1 LESSON 1

26 hours  5 lessons (2 hrs each)  8 oral presentation sessions (2 hrs each) - no final mark - 6 credits will be given for attendance and work done; if you don’t attend and don’t do the work, you don’t get the credits 2

 20 hrs attendance (all 5 lessons; 5 out of 8 oral presentation sessions)  3 written assignments  3 phonetics tests  1 individual oral presentation  1 final interview This will all be completed before the end of April 3

 B2 (more or less)  You need to be able to do an oral presentation  You need to be able to understand what I am saying  No attestato 4

 You register only by filling in the registration form today in person  Attend all lessons; don’t arrive late; don’t leave early; no absences  Do all assignments; send assignments by before the deadline  Attend oral presentations in your assigned groups and times  You cannot make private arrangments with me 5

 Assignments should be sent as an attachment in docx to  Assignments should be clearly marked  I will not accept assignments sent after the deadline 6

 Check the website every week for downloads  I may send you s if I forget something  Emergency communication – I need the name and number of a class representative  Do you have a Facebook page? 7

Who speaks standard English?  a. english people  b. americans  c. australians  d. all three of these  e. all three of these and others  f. none of these 8

 “I scream” has the same sound as “ice cream” Yes or no? 9

xt xs pxssxblx tx xndxrstxnd whxt I xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn x Yes or no? 10

Phonology is the study of the sound patterns in languages. It uses these categories:  Phonemes (vowels and consonants)  Prosody (stress, rhythm and intonation) 11

5. How many sounds are there? in Italian? in English?  Vowels 5(7)12  Diphthongs48  Consonants

go, though, foe, slow, boat; George, Joe, badge, village  many sounds have several different spellings : though, cough, bough, through, thought, enough  many “same spellings” have different sounds 13

 Learners cannot rely on the spelling of a word  The problem is the opposite for native speakers – English schoolchildren spend a lot of time learning to read and write. Many adults have very poor spelling.  To learn to pronounce English correctly it is of great help to learn to read phonemic transcription and/or have a CD or online dictionary with sound 14

 Why is english spelling so erratic? 15

 83% of English words have predictable spelling  The remaining 17% is comprised of the most commonly used, everyday words  The greatest difficulties are faced by the learner at the start 16

 not enough vowel letters for vowel sounds  English does not use accents, umlauts etc.  English spelling reflects many archaic forms of pronunciation e.g. night in the past, was pronounced with a fricative 17

 English has always resisted spelling reforms and academies to set standards  English spelling became fixed in the 16 th -17 th c. with the arrival of printing. Many of the printers were Flemish and had little knowledge of the language.  English has borrowed extensively from other languages and has tended to maintain original spelling 18

SHORT  bad  bed, friend, head  good, put, should  his, it, kiss  hot, of, on  love, must, number  the, about LONG car, park door, more, caught free, me, please girl, third, world who, you 19

 quality (i.e. the difference between /i:/ and /u:/  oral or nasal production  length 20

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 The IPA vowel quadrilateral is a grid on which we can plot vowels  It indicates the total area in which vowels can be produced by human beings, the cardinal vowels are fixed reference points on this chart, just like lines of longtitude and latitude on a map  Plots of language specific vowels do not usually correspond to the cardinal vowels, e.g. the Italian /a/ does not correspond to the cardinal vowel [a] 33

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36 The fact that Italian lacks vowels in the central area may well explain why Italian students of English have so much trouble with these sounds

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 English vowels differ in length as well as in quality  These differences are as important to perception as quality  English long vowels are far longer than Italian equivalents (e.g. /i:/, /u:/) 39

 Italian speakers of English often produce vowel sounds that can be misinterpreted by native speakers  This is particularly important in the case of minimal pairs i.e. where substituting one vowel sound for another leads to semantic changes  This can be due to the irregular orthography of English or interference from L1. We will now examine this second case. 40

 e.g. sheep v. ship Italian speakers often use one vowel sound, the Italian /i:/ for both. In the case of sheep the vowel length is too short, in that of ship the quality does not exclude ambiguity. 41

 e.g. ban and bun – here the problem is one of vowel quality  e.g. coat and court – the Italian /o/ is often used for both 42

Sound:  Oral presentation:  43