difficulties in phonetics faced by brazilian students

7/27/2019 Difficulties in Phonetics Faced by Brazilian Students

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ESTCIO DE S UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURES

SUBJECT: ENGLISH LANGUAGE II

THE MAIN DIFFICULTIES BRAZILIAN STUDENTS MAY HAVE WHEN

STUDYING PHONETICS

STUDENT: RICARDO FERNANDES MARQUES

REGISTRATION NUMBER: 20100208908-5

Task presented to

Mrs. Rosangela Salviano

to fulfill the requirements

for: Horas Campos.

NITERI2011


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Introduction

Theme: The main difficulties Brazilian students may have when studying

phonetics.

Source:

Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary.

Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners

Classroom Experience

Objective:

We hereby not only want to present some difficulties Brazilian students

may have when studying phonetics but also analyze the reasons why these

difficulties are placed before them.

Development:

As we will show through this paper, phonetics is very important so a non-

native speaker of English can express himself correctly and also understand

what his counterpart is communicating, aiming the conversation flow, Because

once broken the flow communications fails.

Considering the fact of flow breaking and fail in communication we can

analyze the following problems:

Dif ferent ph onemes

In English we have phonemes that we do not have in Portuguese,

making first a great impact on Portuguese speakers understanding. A good

example can be quite understood through the analysis of some words below:

1 - Day --- They

In this first example, the consonant phonemes are quite different,

although Portuguese speakers most of the time, cant differ them.

Because of our phonemes, Portuguese speakers tend to pronounce both

/dei/. Yet, the right transcriptions and consequently pronunciation for the words

mentioned are/dei/ and ./ei/


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2 - Three --- Free --- Tree

This second example is also quite interesting, because most of

Portuguese speakers tend to pronounce all the 3 words in the same way.

However the transcriptions are the following:

/ri/ --- /fri/ --- /tri/

Besides that, we also have in English, as we have in Portuguese,Homophones.

Below we have a list and some explanation extracted from CambridgeDictionary:

Homophones words that sound the sameHomophones are words that sound the same but have a different meaning andspelling. For example:Mysonis a doctorThe sunis really hot today.The common homophones on this page are grouped according to the soundthat is spelled differently. Words marked UK only sound similar in BritishEnglish. If words are in dark type (e.g. grate great) they are common causesof mistakes for learners.I:bean been

be beefeat feetflea fleeheelhell healleak leekmeat meetpeace piecepeak peekpeal peelreed readsea see

seam seemseen scenesteal steelsuite sweetweak weekweaveweve


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UK: US:rboard boredcaught court UKcoarse course

hoarse horsesauce source UKsaw soarUKsort sought UKwarn worneIbale bailbrake breakgrate greatmale mailpain pane

pair pearpray preyrain reign reinsale sailslay sleighstake steakSunday sundaetale tailwail whalewait weightwaste waist

way weigh

UKUSogroan grownhole wholeknow noloan loneroad rode rowedrole rollrow roesew sosole soulaltar altercurrant currentgorilla guerrillaidol idlemanner manorminer minor


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aIaisleIll isleaye eye Ibuy by byedye die

hi highhire higherrye wrysight siteright writetyre tire

UKearUSerair heirfair farebare bear

pair pearstair staretheretheyre theirware wear where

u:blew blueflew flu fluethrew throughto too two

Critical Appraisal

Importance

Phonetics is quite important due to his great connection between flow

and communication. Once flow is broken, communication is interrupted and

since the phonemes of Portuguese and English are importantly different, this is

an uttermost subject which needs to be taken into account when studying the

languages.

RelevanceAs we previously mentioned when talking about the importance of

phonetics, it is extremely necessary for those who want to maintain a good

conversation in English to have not a vague idea of the subject but do know the

subject in depth so conversation flow is not broken and ideas can be well

communicated, since most of the times it is not the lack of vocabulary which

breaks a conversation but the misunderstanding of the vocabulary used thatmakes so.


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Bibliographical ReferencesBooks:Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary

difficulties in phonetics faced by brazilian students

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