What is phonology?

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Phonology is the study of the sounds of a language.  When spoken, English can sound like an unbroken string of sounds, but it is actually made up of many smaller sound units, called phonemes.  These small pieces of sound are the “building blocks of words.”  For literacy development, phonemic awareness is the important process where children learn to hear and break down words into the individual sounds, blend sounds, and manipulate sounds to make new words.

For English, Standard American English is often the model for studying and determining the sounds of English, but there are many variations of English which have phonological differences, what native speakers might perceive as different ‘accents’. 

When considering how English sounds are made, the most significant parts of the mouth are the lips, teeth, tongue, and different parts of the top of the mouth.  The following website includes audio and video of the different sounds of English and a few other languages, and provides models of how native speakers make these sounds:
Phonetics: The Sounds of English

The sounds of English can be organized by consonants and vowels.  Consonants depend on the place of articulation (where the sound is made in vocal tract), the manner of articulation (how close the articulators or parts of the mouth get to change airflow to make a sound), and voicing (whether vocal chords produce sound or not).  With different combinations of these 3 factors, English speakers produce stop sounds (i.e. /p/, /b/, /d/), fricatives (i.e. /f/, /v/, /h/), affricates (i.e. ch, j), nasals (i.e. /m/, ng), and liquids and glides (i.e. /l/, /r/.  Vowels are all voiced (vocal chords producing sound) and rely on the placement of the tongue in the oral cavity, affected by the height, frontness, and tenseness of the tongue. 

Phonological rules explain what happens when sounds change in different contexts of words, including:
  • Assimilation: a sound in a word becomes more similar to surrounding sounds (i.e. the different pronunciation of –ed based on the sound preceding it)
  • Deletion: sounds are excluded from words (i.e. “labratory" for laboratory or “an” for and)
  • Insertion: sounds are added to words, most commonly an affix (i.e. “sumpthing” for something).
  • Metathesis: sounds are reversed in order (i.e. “aks” for ask or “pasketti” for spaghetti)

In the classroom

Tips for Applying Phonology:
  • Check your pronunciation: When teaching English, our own and students’ pronunciations and identification of sounds can be heavily influenced by the variety of English spoken or other languages spoken.
  • How English sounds are made: The characteristics of sound creation (consonants and vowels) can be helpful when understanding mispronunciations and when teaching new distinct sounds for ELLs.  Consider the different parts of the vocal tract used to make sounds in English and the different sounds of other languages in relation to English, on this site: 
    Phonetics: The Sounds of Spoken Language  
  • Connections between English & Spanish sounds: The following chart shows sounds that are shared and distinct between English and Spanish.  A teacher can help Spanish speakers to learn English sounds by making connections with similar sounds in Spanish and explicitly teach distinct English sounds using the appropriate mouth formation for accurate pronunciation.
  • Teach letter sounds clearly: In the classroom, insertion issues may be noticed in students' writing.  When sounding out words, especially with ELLs, sound insertions become more apparent when students are ‘stretching out the word to hear all the sounds’ to write down the sounds they hear.  Extra vowels and consonants may be added, depending on how they are learning English sounds and/or native language influence.  When teaching sounds, clearly and distinctly pronounce each consonant sound, without any added vowel sounds (i.e. "t" instead of "tuu").
  • Prioritize pronunciation as needed: Our overall goal as teachers is to make sure that students can produce clear speech that can be understood by others, for successful communication. Mispronunciation, due to phonological rules or differences from a native language or variant of English, may alter or hinder a message, having an effect on the greater meaning of their message.  As teachers, we must prioritize and focus on pronunciation skills as needed, to best support the student so they are understood and comprehended.
  • Target phonological awareness:  The Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS) provides information about how students are developing with early literacy skills.  This link connects to numerous activities, sorted by phonological awareness, letter and sound recognition, rhyming, as well as other necessary pre-literacy skills: https://pals.virginia.edu/tools-activities.html  Reading Rockets also has a good article on phonemic awareness in young children, that provides developmental perspective as well as student activities: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/408/
  • Sing it!  Jazz Chants can be a great way to practice the sounds and pronunciation of English: http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/listening/jazz-chants/