English Pronunciation for CommunicationA Practical Course for Students of EnglishByWang GuizhenFaculty of English Language & CultureGuangdong University of Foreign Studies Consonants of the English Language&Chinese EFL Learner’s Difficulties in the Learning Process Why use phonemic symbols?The alphabet which we use to write English has 26 letters but (British) English has 44 sounds. Inevitably, English spelling is not a reliable guide to pronunciation because•Some letters have more than one sound •Sometimes letters are not pronounced at all •The same sound may be represented by different letters •Sometimes syllables indicated by the spelling are not pronounced at all Questions:•How do you pronounce gh in 'enough', 'through' and 'ghost'? (like f in fun, not pronounced, like g in got) •How many syllables are there in 'chocolate'? Phonemes Linguists classify the speech sounds used in a language into a number of abstract categories called phonemes. English, for example, has 44 phonemes, although the number varies according to the dialect of the speaker and the system of the classification. Phonemes are abstract categories which allow us to group together subsets of speech sounds. Even though no two speech sounds, or phones, are identical, all of the phones classified into one phoneme category are similar enough so that they convey the same meaning. Description of the English consonants English consonants can be classified according to 1. the points of articulation2. the manners of articulation3. the state of the vocal cords Points of articulation 1. bilabial (two lips) 2. labio-dental (top teeth/bottom lip) 3. dental (tongue tip/top teeth) 4. alveolar (tongue tip/tooth ridge) 5. post alveolar...
