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Unit 13 is a very complex unit. I studied phonetic and phonology at the university level a couple of years ago and I have to admit that discovering the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), understanding all of its intricacies, was at a later point, very helpful for improving my pronunciation. It helped me, for instance, use the dictionary to figure out the pronunciation of words. Not only that, but I also understood the difference in sounds that otherwise were difficult to discriminate. However, in my own teaching experience, I have found that using \"basic\" representations here and there, introducing one symbol at a time, is more powerful and efficient than teaching phonetic lessons in regular English class. This is, I would teach phonetics to students at a college or university level and I would introduce isolated IPA symbols from time to time to students in an English course. Not to mention children and young learners. One of the biggest criticism to teaching using the grammar-translation method is precisely that students learn more about the language than the language itself. To me, teaching phonetics and phonology in depth in an ESL environment might be analogous.
