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Table 1.1 The Four Language Skills Written Medium Spoken Medium

The document discusses the key aspects and distinctions within the field of phonetics. It defines phonetics as the descriptive study of how language sounds are produced (articulatory phonetics), transmitted (acoustic phonetics), and perceived (auditory phonetics). While all three aspects are part of phonetics, only articulatory phonetics is directly relevant for language teaching. The document also introduces the related field of phonology as concerning how sounds function and are organized in a given language.

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Dennis Randall
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42 views1 page

Table 1.1 The Four Language Skills Written Medium Spoken Medium

The document discusses the key aspects and distinctions within the field of phonetics. It defines phonetics as the descriptive study of how language sounds are produced (articulatory phonetics), transmitted (acoustic phonetics), and perceived (auditory phonetics). While all three aspects are part of phonetics, only articulatory phonetics is directly relevant for language teaching. The document also introduces the related field of phonology as concerning how sounds function and are organized in a given language.

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Dennis Randall
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4 Introduction

the sounds of their language. Very often, this takes the form of preferring aspects
of their own pronunciation over those of anyone else’s accent, and trying to
impose their own thoughts on others. Thus, they tell people how they think a
language ought to be pronounced, rather than describing how it actually
is pronounced. Such people are prescriptive, while phonetics is a descriptive
subject.
• Language: Notice that language is used here, rather than a language. By language,
we mean the human ability to communicate, that underlies all human languages.
Although much of phonetics has historically been concerned with English,
the study of the sounds of an ‘exotic’ language spoken by only a few speakers is no
less valid.
• Spoken form: Language, the human ability to communicate, may be manifested in
different ways (or mediums). By far the most common are the spoken medium
and the written medium. Others exist, such as Braille, a tactile medium. Both the
spoken and written mediums have a productive and perceptive form. This gives us
the categories of writing, reading, speaking and listening, often referred to by
language teachers as the four skills (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 The four language skills

Written medium Spoken medium

Production Writing Speaking


Perception Reading Listening

• All aspects: When we speak to someone, there are three distinguishable phases of
the communication process:
1 The speaker uses his/her vocal organs (lungs, vocal cords, tongue, lips, etc.) to
produce sounds. This aspect is known as articulatory phonetics.
2 The sounds are vibrations of air particles (sound waves), that travel from the
speaker’s mouth to the listener’s ear. The technical study of these vibrations is
known as acoustic phonetics.
3 The sound waves reach the listener’s ear, travel along his/her ear canal and
cause the ear drum to vibrate. This movement is transmitted to the brain and
ultimately interpreted. This aspect is known as auditory phonetics.
While all three aspects belong to the field of phonetics, only the first (articulation) is of
real relevance in language teaching.

Phonology
Articulatory phonetics thus describes the way humans use their vocal organs to
produce speech sounds. Phonology, on the other hand, describes the way these
sounds function in particular languages. For instance, we can describe two sounds as
follows:

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