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PhonologyPhonology is the study of the physical property of the sounds. It is the science and classification of what you hear when you speak. Phonology and phonetics are usually considered synonyms, but phonology is really to be used to indicate the entire sound system of a language. Some things I would like to touch on are stressed words, intonation, and the phonemic alphabet. Intonation is the change of pitch and volume in a sentence. It is what carries much meaning in a sentence, especially when agreeing or questioning statements. It is used to express feelings while saying the sentence. The two common patterns of intonation in a sentence are rise/fall, and fall/rise. With rise/fall, this generally indicates that you are finished speaking. With the fall/rise pattern, you can indicate surprise, but can also mean you want confirmation or a response to your sentence. Yet fall/rise can also mean you aren?t finished speaking as well and suggests that you have more to say so the listener should wait for you to continue speaking. Sometimes you have flat intonation, which indicates that the speaker doesn?t have much to say, or doesn?t care to speak. Often this is with one word answers, but does allow for a response, although doesn?t suggest that you want one. With intonation, you can often predict forthcoming information; not the actual information, but the tone and attitude, which can create a mood for the conversation. When teaching intonation, you must make sure that students understand which parts of the sentence to emphasize, and what they will be conveying with the intonation. Where intonation conveys mood, stressing words is a way of interpreting the sentence meaning. The ?strong? word of the sentence conveys where the meaning lies; it is the focus of the whole sentence. For instance, in the sentence I don?t like to dance, If I stress the word ?like?, I convey that I dislike dancing. If I stress ?dance?, I convey that I don?t like dancing, but I do like other things! When stressing, one word can only have one stress. You can only stress syllables of words, not single letters. There are a plethora of rules for stressing, but really, stressing is how you would naturally say a sentence. Speakers of another language may not know which part of a sentence to stress in english, since it is not natural to them, so you must teach them, and the rules will definitely help. The last thing I would like to talk about is the phonemic alphabet. The phonemic alphabet is very useful when teaching english to students who speak another language because english has many rules, but many contradictions and exceptions to these rules, and the same letter combination in a word may make a completely different sound in another word! The phonemic alphabet helps students with the pronunciation of a word. It is an international alphabet, and is found in the dictionary next to the spelling of the word. When a person is familiar with this alphabet, they can correctly pronounce any word in any dictionary in any language. It is not a necessary thing to know, but is very helpful for language students. Phonology is something that all students will have to have a firm grasp on in order to be able to speak english. It is important to take time to make sure your students completely understand this lesson before moving on. You can have fun with it too by using the phonemic alphabet and ?breaking the code!?
