Problems in phonology
Hi!
Well, I have just completed my task on phonology and believe me it wasn’t easy! Phonology is one area of English language teaching that I have always had a problem with – there is so much involved in this one section: phonetic alphabet, intonation, stress, syllables, phonemic script, the list is endless!
‘Goal’ and ‘Model’ are two terms that I couldn’t find on the world wide web. They are words associated with pronunciation; unfortunately I don’t have the book ‘Sound Foundations’ by A.Underhill. This book could have been useful and I need this material!! But unfortunately, I can’t find this book in www.amazon.co.jp website and I am not going to purchase this book from England where shipping costs exceeds the purchase price – that’s crazy!
Phonology is an important area of English language teaching especially in Japan. Japanese speakers of English [JSE] have immense problems with the English phonetics and intonation. The most famous example is the difference between /l/ and /r/. There is no /l/ equivalent in the Japanese alphabets- there are two alphabets in Japan, Hiragana is used for local and Japanese originated words and Katakana is for anything that is foreign [e.g. hamburger, microwave, etc]. Anyone teaching in Japan would know this.
