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This unit was probably one of the most difficult units to understand. As a native English speaker, we never think about pronunciation, stress words, linking, etc when speaking. So it was much harder to cut everything down and focus on one sentence at a time. At first, I was introduced to pronunciation and how this is rarely ever taught when teaching English to language students. I learnt that phonology is to indicate the sound system, whether its individual sounds, stress words, sounds that are connected, etc. I then began learning about intonation which is important when agreeing, disagreeing, questioning, or trying to confirm something. There are different types of intonation like rise/fall or fall/rise. This will help the people you are speaking to to either continue and listen, or respond. Then I went on to Stress which can be very important. It is important to know which words should be stress and others unstressed. There are many different to help show students about stress words, maybe highlighting them, boxing them, or adding stress marks. When teaching, it can be useful to try and emphasize the stress words in sentences to help students understand. In English, it is common for native speakers to use linked speech, and for language learners, the faster they learn this, it will become much easier to understand, as well as sound more natural with their speech. I also learnt about the phonetic alphabet which can be very difficult with how it looks compared to how it said. Although, dictionaries are very useful in helpful in using the phonetic alphabet to help pronounce certain words There are may different symbols that are used to help students. Finally, I learnt about articulation. Articulation is very important but throughout this unit, I discovered which organs are used when speaking. The manner and place of articulation chart was very helpful in helping me understand the difference between manner of articulation and place of articulation. Teaching pronunciation lacks quite a bit when teaching English as a second language, but I believe to help improve language students English, pronunciation, stress words, articulation, the phonetic alphabet, and intonation are all very important.
