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INSTITUT PENDIDIKAN GURU

KAMPUS PERLIS

Declaration Form

I hereby declare that my assignment is an original piece of work prepared by
myself in my own words and I did not copy or plagiarism any part of the
paper that I have submitted.
I hereby acknowledge that I:
i. have acknowledged all work and ideas in my research paper was taken
from printed and electronically published resources;
ii. Did not copy from any other resources or another student;
iii. Did not allow another students to copy our assignment; and
iv. Have faithfully represented the views of authors cited in my paper.
Therefore, I understand that if any of the above is found to be untrue, IPGM
Kampus Perlis has the full right to take any disciplinary action that the institute
deems fit as denoted under the latest Student Handbook or 'Buku Panduan
Pelajar terkini'.

..
NAME : ZAHIRAH BINTI DZANIMI
I/C NO : 920523-09-5072


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost I would like to offer gratitude to God for giving me health and
ability to complete this task Introduction to Linguistics. Without nature has given, I have
no way to complete this task.
In addition, I would like to thank our lecturer Madam Suliana bt Wan Chik who
has provided guidance to me to complete this task. This is my first task in linguistics, so
it becomes a little challenging. However, due to his endless guidance, I am capable of
this task successfully.
Furthermore, I also feel very fortunate and would like to thank to my classmates
who are providing assistance to me during completing this task. We often exchange
views and at the same time, an opinion to improve the quality of this task.
I also appreciate all the sacrifices made by my parents, especially in financial
terms have the moral support they extend. Without the support and assistance from
them, I can not able to carry out this responsibility well.
Finally, thanks to all those involved in helping me complete this task.









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CONTENT

Bill Item Page

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Declaration form
Acknowledgement
Content
Topic 3
Reference

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Topic 3 : Phonology
Non-native speakers of English (NNS) often have problems with pronunciation.
Discuss the problems areas and suggest ways to overcome these problems
identified. Provide relevant examples to illustrate your answer.
According to Bishop Berkeley, phonology is the study of the sound systems in
language about being what they are, aim to provide us with methods of analysis. In this
case, analysis of spoken utterances which will allow us to represent them on paper in a
way that provides us with a deeper insight into how our language works. According to
George Yule, phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of
speech sounds in a language. A speaker of English will have to produce various
sounds out loud and can speak out loud the language without doubt. Many non-native
speakers have studied grammar for many years but are unable to speak like native
speakers due to their inability to pronounce the sounds of words properly. It is usually
the largest obstacle to overcome when trying to achieve fluency. Thus, we will look
further the problems areas in pronunciation facing by non-native speakers of English
and some ways to overcome this problems identified. The three main components of
pronunciation are sounds, word stress, and intonation. (Dr. Dilip Abayasekara). This is
the most important areas of pronunciation that will lead non-native speakers to
communicate clearly.
The first problem area is pronunciation of individual sounds which may sound
alike but they are actually carries different meaning. There may be some confusion
between minimal pairs for examples between bed/bad and ship/sheep. Pronunciation
refers to the way we produce individual sounds and combinations of sounds. These
sounds are produced by correctly moving your articulators which include our mouth, our
tongue, our lips, your teeth and the roof of our mouth. If we are a non-native English
speaker, the way we tend to sound out some consonants and vowels may be different
from the way Standard English sounds are pronounced. In fact, written English has 26
letters in the alphabet. However, in spoken English, there are approximately 44 sounds,
composed of 24 consonants and 20 vowel sounds. These sounds are called phonemes.
The phonemic alphabet has 44 characters to represent these sounds. As I mentioned
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earlier, a lot of pronunciation work does focus on distinguishing between individual
sounds. The difficulties come in the dipthongs which are speech sounds that involve a
slide from one vowel to another. For instance, non-native speakers of French may
perceive /r/ as /w/-like and have trouble distinguishing between /r/ and /w/ because of
the phonetic differences between English and French rhotics. Thus, they take the
easiest way by systematically delete it. For Malaysian, often vowel sounds pose a
problem. This can be because of the confusion between long and short vowel sounds
like:dark (long) and duck (short), or simply the fact that some sounds can be fairly
similar like: man and men. One of the simplest way to fix this problem is by listening
carefully to the correct pronunciation of the sounds, tape the sounds, write them down
and practice them.
The second problem area in pronunciation of non-native speakers stress which
covered both word stress and sentence stress. Stress is extremely important in English
and carries a great deal of information. In English, certain syllables are stressed when
sounding out words and certain words are stressed when speaking sentences because
they show contrast and other information about the speakers intent. In many cases,
incorrect word stress will lead to more problems than the use of an incorrect phoneme
in a word. We have to bear in mind that wrong word stress can sometimes changed the
tenses. Just take an example of Italian. They tend to give equal stress to the two parts
of a diphthong rather than stressing the first element as we do in English. The most
common error that non-native English speakers commit is to put the emphasis on the
wrong syllables or on the wrong words. In words of more than one syllable, one syllable
will be more heavily stressed than the others, so that those sounds jump out to the
listener. For example, in word biology, they put the stress on ol and not bi. For
example, Indonesian speakers tend to pronounce post-vocalic /r/ as in car park while
the Malaysians generally drop the /r/ as such in the word car, but lengthen the vowel
thus it sound like caa for car or paaaper for paper. One of the way to improve our
word and sentence stress is by involving in the language activities that make people
especially non-native speakers aware of the importance of sentence stress, as well as
activities that focus on hearing and producing various aspects of sentence stress. Some
other suggestion that seems relevant is try to mimic TV and movie actors which are
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played by native speakers of English. In speaking, we need to try to exaggerate the
stress on key words.
Other than that, the problem of pronunciation by non-native speakers of English
is intonation. Intonation is essential as it helps the speaker to convey the right attitude,
whether it is a question, a statement and to portray great enthusiasm. For example,
there are specific intonation patterns for expressing surprise, madness, happiness and
sadness. The intonation pattern is different whether you are making a statement or
asking a question. The English language has standard patterns of intonation for the
various meanings you desire to give to your communication. This is a brief example that
shows how Malaysian face the problem of intonation in English pronunciation. Ramish
(1971) says that (as cited in Suhaila, 1994) Malay words are not distinguished by the
contrast of stress. Checketts (1993) stated that Malay speakers who speak English
have the tendency not to use the rising tone, such in English, to signal lists or
sequences of verbs. In addition to that, a rising tone is always used at the end of a
statement or list. In terms of attitudinal function of intonation, the stress could fall almost
anywhere in an utterance, depending on what is emphasised. A rising, falling, falling-
rising and rising-falling tones are used somehow quite differently from English. Due to
the differences, Malaysians whose mother tongue is Malay, encounter difficulties in
acquiring the correct patterns of English intonation and stress patterns. Lets go for the
simplest example, a word pronunciation (Pro-nun-si-a-syen). Malaysian incline to lower
the intonation of si-a so the word sounds like pro-nun-ciation where we actually need
to high the intonation of a. The problem in intonation by non-native speakers can be
minimized by find out how to produce the sound in terms of the mouth, the shape of the
tongue, the position of the lips and the jaw. Where does the sound come from? Practise
in front of the mirror, so that when you say thoroughly, you know what your, tongue,
lips and mouth are doing. Besides, we can practise listening to a range of English
accents being spoken. If your work involves having to speak to people from Aberdeen
or Mumbai, get used to their accent. The more exposure you have to different accents,
the easier it will be to communicate.
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After exposing the problem areas in pronunciation of non-native speakers of
English, I would like to highlight some suggestion to overcome these problems
identified. The first one is in order to develop our pronunciation skills, as non-native
speakers we got to know about the particular features of English pronunciation. As
such, make sure that we pronounce and do not swallow the endings of each word
because the spelling of word does not always help to pronounce it. Also, as non-native,
we sometimes get nervous when try to speak in English which the sound is very far
apart from our mother tongue. However, non-native speaker of English need to slow
down in uttering words. Sometimes it is tempting to try and speak very quickly to give
the impression of fluency. It will affects the clarity of our pronunciation and makes it
harder for people to understand us. And remember, many speakers of English do not
speak very quickly, but are very fluent. At the same time, non-native speaker of English
will have to try to sound interesting by never speak in a monotone but try to sound as if
we enjoy speaking English. Putting a little emphasis on important words and say them
a little more slowly to bring out their meaning will make the intonation clearer and
understandable. As stated above, non-native speakers of English always pronounce
certain consonant sound incorrectly. Thus, this problem can be fix by paying attention to
how you use the voice when speaking by feeling the vibration of vocal cords when
make voiced sounds (b, d, g, v, z, r, l, m, n, ng, dge, zh, and voiced th).
As a conclusion, although it may sound perverse, many non-native speakers who
are aware that their accent is non-standard have had great fun with the technique of
exaggerating their own accent. The exercise shows them at once that they are capable
of modifying their own accent and each time they try the technique they can come
across one more problem of intonation that they can correct. With some self-awareness
and a little hard work it is quite possible to make dramatic improvements in
standardizing spoken English in a short period of time. Many non-native speakers have
studied grammar for many years but are unable to speak like native speakers due to
their inability to pronounce the sounds of words properly. The pronunciation is the first
and most important thing native speakers notice during a conversation. Knowing
grammar and vocabulary are important but useless if we are unable to pronoun those
structures or words correctly. Also, native speakers are more likely to understand us,
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even if you make grammatical mistakes rather than if we make mistakes in
pronunciation. Even the simplest words misspoken will keep you from effectively
communicating with native English speakers. Quite clearly, pronunciation is both
incredibly complex and an important area for teaching and learning. Pronunciation is not
just about producing the right sounds or stressing the right syllables, it is also about
helping students understand what they hear. Having said this, it is certainly not
necessary to have native-speaker-like pronunciation. Our accent is part of us and our
culture and there is no need to lose it entirely. The real key to having good
pronunciation is what we call comfortable intelligibility. In other words, the person or
people listening to us should be able to understand what we are saying with minimal
strain. This is something completely different from losing our accent entirely.
















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REFERENCE
Yule, G. (2010). The Study of Language. (4
th
ed.). New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Robinson, D. (2006). Pronunciation Guide ugba-100. 1-6.
Emad M. Al-Saidat, Al-Hussein Bin Tal. (2010). Phonological Analysis of English
Phonotactics: A Case Study of Arab Learners of English. University of Jordan.
Tomkov, K. (2005). The Perception of Non-Native Pronunciation of English by Native
Speakers. Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno.
British Council. (2009). Native vs Non-native speakers and studying abroad.
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/forum-topic/native-vs-non-native. Accessed on
15 March 2012.
Cal Learning Blog. (2011). Five Problems Areas In Pronunciation.
http://www.callearning.com/blog/2011/03/5-problem-areas-in-english- . Accessed
on 15 March 2012.
Fun Easy English. (2003). The importance of pronunciation.
http://funeasyenglish.com/ . Accessed on 18 March 2012.