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0 INTRODUCTION
Language plays important roles in daily life for human beings to communicate with
others. Hyacinth Gaudart (2003) said that “in our daily communication with other
people, we use a language. Even, some people probably use more than one
language in their communication”. People use language as communication tool to
share ideas,expressions, and information each other. When some one using
language they can express their ideas and feelings, and share it with others orally or
written communication which enables people all over the world to interact and connect
with one to another.
Non-verbal communication occurs without using any oral or written word. Instead
of written or oral words, it relies on various non-verbal cues like physical movements,
tasks, colours, signs, symbols, and signals charts to express feelings, attitudes or
information. Although no word is used in non-verbal communication, it can effectively
communicate many human feelings more accurately than verbal methods of
communication.
The importance of non-verbal language example like gestures are used to help
convey subtleties of a message. Which they can even replace words in some
situations. For example, if you are interested in what the other person is telling you,
you probably won’t cut them off and say, “Hey that’s interesting! Go ahead, keep
going.” Instead, you may lean closer to them to let them know you are interested and
curious about what they have to say, or you might nod your head in agreement. This
is non-verbal communication. Most of the gestures we use to help convey
messages, we make with our hands.
Writing and speech language differ in many ways (Coulmas & Florian,1989).
Below are some of the ways in which these two forms of language differ:
Writing tends to be more complex, formal and compact than speech with longer
sentences which the punctuation and layout of written texts also have no spoken
equivalent. Examples, writers can make use of punctuation, headings, layout, colours
and other graphical effects in their written texts. Meanwhile, spoken language tends to
be full of repetitions, incomplete sentences, corrections and interruptions, with the
exception of formal speeches and other scripted forms of speech, such as news
reports and scripts for plays and films. Example, speech can use timing, tone, volume,
and timbre to add emotional context to make their speech more interesting.
Writing is usually permanent and written texts cannot usually be changed once
they have been printed or written out and writers receive no immediate feedback from
their readers, except in computer-based communication. Therefore they cannot rely
on context to clarify things so there is more need to explain things clearly and
unambiguously than in speech, except in written correspondence between people
who know one another well. Meanwhile, speech is usually a dynamic interaction
between two or more people. Context and shared knowledge play a major role, so it is
possible to leave much unsaid or indirectly implied. Speech is usually transient,
unless recorded, and speakers can correct themselves and change their utterances
as they go along (Sampson & Geoffrey, 1985).
Phonetics is the science where all aspects of speech are considered and
investigated: how speech is produced using our speech organs, what are the
properties of speech sounds in the air as they travel from the speaker's mouth to the
ear of the listener, and, finally, how we perceive speech and recognise its structural
elements as certain linguistic symbols or signs.
Learning phonetics make us know how the symbols in the dictionary used to
represent each speech sound by learning the International Phonetic Association
(IPA) thus will help us to pronounce certain words correctly. The IPA aims to provide
visually distinctive symbols for all speech sounds which are phonologically distinct in
any language (Trask,1996). Which meant that not only could we learn to transcribe
speech sounds of different accents and languages, but that we could use the symbols
included in dictionaries to help our own pronunciation of new words. This had an
immediate impact for both of us when using English language on holiday, for example,
giving us increased confidence in being able to recognise those small differences
between sounds of different languages. The ability to use the alphabet of the IPA,
definitely enables the student to read the transcriptions provided and helps them to
avoid confusions with similar sounds; this in turn boosts their confidence while trying
to speak an additional language. It is shows,
Besides, the importance study of phonetics is helps students to use the right
intonation to prevent from miscommunication. When learning an English language,
students tend to transfer the intonation habits from their native language into the
second language, forgetting that when used inappropriately, intonation can lead to
misunderstanding and even complete communication breakdown between speakers
coming from two different linguistic backgrounds. This is when phonetics comes in
handy. Phonetics also describes intonation and helps students to recognize,
understand and practice intonation patterns. Example, we will use this rising
intonation pattern when we’re asking questions so the pitch of our voice tends to go
up for instance,‘when does the meeting start?’. The ability to ‘read’ intonation proves
to be extremely useful in many fields such as language teaching and learning. This
shows, study of phonetics helps students to use the right intonation to prevent from
miscommunication.
People with learning disabilities can have trouble reading, writing, spelling or
understanding texts (Kuder, 2003). Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a
developmental disability that can cause significant social, communication, and
behavioural challenges which autism students tends to do a repetition when they
talking to someone and they even did not know the meaning the word that they are
using. For instance, a child may count from one to five repeatedly amid a conversation
that is not related to numbers or a child may continuously repeat words he or she has
heard—a condition called echolalia.
The importance of this knowledge to a teacher-to-be is, teacher can help the
students to understand more deeper about the pronunciation of a word by teaching
the students about phonics in the classroom. The report of National Reading Panel
indicates that teaching children phonics will help them in many ways in life. In the first
instance, phonics reading is very important in helping children to learn how to spell
words. It will be impossible for a person to spell any word correctly if the person is not
able to recognize the sounds of the letters used in forming the words. When a child is
taught phonics, the child will be able to recognize sounds in words and will be able to
spell them correctly. Children have problem in reading because they are not able to
recognize the sounds of the letters of the alphabet in the words they read. Phonics
reading will help children to recognize and associate sounds of the letters of the
alphabet in the word they read. This will help them to improve in their reading skills
and efficiency. In other words, it will be more easier for a child to improve in his
reading skills when a teacher had the knowledge about linguistics and teach them the
phonics.
8.0 CONCLUSION
9.0 REFERENCES
Coulmas, Florian. (1989) . The writings systems of the world. Oxford: Blackwell.
Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright (eds.). 1996. The world's writing systems. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Hyacinth Gaudart. (2003). English Language Teaching Practices. Sasbadi Sdn. Bhd.
Loga Mahesan Baskaran. (2005). A Linguistic Primer for Malaysians. Kuala Lumpur :
University of Malaya Press.
Zaidah Zainal and Tina Abdullah. (2013). Ways of Language Learning. Selngor :
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
John Cárdenas. (2017, July 10). Why it is important for English teacher to learn
linguistics?. Retrieved from
https://www.quora.com/Why-it-is-important-for-English-teacher-to-learn-linguistics
María Luisa Blanco Gómez and Rosalie Henderson Osborne. Linguistics and
language teaching: Friends or foes?. Retrieved from
https://ebuah.uah.es/dspace/bitstream/handle/10017/948/Linguistics%20and%20Lan
guage%20Teaching.%20Friends%20or%20Foes.pdf?sequence=1