Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

11 a heavy wheel used to store power
䊐
is a flywheel
12 something engraved on stone is 
䊐
up to 150,000
lapidary
You can now see roughly how many words you know by taking the last level at
which you score both right. A full version of this test is on the website.
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4
Acquiring and teaching
pronunciation
Language conveys meanings from one person to another through spoken sounds,
written letters or gestures. Speakers know how to pronounce the words, sentences
and utterances of their native language. At one level they can tell the difference in
pronunciation between ‘drain’ and ‘train’, the sound patterns of the language; at
another they know the difference between ‘Fine’, ‘Fine?’ and ‘Fine!’, the intonation
patterns in which the voice rises and falls. The phonologies of languages differ in
terms of which sounds they use, in the ways they structure sounds into syllables,
and in how they use intonation, hard as this may be for many students to appre-
ciate, and difficult as it may be for teachers to teach. It is impossible to imagine a
non-disabled speaker of a language who could not pronounce sentences in it.
Talking about the sounds of language necessitates some way of writing down
the sounds without reference to ordinary written language. For over a century the
solution for researchers and teachers in much of the world has been the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which supplies symbols for all the sounds
that could occur in human languages. The full version is given in many books and
the latest official revision can be downloaded from the International Phonetic
Association; there is also an online version at the University of California, Los
Angeles, that gives demonstrations of how the sounds are pronounced. This then
gives a way of showing the sheer sounds of language, known as phonetics.
Think of a speech sound in your first language:
●
How do you think you make it?
●
How do you think an L2 student learns it?
●
How would you teach it to an L2 student?