Megan Tunon

Summary of Chapter 3 of Essential Linguistics: English Phonology

During reading, I was able to fully appreciate many of the sentiments discussed in chapter 3 of Essential
Linguistics, which was all about English phonology. While learning my second language of Spanish in a
Spanish speaking country, I would often long to revert back to the effortlessness of speaking English. I
was desperate for the ability to communicate like an adult rather than like child. However, I was also
fully aware of how fortunate I was to have English as my native language, and that I was able to acquire
the knowledge of its phonemes during my developmental stage rather than try to understand them
after learning an entirely different language system. For its part, Spanish is a very easy language to
pronounce because when it comes to spelling and phonetics, what you see is what you get. Its an
entirely different story when it comes to verb conjugations, but thats a lesson for another day!
Its true that humans take for granted the ease at which we produce language. There really is so much
intricate movement that goes into creating specific sounds. I found this chapter to be very interesting
when it discussed why sound became our primary means of communicating with one another; so that
we could do so without the necessity for sight, touch or proximity. While Ive always been aware of the
intricacies of our language, I learned a lot from this chapter about the terminology of the different
sounds in English, and the function of the tongue, lips, teeth, breath, and voice in producing those
sounds. I learned that vowel sounds are produced by pushing air out and consonant sounds are
produced by stopping air from exiting the mouth. I also learned the different terms for the different
types of sounds like stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, liquids, and glides. In my experience of language
acquisition, I have found it to be very important to understand the phonemes of language to assist in
pronunciation. The more time practiced learning these, the easier the language begins to understand
and speak.
This chapter had a lot of helpful information to translate into the ESL classroom. When students have
trouble pronouncing words, it would be immensely helpful to be able to describe to them the
positioning of the tongue in the mouth or the shape of the lips for specific phonemes that they are
mispronouncing. Its true that it is hard to determine these on your own for a native speaker, so these
details are very practical for the ESL teacher to have on hand.