The influence of phonetics and phonology knowledge

Presented at International Seminar on Languages and Art (ISLA)

Padang, 20 – 21 Oktober 2012 1

THE INFLUENCE OF PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY KNOWLEDGE

ON THE STUDENTS’ LISTENING ABILITY:

A PSYCHOLINGUISTICS APPROACH

Rusdi Noor Rosa

FBS Universitas Negeri Padang

email: [email protected]

Abstract

Listening is the first skill that has to be mastered by students who

learn English. Without having listening, other skills including

speaking, reading, and writing cannot be mastered. However, many

students often have problems in understanding messages which are

delivered orally. Giving them more listening tests seems not to be

the best way to overcome the problem. The main problem faced by

the students is they have poor pronunciation. Psychologically,

understanding takes place when the pronunciation stored in their

brain matches the pronunciation that comes from outside through

their hearing cortex. One of the ways to overcome their problems is

by providing them with good knowledge of phonetics and

phonology. By having this knowledge, they are not only treated

how to pronounce particular words correctly, but they will also be

provided by knowledge that is applicable to pronunciation rules of

other words. By using phonetics and phonology knowledge, the

students’ pronunciation will not be based on imitation, but on self-

discovery.

Key Words: listening ability, pronunciation, phonetics, phonology,

psycholinguistics

A. Introduction

Listening is an activity that always accompanies human in their daily

interactions. Listening is also the basic language skill acquired by human that

enables them to acquire other skills including speaking, reading, and writing. A

good listener will find it easy to speak as the requirement of being able to speak is

the existence of vocabulary which is gained and stored in the brain through

listening. Therefore, it is not surprising that a good speaker is a good listener as

well.



Furthermore, listening is the language skill which is most frequently

practiced in verbal communication because most of human interaction is done

orally. Through oral interaction, human can exchange information more quickly

and accurately. In this interaction, listening takes more important role as the

information will be easily misunderstood without the ability to listen effectively.

As a result, communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily

become frustrated or irritated. This is supported by Adler et al. (2001) who say

that people spend an average of 70% of their time engaged in some sort of

communication, of this an average of 45% is spent listening compared to 30%

speaking, 16% reading and 9% writing. This fact is illustrated in the following

figure:

Figure 1. Time spent for communication

Listening should not be confused from hearing. Not all sounds heard are

listened as people might hear various sounds but listen to one of them. This means

that not listening does not mean that someone does not hear. According to Lucas

(1992:30), hearing is a psychological process, involving the vibration of sound

waves on someone’s eardrums and the firing of electrochemical impulses from the

inner ear to the central auditory system of the brain. But listening requires more

than that: it requires focus. Listening involves paying attention to, and making

sense of, what is heard.

Considering the importance of listening in communication, this language

skill is included in every context of language learning, not only in learning first

language but also in learning second and foreign language. One of the languages



which is learned in almost all countries in the world, including Indonesia, is

English. In Indonesia, English is learned as a foreign language, and listening is the

first skill to be taught to students. In the basic level of learning English, i.e. in

elementary schools, the Indonesian curriculum emphasizes more on oral skills

than written ones. The oral skills are dominated by listening activities as, in the

beginning of English learning, students are required to respond through nonverbal

feedback instead of verbal one. In universities, especially for students majoring

English, a course on listening is given in more than two semesters. In English

Department of UNP, for example, students have to take listening course in three

semesters, three credits for each. However, some of the students still find it

difficult to listen correctly. This is supported by their achievement tests in three-

semester listening courses that show only few of them are good, others are

average and poor at listening.

Several treatments have been given to students with average and poor

listening ability, however those techniques are particularly focused on giving

more exercises or tests on listening. As a result, the expectation of improving

students’ ability in listening is not achieved yet because their problems mainly lie

on their poor ability in identifying English words. To identify English words

correctly, the students should have good linguistics knowledge, especially the

knowledge of phonetics and phonology. This is due to the fact that their poor

listening mainly comes from their poor pronunciation, and their poor

pronunciation comes from their poor knowledge of phonetics and phonology.

Providing students with good knowledge of phonetics and phonology is a good

effort to improve their listening ability.

B. Discussion

As mentioned before, hearing is a partial stage in listening. Hearing and

listening are psychological processes that take place in human’s brain. Ears,

commonly known as parts of human body for hearing, only act as media to

transmit sounds to the brain. In the brain, all of the sounds are decoded to get

comprehension and provide response.



Human’s brain is divided up into two halves, termed hemisphere, the left

brain and the right brain (see Steinberg, 1993). Each half of the brain is charged

with taking care of different tasks and thinking processes. The left brain is

involved in verbal expression like language, thoughts, and other things that

contain words. The right side of the brain works on controlling emotions and

experiences nonverbal things like music and art.

Each half or hemisphere of the brain is divided up into four lobes: the

frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the occipital lobe, and the temporal lobe. These

separate parts each control a still more specific function or type of thinking.

Functions such as cognition occur in the frontal lobe, general sensing in the

parietal lobe, vision in the occipital lobe, and hearing in temporal lobe. These four

lobes can be seen in the figure below.

Figure 2. Division of Brain’s Hemisphere

For the purpose of this paper, the central discussion about the brain is the

brain’s areas which are involved in the use of language. Related to the previous

explanation, half of the brain involved in the use of language is left half or left

hemisphere. The main language centers in the left hemisphere are Broca’s area

and Wernick’s area, and these areas are not found in the right hemisphere. The

two areas are connected by arcuate fasciculus. Broca’s area is closer to motor

cortex, which means it has something to do with production; meanwhile,

Wernick’s area is closer to auditory and visual cortex, meaning it is related to

language comprehension (see Gleason and Ratner, 1998).



So, on hearing a word, the sound of the word goes to the auditory cortex of

the temporal lobe through the ears and then to Wernick’s area, in which listening

takes place. In this area, data of sounds stored in the memory are recalled to match

the sound, the incoming data. If the data stored in the brain’s memory match the

data from outside, then comprehension takes place, or vice versa. Observe the

illustration in Figure 3 and 4.

Figure 3. Comprehension takes place

Figure 4. Comprehension fails

Both figure 3 and 4 take the word “preface” as the example. This word is

not strange for most of students as they often found it in every beginning of the



book. However, it may become a problem when this word is given to them orally.

“Preface” is composed of two morphemes [pre], pronounced /pri/ and [face],

pronounced /feis/, so the students tend pronounce “preface” /prifeis/. This

incorrect pronunciation is, then, stored in their memory. As a result, when the

word “preface”, pronounced /præfɪs/, is listened, the auditory cortex in Wernick’s

area is trying to match it with its pronunciation stored in the brain’s memory. As

/præfɪs/ and /prifeis/ are not matched, comprehension does not take place (see

Figure 4). However, when the pronunciation stored matches with the

pronunciation heard, comprehension takes place, as shown in Figure 3.

It is true that context can also contribute to comprehension in listening;

however, it cannot also be denied that it is hard to guess the meaning while

listening. In addition, sometimes, context cannot help the students comprehend

the oral message. Let us take the words “forty” and “fourteen” in the phrase “forty

cats” and “fourteen cats” as the examples. The final sound /n/ is, sometimes, not

heard very clearly, so both of the phrases sound /fo(r)ti kæts/. The students with

poor knowledge of phonetics and phonology are very likely to misunderstand the

phrase. By having good knowledge of phonetics and phonology, these phrases are

easily comprehended because the key of differentiating them is in the position of

the stress. If the word is stressed in the first syllable, /’fo(r)ti/, it must be “forty”;

on the other hand, if the word is stressed in the second syllable, /fo(r)’ti:n/, it must

be “fourteen”. The problem of using context in listening is also supported by

Cowan (1984) who says that one challenge that is specific to listening comes from

the evanescent nature of speech. People cannot re-listen to what they have just

heard in the way that readers can move their eyes back in the text.

Another example of the contribution of knowledge of phonetics and

phonology in listening is in the insertion of sound /r/ when /ә/ schwa is in the final

of the word followed by another word initialized by vowel sounds such as in “the

idea is good”, /ði aidiә ris gu:d/. This can only be understood if the students know

the phonological rule saying that if the final sound of the word is /ә/ is followed

by the vowel sounds, the sound /r/ can be inserted. The sounds /ði aidiә ris gu:d/

seems strange to them that leads them to misunderstand the message.



The perception of spoken words would seem to be an extremely difficult

task. Speech is distributed in time, a fleeting signal that has few reliable cues to

the boundaries between segments and words. Treiman et al. (2003) say the paucity

of cues leads to what is called the segmentation problem, or the problem of how

listeners hear a sequence of discrete units even though the acoustic signal itself is

continuous. Other features of speech could cause difficulty for listeners as well.

Certain phonemes are omitted in conversational speech, others change their

pronunciations depending on the surrounding sounds (e.g., /n/ may be pronounced

as [m] in lean bacon), and many words have “everyday” pronunciations (e.g.,

going to frequently becomes gonna). Despite these potential problems, we usually

seem to perceive speech automatically and with little effort. Whether we do so

using procedures that are unique to speech and that form a specialized speech

module (Liberman & Mattingly, 1985), or whether we do so using more general

capabilities, it is clear that humans are well adapted for the perception of speech.

The examples above indicate that the factor influencing the students’

ability in listening is their knowledge of phonetics and phonology. The brain’s

memory stores every information (sounds, pictures, smells, etc.) that human

experience, making it as a stock which can be recalled anytime needed. Therefore,

more listening tests cannot make the students better in listening. Even though they

can hear the sounds clearly, they are unable to listen correctly.

C. Conclusion

Listening is not merely hearing the sounds, but it needs focus. Improving

students’ ability in listening by giving them more listening tests is not the best

choice. This is due to the fact that listening takes the process in the human’s brain,

it does not only to frequently contact with a particular sound. Having good

knowledge of phonetics and phonology is useful to improve their listening ability

because they can improve their pronunciation, and good pronunciation results in

good listening.



References

Adler, R., L. Rosenfeld, and R.Proctor. 2001. Interplay: the process of

interpersonal communicating 8th

edition. Fort Worth, TX:

Harcourt.

Cowan, N. (1984). On short and long auditory stores. Psychological

Bulletin, Vol. 96 No. 2, 341-370.

Gleason, J.B., and Ratner, N.B., 1998. Psycholinguistics. New York:

Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

Liberman, A.M., & Mattingly, I.G. 1985. “The motor theory of speech perception

Revised”. Cognition, 21, 1-36. Retrieved at October 5th

, 2012. from

people.umass.edu/cec/languagecomprehension.pdf.pdf

Lucas, S.E. 1992. The Art of Public Speaking – International Edition. New

York: McGraw Hill, Inc.

Steinberg, D.D., 1993. An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. London:

Longman Group UK Ltd.

Treiman, R., Clifton, C., Jr, Meyer, A. S., & Wurm, L. H. 2003. Language

comprehension and production. Comprehensive Handbook of

Psychology, Volume 4: Experimental Psychology. New York: John

Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The influence of phonetics and phonology knowledge

Education

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