Good reasons why your teacher might teach you the phonemic script
1. To spend more time
on pronunciation/ to give variety to pronunciation practice
Most
students come to English class with improving their pronunciation as one of the
top priorities, but this is something textbooks only spend a little time on and
it is difficult to practice outside class. If the teacher is going to work more
on your pronunciation that will usually mean spending more classroom time on
it, which means you will get bored and so not learn much if you only do
drilling. Most of the other activities you can do to improve your pronunciation
in class, such as pronunciation games, need you to write down the sounds in
some way. The only good way to write down the sounds of English is with the
phonemic script.
2. To help you write
the pronunciation down
There
is no way of representing all the sounds of English clearly using just the
alphabet of English or any other country. If you do try to write down what you
hear in the alphabet of your own country, that will just make your own non-native
accent stronger and make it more difficult to understand people who do not
speak the same way as you. Therefore, if you want to write down the pronunciation
in your notebook so you can refer to it later in the same way as you write down
the meaning of vocabulary and grammar, you must learn the phonemic script.
3. To help you
remember the pronunciation
Writing
something down is a great way to help you remember it, and the same is true of pronunciation.
4. To teach you how to
use a dictionary
If you
want to recognize a word you have read and looked up in a dictionary when you
hear it later, you will need to learn the pronunciation as well as the spelling
and meaning. All good dictionaries give the pronunciation using the phonemic
script.
5. To help you study
pronunciation outside class
As
well as using a dictionary, you also need the phonemic script to use self-study
pronunciation books and language laboratories.
6. So you can organize
the pronunciations you write down
Like
vocabulary, the best way of learning pronunciation is to group things together
by similarities. In fact, many people believe that this is how the information
is stored in your head. If you understand the phonemic symbols for each word
you are learning, you can group vocabulary together by the same sound and so
help your pronunciation and your vocabulary learning at the same time.
7. To show the difference
between spelling and pronunciation
The
students who complain about English spelling often think of the phonemic script
as another type of spelling to learn, but actually it is the best way of making
sure you don't get confused by the English spelling when trying to pronounce a
word and of practicing different spellings of the same sounds.
8. To show how sounds
change when they are put together
When
two sounds from different words are next to each other, this often changes the
sounds. To give one example, when there are two /t/ sounds next to each other
like in "What to do?", one of the /t/ sounds is changed or
lost. Studying this point can help with comprehension of natural speech and
with fluency of speaking. The only clear way to show such changes is with the
phonemic script.
9. To show how sounds
change in natural speech
As
well as sounds next to each other, the sounds of English change in lots of
other ways such as the different pronunciations of "can" when
stressed in "YES, i CAN" and unstressed in "I can DO it".
The only way of writing these changes is with the phonemic script.
10. To give a good model for drilling
As
well as copying the teacher's voice or the tape and the instructions on how to
move your mouth, knowing exactly which sound you are trying to produce can help
involve other parts of your brain in your efforts to make the right sound.
11. To give information to help you produce the
individual sounds
The
symbols of the phonemic chart include some easy to understand information about
what kind of sounds they are, for example the two symbols that represent the separate
parts of each diphthong and the two dots after a long sound. Seeing this
written down can help you remember it, and the symbols can also help the
teacher explain your pronunciation mistakes quickly and clearly.
12. To show the system behind English sounds
As
well as showing long sounds and diphthongs, the phonemic chart also groups
together words that have similar sounds and so makes it easier to see the
similarities and differences. For example, pairs of voiced and unvoiced sounds
are next to each other in the chart.
13. To stop you thinking about the spelling when you
are listening
As
well as making reading and writing difficult, the irregular spelling of English
can also cause problems with listening, for example by making it difficult to recognize
a word when you first hear it. Learning the phonemics for every word as well as
the spelling can help reduce this problem.
14. To improve your listening comprehension
All
pronunciation work that is important for listening comprehension, such as the sound
changes in rapid speech mentioned above, are easier to study if you know the
phonemic script.
15. To make everyone the same level
Even
students who have very similar language levels in speaking and grammar
knowledge can have very different accents when they speak. Teaching the
phonemic script allows the teacher to go back to the pronunciation basics that
the students with more problems need while teaching all the students something
new.
16. Because it
is difficult to learn on your own
Because
learning the phonemic script involves not just getting to know the symbols but
also making sure you can say the right sound for each one, lots of help by a
teacher is usually needed.
17. To help logical thinkers
People
who are naturally good at pronouncing another language include musical people
and others who do hobbies that involve carefully controlling their voices and
other parts of their body. The mathematical/logical people who find grammar
study easier usually need a bit more help with pronunciation, and learning the
phonemic script can especially help these kinds of learners and mean they can
catch up with the rest of the class.
Bad reasons why
your teacher might make you learn the phonemic script
Hopefully
the reasons above have convinced you that learning the phonemic script is a
good thing, but as with most things in life there is a small chance that your
teacher might be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. If all the
reasons above are not relevant to you and you think one of the reasons below is
true for your class, you might want to ask your teacher if you could spend less
class time on phonemics.
1. To practice it
themselves
Even
native speakers find the "code" of the phonemic script hard to learn,
and just like for you, for the teacher the best way to learn is by using it in
class. This doesn't have to be a bad thing if you are learning something at the
same time, but might mean that it is used too much. If so, you might want to
ask your teacher or the school manager if some of the phonemics work could be
given for homework instead.
2. To show off
Once
your teacher has learnt the phonemic script, they might enjoy showing they can
use it so much that some of the times they do so your pronunciation could be
corrected in quicker and easier ways. The best way of showing your teacher that
they don't have to use it so much is to learn the phonemic script so well that
your teacher can see you don't need any more practice.
3. To fill time
This
is probably not the reason why your teacher uses phonemics, as there are much
easier ways of filling classroom time! If you think this is the case, the best
way of making it finish quicker is to show that you know phonemics very well
already.
