Articulatory Phonetics

Abstract

The main focus of this chapter is to present the articulatory description of English consonants and provide practical guidance on how to teach the consonant phonemes to ELLs. The chapter starts with the introduction of phonetics as a subfield of linguistics. The concepts such as phonemes, contrastive versus non-contrastive sounds, the branches of phonetics that study different aspects of human speech sounds, and two different types of phonemes—consonants and vowels—are introduced in this section. Next, the reader is familiarized with the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is a system of phonetic transcription. The chapter further presents the description of the vocal tract and explores the classification of English consonants according to their place and manner of articulation, and voicing. Some implications from the introduced phonetics theory for teaching phonics, phonemic awareness, and spelling to young ELLs, and pronunciation to adult English learners, as well as a set of recommendations for effective phonetics instruction for ELLs are discussed to conclude the chapter.