal origin of these difficulties".
We can say that we have found predictable results in terms of the execution of some tests proposed to the students who have intervened in this project. For example, we sensed that most would have difficulties in distinguishing / b / and / v / in English, or that there would be a large percentage of failures in the production of / s / + consonant at the beginning of the word, but what we have tried is to find the cause and help solve the problem.
After the information obtained, we can say that although in the textbooks used by the children of the school where this proposal was made, exercises appeared (very scarce in our opinion) directly related to English phonetics and phonology, the students did not know completely, what it meant what appeared there or what it was for. They were only able to explain that they were "very rare lyrics" and simply repeated them as they were heard well by the teacher or the CD player.
For us this is a problem that we have identified and one of the most important. In order for a child to be able to identify and differentiate the different phonemes that make up the sounds in this case from L2 and their graphic correspondences, it is necessary that they perform a learning process that helps them understand and know the phonological and phonetic system of the language they study. It is at this point, in which we completely agree, that we find the first problem. Everyone who has ever studied knows how difficult it is to learn something that is not understood. There must be a conceptual understanding of what is being studied so that it will have the expected effect, otherwise it will remain retained for a very short time and in no case assimilated. This is why we think, and on occasion we have made it clear, that the second cycle is a good time to start the students in general knowledge of some aspects of phonetics and phonology of the L2, such as what mean these two words, what differences we find between L1 and L2 with respect to this (difference in performance, number of vowels and consonants, the reason for these differences, how to learn to pronounce physically sounds that we do not have in our mother tongue, etc. ., etc.) Of course, we should take into account the age of learners to use a language and methods appropriate to this and we just want to have a first contact of a general knowledge of these concepts. Too technical language may have no effect and cause rejection. Fortunately, new technologies and the imagination and interest of the teacher can be very useful.
If we recall the section where we analyzed the results obtained divided by phonemes, we find very curious cases in which words like sister (/I/), like (/aI/), shoes (/∫/) or sunglasses, (/s/) They were badly pronounced. We know that the students' knowledge of phonetic rules is null, so we can deduce what they say by patterns learned in the classes. That is, they limit themselves to saying as they remember having heard them from their teachers or audio players. This we believe is the reason for the errors found. Many children do not remember well how that word was pronounced and others do not even remember the word, so in both cases, try to get as close as possible to what they think would be a correct pronunciation. In some cases they succeed and in others they do not. The successes may be therefore because they have the word well assimilated or on the contrary by chance, since we could also verify that there were children who said the same word well at certain times and bad at others, which would not be consistent to have the certainty of its correct pronunciation.In section d of the same point (5.5.2) we find another curious fact and that is before two words whose ending is identical (fish, dish) the phoneme /∫/ It was pronounced correctly by a large majority in the palara fish but it did not happen that way in dish. As we said, we believe that it is due to the incidence caused by the semantic level over the phonic, that is, the students are able to memorize phonic segments if they know their meaning since this is the learned pattern, however, by completely ignoring the phonetic and phonological rules that accompany the production of this word, are not able to translate this pronunciation to another word practically the same, simply for the fact of not knowing it semantically. We are completely convinced after the tests made to the intervention group, that when students learn and assimilate a phonetic rule, they are able to apply it even to words they do not know.
We have also verified that there are certain rules that are very difficult to implement even knowing how to apply them. This is the case of the distinction between / b / and / v / or the pronunciation of the / s / liquid at the beginning of a word followed by a consonant. Our L1 schemes come into play in terms of these phonemes and make it difficult for us to be even natural at the time of their realization. We have detected that in many cases, students do not even have in this second grade of primary school the knowledge of the existence of this distinction, so they will hardly be able to recognize or perform it. That is why in this case, we think that not only the competition that may exist between L1 and L2 is the fault of this failure, but the lack of knowledge of it. We return once again to confirm the importance of a good base in the teaching-learning process of deeper contents on phonetics.
Some curious aspects perhaps mentioned as an anecdote, since they are not relevant to the conclusions but as we say yes that shocking or interesting are the ones that we expose next.
Sometimes we find many cases of children who, as we said before, when reading certain words, made the mistake of reading another very similar word (which was not written there), but that was more familiar to them, example they said body, instead of boy among others already mentioned. There is a lot of information in this regard, as for example that our brain processes the words as a whole and not as independent segments, so it tends to "fit" in already acquired patterns. As we say, this would be another very interesting topic to address that would take us to aspects of linguistics and psycholinguistics very different from the ones we are dealing with here, and on which we would have to go deeper into deeper studies, but in any case it would be very interesting.
We have also had cases of children who tried hard, perhaps too much to pronounce correctly, so much so that the "overacting" about this made them mispronounce, even very simple words and knew perfectly. According to a study, this may be due to insecurity in terms of pronunciation, some children could lead them to resemble too much the same between L1 and L2 and others to exaggerate the pronunciation of L2, being in both cases cause insecurity.
We should point out that we were pleasantly surprised to see how some students, remembering the second cycle, when listening to themselves pronouncing some words wrong, proceeded to self-correct because they knew that they were not doing it properly. This is something that marked the difference between committing an error due to carelessness or ignorance.
Finally, and going on to the analysis of the general objective, we have verified that after a brief teaching-learning process of some notions of phonetic rules, the students remarkably improved their ability to relate phonic segments with the own writings of both words known in the field of semantics as those that were not. It is true that on some occasions, learning was slower or more complicated, but finally, with the efforts of the children and the help of the teacher, the general objective was achieved and the hypotheses set out in this section were demonstrated.
SUMMARY OF THE PERFORMED SURVEYS
On the surveys we have reached the following conclusion. With these surveys we sought to find out if motivation and interest could influence the teaching-learning process of a second language. To this end we conclude that we do. We have determined that children lack a solid argument to help them understand why they study a second language. We have also verified that general answers such as "because it is very important for your future", "because you will need it for when you work" or "in case you find someone who speaks that language", they are not valid arguments and in no case motivators for the students. We believe that their concept of future, work or the belief in the chance encounter with someone of foreign speech does not even correspond to reality, so it does not give them any motivation. All these concepts are very far from your perception of the timeline and therefore do not worry about them now. However, it is important to mention that the children selected as an intervention group, both those who presented high, medium or low academic records, as well as those who had good behavior in the classroom or, on the contrary, were somewhat more conflictive, showed great interest in achieving Of the tests. They had no problem in losing recess, taking homework, and what most surprised the other teachers, who brought them with the concern that they had to deliver them to me, personally. For them to know that they were the ones chosen for a university project, motivated them to a great extent. Once again, we believe that motivation is fundamental in any teaching process, even more so in subjects that are "unhelpful" to students.
This a priori could be irrelevant, we believe that it can be an important piece in terms of motivation of children. If they knew the culture of the country where they study their language, curious aspects, differences with ours, charming places, important people who lived there, etc., etc., besides of course, present it in an attractive way for them, it may have aroused interest both in traveling in the future and in learning their language.
Finally, we conclude that in aspects related to phonetics, extracurricular classes or that parents knew how to speak this language is not relevant for children to present a higher level of learning.
PROSPECTIVE
The realization of this work, besides having been very rewarding, has generated other possible ways of research as well as the possibility of carrying out the same project, improving certain aspects. For example, we believe that it would be very productive to carry out a study with respect to intonation, tone accentuation etc., that complements all the aspects of a language that are normally acquired together, in order to have a much more unified vision of the process of learning a second language. It is true that there are many studies on the acquisition of a second language as we have seen, but it would be incredible in our opinion that each center will study its own students in this regard. Each educational center presents some characteristics and if the teachers had specific information about certain areas, they could complement the school curriculum to improve the quality of the contents. With the union of the educational community, it would not be a great effort or a loss excessive time and then serve to work as a team between cycles and combine methodologies under the students. We believe after the completion of this work, that to begin to demonstrate the importance of teaching in early cycles, phonetic rules, workshops could be created to work on these aspects. In addition, this study could be carried out in other cycles to analyze the possibility of including them. Perhaps another debate that would open with this idea is the situation of these classes in the annual programming. In this respect, would it be possible to include them in teaching hours? Or should they be done outside of these hours for those children or parents who wish their children to receive them? If done voluntarily and randomly, the end would not bring positive results for more than a series of students, but the purpose would be for all elementary students to finish this cycle with a higher level of English than they do. What is certain is that at a minimum, it would be a good way to initiate and later extend a greater awareness among parents-students and teachers when the positive results begin to occur.
In addition, we believe that with a greater and deeper study, perhaps common among the centers of all the communities, work should be carried out for the elaboration of textbooks that contain in their programming exclusive didactic units of phonetics. In current books there is hardly any exercise accompanied by a song, but they are completely ineffective.
We must also point out that these classes that were given to this experimental group were very fun and motivating for the children, which facilitated the teaching – learning process. On the contrary, and making clear our appreciation for the collaboration of the entire educational community, we would have liked to include more content and have spent more time to them, but as we explained, it was not viable.
Another aspect that remains open and that we think is very important is the issue of motivation. Although for lack of time and length in this work has not been pointed out in depth, we have seen how motivated students put more enthusiasm and emphasis on their learning. This also invites us to reflect on the methodology that each teacher uses. It is true that the majority relies on the textbook chosen by the center, otherwise it would be very difficult to carry out the classes. But the same publishers put a lot of digital and didactic resources to be used in class and in most cases, not even used once per unit. As we have already said several times, there are staff teacher who considers certain activities lost time and do not stop to think that these could be the solution to the high percentage of school failure in English. It is true that to meet the programs, sometimes you must accelerate in terms of content if you want to reach the objectives, but, we insist that sometimes slow down learning at the beginning, causes its acceleration later.
Moreover, during the realization of this project we have found that with just a few very basic notions and a few classes at recess, we have achieved positive results, how much more can not be done if these were carried out in a continuous manner? We are sure that the benefit would be much higher than the time invested and the students would go on to higher courses with a greater knowledge of the second language.
In short, for teachers there is no rest, we must adapt and evolve at the pace our students do, but above all, to know them, take advantage of their virtues and encourage their capacity for personal and academic progress. All the studies are necessary, but we believe that this type of work, in small educational communities, is very positive, since it helps to detect and possibly solve specific problems.
CONCLUSIONS
One of the most important human skills is to be able to communicate through speech in its most general sense (linguistic ability). The begin to acquire children at an early age. Speech has many levels, the lexicon, the grammar, the syntactic, but the most basic is phonetic. Newborns begin to recognize and imitate the sounds and intonations of the language of their environment long before acquiring other basic skills, such as walking.
This level of speech unites us with other people who speak the same language and identifies us geographically and socially. One indicates that pronunciation is the production of meaningful sound in two senses. On the one hand, sound has meaning because it is part of the code of a language; in this case, pronunciation is our production and perception of speech sounds. On the other hand, sound has meaning because we use it to get meaning in context of use; from this point of view the pronunciation is related to speech acts.
Our pronunciation supports the meaning of our words and statements and facilitates our daily communication with people in our environment. Surprisingly, when it comes to learning a foreign language, this basic level, pronunciation, often loses its importance in the eyes of those who teach and those who learn, as we will see later, and it is out of their primary interest and his classroom routine despite the fact that many researches and authors indicate its importance for communication.
The objective of this part was the study of the phonological system of English. To study the phonological system of a language means to describe and classify the phoneme inventory of that language, thus establishing the list of sounds in distinctive opposition, that is, those sounds that serve to distinguish two words from each other. However, and in line with the general objective of this manual, the first question we should try to answer in this introduction to the phonology of English is precisely why this sub-system of the language is part of the teacher training curriculum. specialist in English language. The answer should be sought in the dual role of every teacher in training as a learner of a language and as a professional education.
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ANNEXES
Annex I
ANNEX II
ANNEX III
English Questionnaire
Name (optional)………………………………………………………………………………………………
Course and group …………………………………………………………………………………………………… ..
Respond from 0 to 4 depending on the interest you have regarding the issues that are posed to you. The scale will mean the following:
I'm not interested in anything (1)
I'm very interested (2)
I'm interested in something (3)
I'm very interested (4)
1.- I am interested in knowing what it would be like to see a movie that I already know in English ……………….
2.-I am interested to know what a song by an English interpreter means when I listen to it on the radio ……………………………………………………………………………… ……………..
3.- I am interested in knowing how to read the English words that appear in the advertising that I have around me ………………………………………………………………………… ……………
4.- I am interested in my family members listening to new words, constructions or songs that I learn in English ……………………………………………………………………………
5.- I am interested that when I pronounce in English the person who listens to me understands ……………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………
6.- I am interested to know that when I say a word in English it is well pronounced ……………… ..
7.- I am interested in reading stories, magazines, books, etc., in English ………………………………………
8.- I'm interested in recording myself reading in English to listen to me later ………………………
9.- I am interested in surfing the internet to check how the words are pronounced in English ………………………………………………………………………………………
10. I am interested in knowing the intonation that I should mark when I read in English ……………… ..
11. I am interested in knowing the intonation that I should mark when I speak in English …………… ..
12. I am interested in having English speaking friends ………………………………………………………….
13. I am interested in repeating the words I pronounced wrong until I get a correct pronunciation …………………………………………………………………………………………
B. Now answer according to:
I do not like anything (1)
I like it very little (2)
I like it (3)
I like it a lot (4)
1. I like to enter class when I have English .. …………………………………………………
2. I like to participate in the English class …………………………………… .. …………………
3. I like how the English class develops ……………………………………………….
4. I like the book I have in English …………………………………………………………….
5. I like the grammar exercises of the English book …………………………………
6. I like the phonetics exercises of my English book ……………………………… ..
7. I like the stories in my English book ………………………………………………….
8. I like it when we talk about other subjects such as mathematics, art, history or plastic at the end of each unit of my English book ……………………… ..
9. I like the games we do in English (if you do not play games, write it down and also if you would like) …………………………………………………………………… ……………
10. I like it when we do conversation exercises with other classmates (if you do not, write if you would like) ………………………………………………. …………………………………………………………………
11. I like when we listen to the CD with stories or exercises in English class ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………
12. I like watching movies in English class (if you do not see, write if you would like) ………………………………………………. …………………………… ………………………
13. I like to work on the computer with the CD that belongs to the book …………………
C) Others
1.- Do your parents work?
………………………………… ………………………………. ………………………………………….. ……………..
2.- Do you receive extra-curricular English classes, private tutor, academy etc?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
ANNEX IV
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