THE BENEFITS OF LEARNING

PHONETICS, PHONOLOGY, AND PRONOUNCIATION

Learning language means that we learn to communicate by using that language. The communication may be in spoken and written form, but the spoken form may be more difficult for second language learners. As we know that every language has its own system of sounds, so it may be difficult to understand and produce sounds of other language. Therefore, learning language should not be separated with learning its system of sounds. In other words, we have to study Phonetics and Phonology, two branches of linguistics that study sounds and sound structures, to get good understanding of the underlying principles of the speech sounds. Not to mention, we also need to learn the pronunciation.

When we learn Phonetics, we learn how sounds are produced from the organ of speech. It seems to be very simple that makes many non-native speakers often neglect it. In fact, to produce a single sound, it involves several steps; those are the process of initiation, phonation, oro-nasal, and articulation. In this case, Phonetics helps us to understand, hear, and reproduce the sounds. By learning such knowledge, we will become aware of pronouncing words.

Beside the pronunciation, another important aspect is intonation. When learning a foreign language, we tend to transfer the intonation from our native language into the second language. Inappropriate intonation may lead to misunderstanding. In addition, we also have to recognize the stress in pronouncing words.  Phonetics helps us to recognize and understand intonation patterns. Moreover, there are still some other features such stress, length, etc. that we need to recognize. In Indonesian it is not very necessary to recognize such features, such as stress in pronouncing Indonesian words is not affected the meaning, but in English we have to recognize it. That’s why Phonetics is very useful to learn.  

Next is about Phonology that is very closely related to Phonetics. We need a good knowledge of Phonetics to understand Phonology. Both are the study of sounds, but in Phonology we explore more about the differences between sounds that can change the meaning of utterances. For example, the singular and plural form of most nouns will be pronounced differently such as in cat and cats. Every single sound must be sound because it is meaningful. By learning this, we will understand the importance of pronouncing every single sound to avoid misunderstanding of meaning so we will try to pronounce the word as well as possible.

From the explanation above, we can see that it is very important for us especially English teachers to learn Phonetics, Phonology, and pronunciation in order to have good pronunciation. It goes without saying that pronunciation is definitely the biggest thing that we notice when hearing someone speaking. It involves not only the individual sounds, but also certain features such as the fall or rise of the speech, stress of words, pitch, rhythm, and so on. Bad pronunciation will make us unable to communicate efficiently and effectively because it may make the listener confused of what we said. Because of the confusion, we have to explain again what we mean until the listeners understand, and this is   wasting time.

 Moreover, we as teachers are models for our students. Good teachers have to deliver correct model. We have responsibility to transfer correct knowledge. Besides, our pronunciation may be reflected in our students’. Therefore, other people may judge us based on our product (students). In addition, by having good pronunciation, we may encourage the students to have good pronunciation. As a result, they will maximally expose the use of English which makes their ability improved. We do not have to be like native speaker, but at least we can minimize misunderstanding.

 Furthermore, we also have to teach our students the phonetic alphabet as soon as possible. Learning the symbols used to represent each speech sound, especially English which has become international language, means that not only could we learn to transcribe speech sounds, but that we could use the symbols included in dictionaries to help our own pronunciation of new words. In practical terms, this helps us when using English on holiday when we want to speak with foreigners. It will increase our confidence because we are able to speak more accurately. It also helps us to avoid confusions with similar sounds from our first language as well as to produce the new and different sounds of the target language.

The discussion above much exposes the importance of learning Phonetics, Phonology, and pronunciation to improve speaking ability. However, it is actually not only for speaking skill. As we know that there are three other skills (listening, reading, and writing) that are integrated with each other. The speaking skill itself is very related to the listening skill. If we have good pronunciation, which means we are aware of producing sounds, we will be aware of listening every single sound too. It is vice versa, if we have high sensitivity in listening every single sound, we will have more accurate and appropriate pronunciation.

Beside that, learning Phonetics and Phonology may also influence us in improving reading and writing skills. In reading skill, especially reading aloud, we need the knowledge of how to read the text by using appropriate pronunciation. It is also related to the ability to recognize the phonetic transcription. To be a good reader, we need to recognize every symbol. After that, we will also try to create the symbol by writing it. Therefore, the knowledge of Phonetics and Phonology is very useful to improve the four language skills.

Some teachers may feel that it is not easy to teach the students about that. However, we should not look down on them. In this case, we do not need to teach the knowledge of Phonetics and Phonology deeply. Maybe we just try to introduce the phonetic transcription, how to pronounce words appropriately, etc. We should motivate them to learn the language. However, it should start from us, as the teachers. As I said before, we are the models and we have to be good models for our students. Something good will inspire them so they will be encouraged to learn more and more. That’s why it is important for us to learn Phonetics, Phonology, and pronunciation as one of efforts to be a good teacher, a good model to our students.