General Debate~~ Do you really need Phonetics and Phonology? -1

[khaledshahin]

I have written this with orientation of students in mind. Needless to say, being successful undergraduate and also graduate, let alone vocational issues, depends heavily on your understanding of your major requirements and goals.
Among levels of linguistic analysis, phonetics and phonology seem to be the most difficult and morphology and syntax the least difficult. This is related, perhaps, with the dominant traditional approach to English in terms of Grammar, i.e., syntax and morphology.
I had a very negative feedback to phonetics and phonology and hope to make things clearer to the students of English.
I start this thread with a major question and wait for your feedback: Why linguistics in English language and literature Dept.? I will wait for a week to collect your feedback and take it from there.

Prof. Khaled Rifaat
Imam University

[Tahani]

First of all ~
dr. Khaled
Glad to see you here in our forum

...

actulally your question is crucial for getting your students' feedback about phonology and phonetics and linguistics in general. As you have said, phonology and phonetics is tne most difficult of linguistics and i agree with you. they work as a guide for pronouncing the most difficult sounds in English and other languages as well. However, learning phonology is not at all as esay as i thought. May be because it is the first time for me to study phonology with its basic foundation . Also, the fiield is very huge and it needs more than one semester to control the basic issues related to phology.
In fact, they are part and parcel of the field of linguistics

that's what i have for now.

I will be back with more ideas and points

Thanx prof for issuing such a great subject

Best Regards

Tahani

[khaledshahin]

Thanks Tahani, your reply implicitly suggests that phonetics and phonology are inescapable. Yes they are. I will ellaborate on that after getting more feedback. It will be a nice idea to adopt this issue and announce it as a general debate in the forum.
Regards,

Prof. Khaled Rifaat

[Shams Almuzaini]

!OH MY GOD!!! Prof. Khaled is here. We are so proud to see you in the forums, and so glad to read your valuable contributions and wide knowledge, Prof. Thank you.

Phonetics and phonology, as most other fields of linguistics, are very important and applicable in many areas in life. Of course, we need them in sociolinguistics, class room teaching, computer programming and speech therapy, to mention few. In sociolinguistics, we use them for getting sociocultural facts, such as differences between genders. In class room, they are essential for correct pronunciation of sounds. There is unlimited number for the different uses of phonetics and phonology in computer programming, such as voice analysis. In clinicalinguistics, they are one of the crucial fields that a speech therapist must learn for better diagnosis and treatment and so on.

Thus, linguistics in general is one of the important subjects that many other subjects benefit from.

Phonetics and phonology are really difficult and the most challenging fields of linguistics -- although our expectations were the opposite. I think the reason for their difficulty is that we are dealing with the smallest units in language (sounds and features) which we use to build larger linguistic units, namely morphemes, phrases, and sentences. Phonetic and phonological units are also difficult to teach and to master in class rooms unlike other fields of linguistics, such as semantics and syntax. For instance, an English teacher or learner will face difficulties to teach or master many of the Arabic consonants. For us as Arabs, English vowels are the most difficult sounds and so on. The same difficulties apply to the other applications of phonetics and phonology to different areas, and the same reasons apply—as I think.

Still, the challenge was so pleasing and enjoyable, and was fruitful and useful to deal with other difficult scientific fields.

Waiting to correct us ,Prof, and to open new perspectives for us.
Thank you.

[Reem Furaih]

I am really glad to see you here sir. You are such a gain to this forum.
This debate can be presented in two questions
Do we know English?
What is English language?
Students of English need to study linguistic courses to enable them to deal with a language in a systematic way. They should be aware of the underlying system of the language i.e. they can be consciously aware of what they unconsciously do when they listen, speak, read and write. As for English teachers, they will be liable to effectively teach their students the language.
Do we really need Phonetics and Phonology?
Absolutely, YES.
Students of English need to know the individual sounds that make up the language, the way these sounds pronounced ; which might differ from the way they are written and realize how to combine these sounds to form larger units.
Kindest Regards,

[khaledshahin]

So, it seems that you agree on the necessity of linguistics in general to your study of English. You are luckier than I was as a fresh graduate. It was very puzzling for me; you all know that there were language departments without linguistics, and it still holds true till now. In these departments, language skills and literature dominate. As far as language proficiency is concerned, these departments were successful in graduating excellent students. Also, study of literature adds to the cultural side of language. This is achieved by the basic requirement that applicants to a Dept. of English should be proficient in English. The job of the department is to provide the students with advanced knowledge about English.
The existence of academic departments of linguistics and applied linguistics in which linguistics courses are the core of the curriculum adds to the complexity of the picture. I will leave this to another post.

Prof. Khaled Rifaat

[Shams Almuzaini]

I might be romantic in my view, but I have never seen “ learning a language” as a goal. For me, language is a mean for cultural knowledge and sciences. I have been always holding this view, and I remember arguing with a T.A of an Arabic faculty who was inferiorating English departments believing that a language can be learnt in constitutions in less than four years or five years. I replied that we are not learning a language merely, but we are dealing with the literature and the linguistics of that language.

This is especially true in faculty of Language and Literature in KSA where Literature and Linguistics are emphasized and very few skill courses are provided. However, faculties of Language and Translation, such as those in King Saud University and King Abdul-Aziz University, emphasize language skills and translation and care little about linguistics. According to the many I have encountered, graduates of faculties of language and translation have better language skills; on the other hand, graduates of faculties of Language and literature have better scientific knowledge about that language.

As for linguistics in particular, I have never seen it as a subject related to English language only, although it greatly helps for acquiring proficiency in the language being learnt. As you know, it is universal, and it is a fruitful science that leads to different other sciences.

[Reem Furaih]

Linguistics is interesting as well. It allows us to utilize analytical skills and creative thinking. It offers important insight into human cognitive abilities. A linguist can realize the internal structure of a language without actually speaking it.
I enjoyed the debate
Thank you everyone

[Tahani]

Linguistics is learnt inconcsiously througly learning other aspects of the second language such as literature and translation. if you ask a student who is studying English literature about some linguistic notions he would bring sarisfied answer. However, that doesnot mean that studying linguistics as aseperate field is not important. of course not because it will add to the scholar furhter crucial information about the languge it self.

i will be back to hear more opinions

[Eman Baghlaf]

First of all, I 'd like to welcome you Pro. Khaled to this forum . It's our honor to have a professor like you with an encyclopedic knowledge.
Regarding your question professor about phonetics and phonology , I believe that both are intertwined i.e. when we have perfect command in phonetics , we can easily understand phonology.
For English students in general studying linguistics is inevitable because it's the core of English , and of course English students particularly need to have perfect command in each filed including linguistics .
So we need to understand and acknowledge the basics of linguistics
Concerning phonology which is an endless and more complex field , students who are studying phonology need to improve themselves constantly and I think it's not enough to study it within few months as we encountered last semester because its really a pure science that cannot be fathomed into it easily that's why we were so puzzled because every concept was new and complex and within such there were many other topics too .
In brief, linguistics is a must but phonology and other specialized branches matter for those who are specialized in.

[khaledshahin]

I don’t think taking courses on pure linguistics will improve the language proficiency. I may conclude this section with: Courses on pure (theoretical) linguistics have nothing to do with language proficiency. Actually, applied linguistics (especially teaching methods) makes use of the outcomes of pure linguistics to come up with teaching grammars.
Provided that courses on pure linguistics are found in departments of linguistics, departments of applied linguistics and language departments, it seems that there should be differences between those. I guess that courses given in language departments may lean towards, say, English. So, in the undergraduate level the focus should be on English morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology. A higher dose of pure linguistics may be dealt with in the graduate level.
If linguistics is not about learning language, what's it about?
Prof. Khaled Rifaat

[Shams Almuzaini]

We are very glad to see you again Prof. Khaled.

I just want to add that although linguistics is basically about learning a language, it greatly contributes to many other fields. It is used for medical diagnosis, medical treatment, forensic analysis, and computer programming and so on.

What do you think? Please, we always need to learn from you.

[Eman Baghlaf]

Yes professor I agree with you .Actually linguistics is necessary generally speaking and both theoretical along with applied linguistics complement each other . Of course theoretical linguistics doesn't have that affect on language proficiency yet I think it is helpful and opens roads for students to taste the beauty of the language .

[khaledshahin]

I don’t think taking courses on pure linguistics will improve the language proficiency. I may conclude this section with: Courses on pure (theoretical) linguistics have nothing to do with language proficiency. Actually, applied linguistics (especially teaching methods) makes use of the outcomes of pure linguistics to come up with teaching grammars.
Provided that courses on pure linguistics are found in departments of linguistics, departments of applied linguistics and language departments, it seems that there should be differences between those. I guess that courses given in language departments may lean towards, say, English. So, in the undergraduate level the focus should be on English morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology. A higher dose of pure linguistics may be dealt with in the graduate level.
If linguistics is not about learning language, what's it about.

Prof. Khaled Rifaat

[Shams Almuzaini]

Thank you for the intersting debate.

Waiting for another

: )

[محي الدين محمد]

ما الفرق بين التجويد و الفونانتك و الفونولوجي

[غازي]

If linguistics is not about learning language, what's it about"."

Prof. Khaled Rifaat[/QUOTE]



It is rather about What is Language?

[ahmadsaeed]

Phonological awareness is the corner stone to master English sounds,hence it leads to overall language proficency .The inerference of the Arabic sounds which sometimes dissimilar to the English sounds makes Arabic learners of English to produce sounds that are accented.

[its me]

phonology plays a great part in mastering any language not just english. in that we have to know how to pronounce sounds so we can diffrentiate between words speacially if we are talking about british pronounciation.
its indeed one of the major issus that we have to underline,unfortunately, we start learning linguistics very late that we have already build to our self a sound system for this particular language or even have forced our native language system on this very language we are learning, and at this point it would be very hard for us to change it..

thanks a punch for this discussion

:) Rajooy

[languages]

I think the most difficult in phonetics and phonology are two main things . First, phonetics needs more than semester to be understood well and phonology needs like phonetics because both are important and significant but both needs good professors to be dealt with and conveying them in a good way for the students .Thats all

best wishes ,

[languages]

Phonetics and Phonology as a part of linguistics are very important . However , our problem is that the period of time is good , it is enough but the way of teaching is the biggest problem since some profs. are teaching these materials without writing on the board and detailing to be able to understand . They just open the book and read as well as they explain what they are reading without any illustration on the board to be enabled us to acquire the information well and in a good way

that is all

Languages

[أسماء الصهيل]

I hope that i am not late replying. A good debate question you raise up here prof.Khaild. It has been long time
i hope you are doing well
I am currently working on a research about a topic similar to this.
let me state my opinion, since i am now in states and studying in a graduate program. We've never touched upon linguistics as we did back then in my previous study whether in undergraduate or graduate studies. to be honest i am enjoying them much more .

i believe that we should approach linguistics in more realistic way. Why do we teach all these technical terms and details!. let's take phonetics course in undergrad curriculum as an example. the goal of this course is supposed to help student be aware of the nature English sounds, stress, rhythm ... etc so they would be able to produce these features correctly. but what really happens is that we load students with all these details, unfortunately we don't help them how to use them
this brings the issue of the important of integrating teaching pronunciation/ or how to teach pronunciation along with phonetics and phonology. this is applicable to all courses like morphology, syntax ...etc


I don’t think taking courses on pure linguistics will improve the language proficiency. I may conclude this section with: Courses on pure (theoretical) linguistics have nothing to do with language proficiency. Actually, applied linguistics (especially teaching methods) makes use of the outcomes of pure linguistics to come up with teaching grammars.
Provided that courses on pure linguistics are found in departments of linguistics, departments of applied linguistics and language departments, it seems that there should be differences between those. I guess that courses given in language departments may lean towards, say, English. So, in the undergraduate level the focus should be on English morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology. A higher dose of pure linguistics may be dealt with in the graduate level.
If linguistics is not about learning language, what's it about.

Prof. Khaled Rifaat
you are absolutely right. Therefore, i strongly believe that grade/undergrad program should identify their goals clearly.
why we have a grad program in linguistics while the goal is to have those student teach English in English department We would rather have applied linguistics

what do you think?

peace

Asma