The symbols used in this book are like those used in many
American ESL textbooks, and are in the Charis SIL font.
Should you use a phonemic alphabet in teaching
pronunciation? Maybe, or maybe not. For some students it’s
valuable, but for others it’s confusing and scary. You’ll need
to think about your students—their age, expectations, and
learning styles—before making this decision. We’ll look at
this question in more detail in Chapter 14: “Di"erent Places,
Di"erent Learners.”
If you decide to use a phonemic alphabet in teaching, which
version of IPA will you use? Most likely you’ll choose the one
that is found in the textbooks and dictionaries that are in
common use in your country—that is, the one everyone else
is using.
Segmental and suprasegmental features
When we hear the word “pronunciation,” the !rst thing that
usually comes to mind is the individual sounds of a language
—the vowels and consonants. But the sounds themselves are
not the only things that a"ect pronunciation. There are also
more “musical” aspects of pronunciation, such as rhythm,
intonation, and word stress. We also need to know how
sounds a"ect each other and how they change in connected
speech. These aspects of pronunciation, which a"ect more
than just a single sound, are called suprasegmental
features of pronunciation, or just suprasegmentals.
We refer to the individual phonemes of a language—the
consonants and vowels—as segmental features of
pronunciation or segmentals because they a"ect only
one segment of sound. It’s important to know about and
practice both segmental and suprasegmental features. Both of
these work together to make pronunciation understandable to
listeners.Syllables
A syllable is a rhythmic unit in speech—a unit of sound that
gets one “beat” in a word. A syllable must have a vowel (or a
syllabic consonant, which we’ll read about in Chapter 4). It
might also have one or more consonants before the vowel
and one or more consonants after it. For example, the word
potato has three syllables: po-ta-to. Each syllable in this
word has one consonant followed by one vowel. The word
strong has just one syllable: strong, with three consonants,
then one vowel, then one consonant. (The end of the word
has two letters: ng, but these stand for just one sound: /ŋ/.)Varieties of English
The English language is not the same everywhere. There are
many di"erent varieties, or dialects, of English that are
spoken in many countries around the world. A dialect is a
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