Phonemic Analysis and Teaching - Case Study Example

Phonemic analysis and teaching Table of Contents Phonemic analysis and teaching 1 Table of Contents 1 Phonemes 2 Phonemes in English language 3 Consonant sounds and clusters 5 Vowel sounds 7 Linking 8 Consonant sounds in Arabic 9 There are 28 consonant phonemes in Arabic and these are differentiated by velarized or pharyngealized consonants. In other words there are either ones that are non-emphatic or those that are emphatic. 'Alif' till pone point of time denoted a glottal stop. However, the use of alif was widespread till 8th century after which it sort of waned in widespread use. Some consonant phonemes have, over a period, transformed into different dialects which are modern in nature. 9 Consonant clusters in Arabic 9 Consonant clusters are forbidden by many languages and Standard Arabic is one of them. This is particularly true of initial consonant clusters and also - in context of some other positions - more than two consecutive consonants. This is not, however, true about Moroccan Arabic, which allows several consonants in strings. 9 Vowel sounds in Arabic 9 As mentioned elsewhere in this paper, in Arabic phonetics there are 6 vowels in all; three long and three short. Besides this there are two diphthongs, which are formed as a result of combinations of /j/ and /w/ (semivowels) and /a/ short vowel. 9 Linking in Arabic 9 Phonemes variations in different languages 10 Phonemes in Arabic language 10 Points of difficulty for learners of English 11 Analysis of DVD 13 Positive points 13 What could be changed? 14 Creation and analysis 14 Activity 1: 14 Jumping Phonemes 14 Activity 2: 15 Tapping Phonemes 15 Activity 3: 15 Elkonin Phonemes 15 References 15 Phonemes A language's phonology has a basic unit which is called a phoneme. When a number of phonemes are combined together, they form morphemes or words, which are meaningful units. The typical definition of a phoneme is "the smallest contrastive linguistic unit which may bring about a change of meaning". This can be further described by how and why two different words in English language convey separate meanings. For example, ‘cut’ and ‘but’ or ‘kiss’ and ‘kill’. In both these examples, what separates one meaning from another is the phoneme. In kiss and kill, for example, two phonemes that are at work are /I/ and /s/. In other words, in these two words single phonemes set them apart. Or it can be said that these two words are set apart by a minimal pair phoneme. Each language is to be analysed in phonemic terms. Generally speaking, phonemes are abstraction sets of phones or speech sounds. Two more examples can be skill and kit, in both these words phoneme is /k/ but they are not identical. Since there is only one phoneme at work, they work as distributional variants. Such phonemes are called allophones and what shape or sound do they provide a particular word depends on the environment in which they work. Phonemes are responsible for both phonetic and underlying realisation of different words and their form. Phonemes in English language International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) determine which types of symbols are used to represent phonemes in the notational form. Slashes are used to represent phonemes and if sounds have to be represented, then brackets are used. For example if /pʊʃ/is to be represented as separate phonemes, it can be done as /p/, /ʊ/, /ʃ/. Certain basic tenets are followed to determine phonemic status of two sounds. Firstly it has to be seen are the words in the complimentary distribution or not. If yes, then are the sounds phonetically similar and if no, does substituting one sound for another change meaning. In case of yes, it is to be seen are they allophones of the same phoneme. In case of no, it has to be seen whether they belong to two separate phonemes. In case of substitution case, it has to be seen do they belong to two separate phonemes or they are in variation. In all phonemes, whether they stand alone as an individual sound or group of several sounds, perform the same function in a specific dialect or language. One suitable example can be that of /k/ phoneme as it appears in words like kill, skill, school, kit and cat. When one speaks these words, there is an interplay of two words, "c/k". The /k/ sound is aspirated in the word kit and it is unaspirated in skill and school. That means in these words there are different speech sounds at work. However, the phoneme stands the same and irrespective of how the same is used, the word meaning stays unchanged. In many other words when sounds are contrasted the word meaning is changed. This is true for certain languages more than any other. Examples could be two words: katur and gatur. In Icelandic culture, the first means cheerful and the second means riddles. It is noteworthy that the phonemes /k/ stays the same in both the words. But in Icelandic language /k/ is considered to be two separate phonemes. This can be equated with the minimal pairs as described above. The conflicting minimal pairs tend to make English language different when spoken by people of two different nations. For example, Koreans would always confuse ’t’ and 'd' and if they have to speak something like 'pata', they would invariably say 'pada'. Since different languages have different phonemes, learners face difficulties when they attempt non-native language. Native learners carry the signature of their mother tongue when they learn a language (Swan & Smith, 2001). Same is true for someone Arabic trying to learn English language. This is primarily because of the phonemic stress, which is not the same for two different languages. Such things are determined by stress and tone, which are discrete elements of segmental speech. There is an interesting background to use of phonemes, a word that comes from Greek and meaning "a sound uttered". First used in 1873 by A. Dufriche-Desgenettes only as a speech sound. Two years later, Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay and Mikołaj Kruszewski started working on the same and until 1895; they developed its concepts further. They termed a word called "fonema" and even called the phenomenon as "psychophonetics". From 1926 to 1935, Prague School's Nikolai Trubetzkoi elaborated phonemes further, while around the same time structuralists like Leonard Bloomfield, Edward Sapir, and Ferdinand de Saussure threw more light on the same. However, around the same time psycholingusitic and cognitive basis of phonemes was rejected by some contemporary structuralists. Most of the credit now goes to Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky for having made it a part of generative linguistics and modern phonology's development. Bigger or smaller supplementations have occurred on several concepts from time to time since then. Consonant sounds and clusters In most English accents there are twenty four consonant sounds. This can be further explained through the following examples: /p/: Example cup and pair /b/: Example crab and bad /t/: Example hit and tall /d/: Example head and dark /k/: Example lack and cab /g/: Example tag and good /f/: Example wife and fine /v/: Example above and very /θ/: Example both and thing /ð/: Example father and this /s/: Example house and saw /z/: Example goes and zap /ʃ/: Example push and shape //: Example beige and pleasure /h/: Example ahead and her /x/: Example loch /tʃ/: Example match and cherry //: Example raj and judge /m/: Example team and man /n/: Example tan and nail /ŋ/: Example singer and ring /l/: Example tall and let /r/: Example scary and right /w/: Example away and wet /j/: Example soya and you When two or more consonants are placed together in a word, it is called consonant cluster or a consonant blend. For example in the word "brilliant" consonant clusters are "br", "ll" and "nt". In order to establish command over English language, it is important to understand the significance of consonant clusters. Consonant clusters can occur anywhere in a word: beginning, middle or at the end. They are referred to as initial, medial or final consonant clusters. Most of the consonant clusters are not more than three letters long; they are at the minimum two in number. There are rare occasions when one encounters more than three letters in a cluster, like 'rsts' in the word "firsts". There is one exception, though, and that is found in the word "rhythm". This word is totally made up of consonant cluster. Normally adverbs have long consonant clusters. An example could be the word "exactly". Some examples of initial consonant clusters are champion, cheer and change (their corresponding digraph being ch and they sound like /tf/); champignon, chandelier (sound like /f/, diagraph ch); chronic, chrome, cholera (sound like /k/, diagraph ch); gnome, gnaw, gnat (sound like /n/, diagraph gn); and knitting, knife, know (sound like /n/, diagraph kn). Examples of final consonant clusters can be these: Those with diagraph ch and sounding like /tf/ are roach, coach, and beach. With diagraph as the same but only /k/ sound is stomach. Diagraph ck and sounding like /k/ luck, flock, pick, and track, black. Diagraph gh and sound like /f/ tough, enough, rough, trough, cough. Diagraph mb and /m/ sound plumb, aplomb, tomb, and comb. Diagraph ng, sound /n/ along, eating, going, meeting. Diagraph sh, sound /f/ finish, Spanish, fish, trash. Diagraph th, sound /o/ tooth, bath, youth, path. In phonemes true consonant clusters hold a special importance. It is because they are spelled the same way they are pronounced. An example could be bread, in which true consonant cluster is 'br'. All the sounds are pronounced in true consonant clusters. Some very good examples of true consonant clusters could be these blood, black, blend, blown, close, clear, clever, clothes, bring, bright, brilliant, brush, crime, cry, crow, crumb, crop, fly, flannel, flame, fleece, flow, drop, drink, drip, drive, dreary, grape, great, grime, grip, grow, provide, prove, princess, pray, quite, quick, queen, quiet, script, scream, scram, small, smart, screw, smooth, smelly, stop, stay, stink, sty, stolen, strange, street, stroppy, strict, trench, tropical, train, triumph. All these are initial true consonant clusters. Examples for those of final true consonant clusters include meany, tiny, candy, windy, sandy, handy, end, mend, stand, munch, ground, lunch, stench, bench, exempt, dreamt, contempt, bump, hump, damp, clamp, lonely, only, rarely, truly. Similarly consonant clusters appearing in compound words can be like this: cliffhanger, switchboard, grandfather and groundbreaking. Vowel sounds Vowels are meant to produce sounds in a language. The pronunciation takes place through an open vocal tract and in this process there is no air build up above the glottis. This thing separates a vowel from a consonant because in the latter the pressure build up takes place in the tract. Almost in all languages, nucleus is formed by vowels that go up to a peak when spoken. Vowels derive their origin from “vocalis”, a Latin word meaning “speaking”. Even as known primarily as a written word, vowels have, in reality, the purpose of rendering “voice” to a particular language. Yates and Zielinksi (2009) have remarked that of several sounds which one is capable of making, some do and some do not make meaning in English. Linking In spoken English linking is very important. When a sentence is formed, different words are linked with each other. When these sentences are spoken, words which would sound differently when spoken individually, sound differently when linked together. Linking has two primary purposes. One, it makes understanding a language easier either as a speaker or a listener. Two types of linking are used: vowel linking and consonant linking. In consonant linking words are linked when they end in consonant sound and begin with a vowel sound. In vowel linking this is just the opposite. Consonant sounds in Arabic There are 28 consonant phonemes in Arabic and these are differentiated by velarized or pharyngealized consonants. In other words there are either ones that are non-emphatic or those that are emphatic. 'Alif' till pone point of time denoted a glottal stop. However, the use of alif was widespread till 8th century after which it sort of waned in widespread use. Some consonant phonemes have, over a period, transformed into different dialects which are modern in nature. Consonant clusters in Arabic Consonant clusters are forbidden by many languages and Standard Arabic is one of them. This is particularly true of initial consonant clusters and also - in context of some other positions - more than two consecutive consonants. This is not, however, true about Moroccan Arabic, which allows several consonants in strings. Vowel sounds in Arabic As mentioned elsewhere in this paper, in Arabic phonetics there are 6 vowels in all; three long and three short. Besides this there are two diphthongs, which are formed as a result of combinations of /j/ and /w/ (semivowels) and /a/ short vowel. Linking in Arabic Arabic alphabets have two collating sequences, known as orders. One is called ’abjadī order and another ’alifbā’ī or hijā’ī order. Letters are either having median or initial version; and depending on their presence or absence the linking follows. For example, if letters lack median or initial version, they are least likely to be linked to the following letter, even in absence of a word. The sounds result on a number of factors, which include whether there is an presence of a modifier letter or a transliterated letter. Phonemes variations in different languages Phonemes are all about sound and it has been seen that human organs are capable of producing many of them. But not as many are found in different languages. Each language has only a fractional subset of the sounds that determine phonology. There are as few as eleven phonemes in certain languages and as high as one hundred and one in others. Vowels play a great role in their determination. Astonishingly, however, certain languages have only as minimal as two distinct vowels. Some even have fourteen. Anywhere from thirteen to twenty one vowel phonemes are used in English language, which includes diphthongs, and on an average total number of consonants used are around twenty two to twenty six. /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ are the most common vowels used and /m/, /n/. /p/, /t/, /k/ most common consonants. Comparably Arabic language does not have /p/ and in the same manner some other languages lack one or more of them. No phonemic stress or tone is found in French language while there are many languages which have as high as nine to fourteen tones. Phonemes in Arabic language Classical Arabic language is one of the oldest spoken languages in the world and at pressent more than 200 million people use it to communicate with each other. That makes it one of the most widely used languages of the world, putting it at number five position. Arabic phonemes have been studied widely and notable researches include that of Ismail and Ahmad (2004), Al-Sayegh and Abed El-Kader (2004), Alotaibi et al (2008), Awais and Habib-ur-Rehman (2003) and Schwarz et al (2006). Just as every other language, Arabic too is partitioned between vowels and consonants. This language consists of twenty eight letters and the distinct feature of this language is that it is written from left to right; most of other languages are written right to left. There are sun letters and moon letters, the former are preceded by a prefix. This language has three short and three long vowels. They former are fatha (a), short kasrah (i), and short dammah (u). As is the case with English language that special letters are assigned to vowels, Arabic does not have any. However for consonants diacritical notations and special marks are used. Long vowels are characterised by durational allophones of the short vowels mentioned above. That means in order to produce a long vowel, a long fatha, kasrah and dammah is used. Three levels of Arabic are in practice at the moment. These are: Colloquial Arabic: this is —used in community and at home and is marked by dialectal variability, which is significant, among colloquial forms. Educated Spoken Arabic: this is used in public arenas and in schools. Modern Standard Arabic: this is used in literature and religious ceremonies. It is important to assess dialectal variations when an Arabic speaker needs to be assessed. This is because in Arabic dialectal variations are very much evident. /t/, /d/, /ð/, and /s/ are emphatic consonants in Arabic. /r/ is trilled in postvocalic environments, but the same in tapped in prevocalic environments. There are some phonemes which Arabic has but English does not have. These are /χ/, /ʁ/, /ħ/, /ʕ/, /ʔ/, /t/, /d/, /ð/, /s/. Similarly there are phonemes in English which Arabic lacks and these are /p/, /v/, /ɹ/, /ʒ/, /g/, and /ŋ/ (Amayreh, 2003). Points of difficulty for learners of English Non-English speaking students have numerous learning difficulties in as far as English language is concerned. More often than not these students are labeled as anything from "dull" to "slow learners", "educationally subnormal" and "low achievers" etc. In Arabic countries the term learning difficulty is applied to those students who are not showing considerable progress towards the language. There are a number of reasons which have been cited to explain their difficulty. Even in Arab nations this difficulty is encountered with varying severity across different regions or nations. Prevalence rate is anywhere from 12 percent to 30 percent or higher depending on how far English language has been carried in the school education. Arabic students pose a higher rate because English is a foreign language to the students here (Silver & Hagin, 2002; Gupta, 1999; Westwood, 2000). Students from disadvantaged and lower socio-economic backgrounds present with greater learning difficulties than those belonging to higher socio-economic group. A number of possible causes have been outlined for these learning difficulties. These are: inappropriate and inadequate teaching, unsuitable and irrelevant curriculum, negative classroom environment towards English stemming from socio-cultural reasons, poor teacher-student relationship, school attendance which is poor, health issues of students, depleted confidence, behavioural or emotional problems, intelligence which is below average, and sensory impairment. In the Arabic context the root of this difficulty lies at the school level, where English is not taught properly. Classrooms are bilingual in nature and being Arab means adhering to Arabic language strictly. This creates a problem at the conceptual level since students tend to decipher English language through the prism of their native language which is Arabic. The problem is more in the rural areas than the urban areas where English language has penetrated greatly particularly because English medium schools have proliferated to a large extent. The bilingual methods of teaching tend to make English learning slower. This also retards real learning process which is required to learn English. English learning should be based exclusively on the basics of this language. The problem with Arab schools is that teachers explain in Arabic what students do not understand in English. This makes the language palatable to them but robs it of its essence in terms of corrective teaching. This has been dubbed as the wrong teaching methodology and not conducive to learning English the way it should be. This further results in lower self confidence which reaches a threshold when students believe they cannot achieve mastery or fluency in the language which is not their own. The impetus to start afresh or move ahead is retarded. In Arabic schools most of the students are first generation English learners as a result of which and in absence of a proper support system find it difficult to move towards better learning. This makes them weak on both learning and writing the language. Another problem that surfaces is that teachers expect students to rote the language which is wrong because unless it is learned, it cannot be mastered. Analysis of DVD The DVD is an impeccable presentation by Susan Boyer who is an exponent in English language teaching. In the lecture she presents nuances of spoken English and pronunciation in a tailored manner. The best part of the lecture is that she relates to what she speaks personally to the practical needs of both teachers and students. Positive points The positive points of the lesson are that the speaker explains the context by nearly creating situations that befit the environment in which a word is spoken. The lesson does not follow a rigid plan which could have made the whole work monotonous but follows a path that is strewn with really excellent examples, which are easy to understand and assimilate. The best part is that the lesson conveys a feel to the listener which should actually be the one that must be prevalent in classroom teaching. As an undercurrent it gives an impression on how English language in general and phonemes in particular must be taught in a classroom setting. This lessen has to be understood in its entirety and approach in order to get across the point to one’s thoughts. The lecture has made the best possible attempt at offering general introduction to phonemes with strong reference to linguistics and phonetics, giving a befitting overview of methods, theories, research and representations. It so candidly gives the learner an opportunity on how to deal with spoken and conversational language. It is crammed up with analysis and other details that are copious and concrete and give a step-by-step account of how several structures of consonants and vowels lead to what one is able to speak and express through a language. What could be changed? The lesson is very informative and not difficult to understand. But it could have been longer to assimilate more. Creation and analysis The activities below are on phonemes and meant for learners of English. The activities are designed such that they make learning easier even for the learners who hail from backgrounds as that of Arabic. Activity 1: Jumping Phonemes Mark the sidewalk or floor with 10 lines in a series. Make children stand along the first line in a row. The teacher can call a word "top" and then he can say "go". With each number of phonemes in the word children can jump forward. A child will jump three rows if he is correct and then occupies his place. In case he is not correct, he will move back and reach line's beginning. When all the children pass the 12th line, the game ends. This game is intended to make children realise phonemes practically. Children who have difficulty learning phonemes have to practice this activity repeatedly till they get it right. Activity 2: Tapping Phonemes Children are asked to sit at their desks. Teacher speaks some word which has some number of phonemes. The children who tap the right number of phonemes at their desks have got it right. Those who do not will need to be explained to. This can also be done by asking children to pronounce the number of phonemes that are in each word spoken. At the end the teacher reveals the number of total phonemes in the word in the proper manner in which they must be spoken vocally. Children need to repeat what teacher says. Activity 3: Elkonin Phonemes Elkonin boxes are another interesting activity that can be used to explain phonemes and their segmentation. In this a word picture is pasted at the top of the box. Below this there is a matrix that contains a box for each phoneme, but not its letter in the word. The word is slowly articulated by the teacher until the children recognise it. If they fail to do the same, the teacher can repeat the process. Over a period of time when phonemes have been exhausted, both picture and matrix can be eliminated. References Amayreh, M. (2003). Completion of the Consonant Inventory of Arabic. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46, 517–529. Al-Sayegh, S. and Abed El-Kader, A. (2004). Arabic phoneme recognizer based on neural network , In Proceedings of International Conf. Intelligent Knowledge Systems (IKS-2004), August 16-20,2004. Alotaibi, Y. Selouani, S. and O’Shaughnessy, D. (2008). Experiments on Automatic Recognition of Nonnative Arabic Speech, EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing, Vol. 2008, pp.1-6, 2008. Awais, A and Habib-ur-Rehman, (2003). Recognition of Arabic phonemes using fuzzy rule base system”, In Proceedings of 7th Int. Multi Topic Conf. INMIC-2003, pp.367-370, 8-9 Dec. 2003. Gupta, V.B. (1999). Manual of developmental and behavioral problems in children. New York: Dekker. Ismail, S. and Ahmad, A. (2004). Recurrent neural network with back propagation through time algorithm for Arabic recognition, In Proceedings of the 18th ESM Magdeburg, Germany, 13-16 June 2004. Silver, A.A. & Hagin, R.A. (2002). Disorders of learning in childhood (2nd edn). New York: Wiley. Swan, M & Smith, B. (2001). Learner English, Second Edition: A Teacher’s Guide to Interference and other Problems. Cambridge University Press. Schwarz, P. Matejka, P. and Cernocky, J. (2006). Hierarchical Structures of Neural Networks for Phoneme Recognition, In Proceedings of IEEE Int. Conf. Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, ICSP-2006, 14-19 May 2006. Westwood, P.S. (2000). Numeracy and learning difficulties. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research. Yates, L & Zielinski, B. (2009). Give it a go: teaching pronunciation to adults. AMEP Research Centre. Macquarie University Sydney. Read More

However, the phoneme stands the same and irrespective of how the same is used, the word meaning stays unchanged. In many other words when sounds are contrasted the word meaning is changed. This is true for certain languages more than any other. Examples could be two words: katur and gatur. In Icelandic culture, the first means cheerful and the second means riddles. It is noteworthy that the phonemes /k/ stays the same in both the words. But in Icelandic language /k/ is considered to be two separate phonemes.

This can be equated with the minimal pairs as described above. The conflicting minimal pairs tend to make English language different when spoken by people of two different nations. For example, Koreans would always confuse ’t’ and 'd' and if they have to speak something like 'pata', they would invariably say 'pada'. Since different languages have different phonemes, learners face difficulties when they attempt non-native language. Native learners carry the signature of their mother tongue when they learn a language (Swan & Smith, 2001).

Same is true for someone Arabic trying to learn English language. This is primarily because of the phonemic stress, which is not the same for two different languages. Such things are determined by stress and tone, which are discrete elements of segmental speech. There is an interesting background to use of phonemes, a word that comes from Greek and meaning "a sound uttered". First used in 1873 by A. Dufriche-Desgenettes only as a speech sound. Two years later, Jan Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay and Mikołaj Kruszewski started working on the same and until 1895; they developed its concepts further.

They termed a word called "fonema" and even called the phenomenon as "psychophonetics". From 1926 to 1935, Prague School's Nikolai Trubetzkoi elaborated phonemes further, while around the same time structuralists like Leonard Bloomfield, Edward Sapir, and Ferdinand de Saussure threw more light on the same. However, around the same time psycholingusitic and cognitive basis of phonemes was rejected by some contemporary structuralists. Most of the credit now goes to Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky for having made it a part of generative linguistics and modern phonology's development.

Bigger or smaller supplementations have occurred on several concepts from time to time since then. Consonant sounds and clusters In most English accents there are twenty four consonant sounds. This can be further explained through the following examples: /p/: Example cup and pair /b/: Example crab and bad /t/: Example hit and tall /d/: Example head and dark /k/: Example lack and cab /g/: Example tag and good /f/: Example wife and fine /v/: Example above and very /θ/: Example both and thing /ð/: Example father and this /s/: Example house and saw /z/: Example goes and zap /ʃ/: Example push and shape //: Example beige and pleasure /h/: Example ahead and her /x/: Example loch /tʃ/: Example match and cherry //: Example raj and judge /m/: Example team and man /n/: Example tan and nail /ŋ/: Example singer and ring /l/: Example tall and let /r/: Example scary and right /w/: Example away and wet /j/: Example soya and you When two or more consonants are placed together in a word, it is called consonant cluster or a consonant blend.

For example in the word "brilliant" consonant clusters are "br", "ll" and "nt". In order to establish command over English language, it is important to understand the significance of consonant clusters. Consonant clusters can occur anywhere in a word: beginning, middle or at the end. They are referred to as initial, medial or final consonant clusters. Most of the consonant clusters are not more than three letters long; they are at the minimum two in number.

There are rare occasions when one encounters more than three letters in a cluster, like 'rsts' in the word "firsts". There is one exception, though, and that is found in the word "rhythm". This word is totally made up of consonant cluster.

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