How to simply explain "Schwa"?

[easybreakable]

Hi,

I used to teach preparatory and secondary levels, I mean young who are a bit oriented with phonetics, now my boss asked me to teach a zero level (starter)... The first lesson in the unit is about "Schwa" and I don' have the teacher's book yet.

I want to know how simply I could explain it without much complicating an already huge topic, I just need simple definition and easy examples, they are adult student with scant knowledge regarding the basics.

[NaVaS]

Hi. I think "schwa" is not actually a phoneme as everyone says. It seems to me like an area in the IPA vowel chart. Sometimes you can use /ɜ/ and others /a/ instead of "schwa".Some websites say you can change for /ʌ/. I´ve read many websites and nobody agrees but I´m sure "schwa" is not always the same sound.

I see "schwa" simply like an unstressed sound. Nothing more.

Personally I move that phoneme to /ɜ/ often.


Greetings and sorry if I made mistakes in my english.

[birdeen's call]

Schwa is most definitely a phoneme. It has many allophones, that's true.

[mara_ce]

Some worthwhile reading comments:
Teaching the schwa | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC
The schwa | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC

[5jj]

When I first studied phonetics over forty years ago, we used /ǝː/ for the sound for which we now use the symbol /ɜː/. Many of the variant allophones of /ǝ/ are very close to a weak, short /ɜː/.