THE RELEVANCE OF PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

IN THE CLASSES OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE:

A Contrastive Approach

Lúcio Santos da Silva1

Paulo Lúcio Scheffer Lima2

Abstract

This final paper aims to emphasize the relevance of Phonetics and Phonology for
pronunciation teaching and learning in the acquisition of English as a foreign language,
an ability that in many cases, fails to receive due attention in English classes in
Brazilian schools, both in regular ones and in language institutes. Through a
contrastive approach between phonemes of English and Portuguese, this research
aims to suggest that pronunciation must be taught since the initial classes, with the use
of an English phonemic chart and explanations about the vocal tract, so learners can
overcome obstacles that naturally exist when studying a foreign language and learn an
intelligible pronunciation.

Key words: Phonetics. Phonology. Contrastive approach. Pronunciation Teaching.

Intelligibility.
A RELEVÂNCIA DA FONÉTICA E DA FONOLOGIA
NAS AULAS DE INGLÊS COMO LÍNGUA ESTRANGEIRA: Uma
Abordagem Contrastiva

Resumo

Este trabalho de conclusão de curso pretende enfatizar a relevância da fonética e da

fonologia para o ensino e a aprendizagem da pronúncia na aquisição do inglês como
língua estrangeira, uma habilidade que, em muitos casos, não recebe a devida
atenção nas aulas de inglês no Brasil, tanto na escola regular como nas escolas de
idiomas. Através de uma abordagem contrastiva entre fonemas do inglês e do
português, esta pesquisa pretende sugerir que a pronúncia deve ser ensinada desde
as aulas iniciais, com o uso de um quadro fonético da língua inglesa e explicações
sobre o aparelho fonador, a fim de que os alunos possam superar obstáculos que

1
Languages graduate from Centro Universitário Geraldo Di Biase, 2018.
2
Advising teacher, holding a B.A. in Languages from UGB and an MSc. in English Literature from
UERJ; he is part of the Geraldo Di Biase undergraduate and graduate faculties.

Rev. Episteme Transversalis, Volta Redonda-RJ, v.9, n.2, p.311-331, 2018

naturalmente existem ao se estudar uma língua estrangeira e aprendam uma
pronúncia inteligível.

Palavras-chave: Fonética. Fonologia. Abordagem contrastiva. Ensino de pronúncia.

Inteligibilidade.

Introduction

English is today’s lingua franca, which results in a growth in the number of

specialized English schools throughout the national territory, besides being a subject
that integrates the Common National Base of regular education. It is known that,
through the ages, linguists had favored grammatical studies rather than pronunciation,
which began to be better approached in the early twentieth century after the
International Phonetic Association, which created the International Phonetic Alphabet,
emerged in 1886. Recently, the teaching of English in Brazil has been changing from
the traditional focus on grammar to textual and communicative approaches, both in
regular schools and in language schools. However, in many cases, pronunciation
teaching continues to be neglected, not infrequently restricting itself, when it happens,
to listening to words and statements, and repeating them without attention to phonetic
criteria. The crucial difference between the acquisition of Portuguese as the first
language (L1) and the acquisition of English (L2) as a foreign language (EFL) is that
Brazilian speakers are not exposed to English daily, as they are exposed to their
mother tongue from the earliest age. For this reason, in the few weekly EFL classes,
the little practice of listening to words and phrases previously recorded or spoken by
the teacher, in order to repeat them without the correct knowledge of the phonemes is
not enough to provide an effective learning for most students. Moreover, it may
sediment incorrect pronunciations, which cannot be confused with linguistic variation,
and which can lead to misunderstandings by native speakers of English.
This paper questions if this situation can change so Brazilian speakers of English
can improve their pronunciation. The hypothesis is that this change is feasible,
provided there is no search for a “perfect pronunciation”, but a search for an intelligible

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 pronunciation which allows Brazilian speakers of English to
communicate effectively with native speakers of English and
speakers of English as an international language. That is why
this paper emphasizes the need for pronunciation teaching to receive the due attention
from teachers.
Moreover, this paper intends to show the relevance of Phonetics and Phonology
for the teaching and learning of pronunciation, which can be more effective if it is done
through a contrastive approach between the Portuguese and English phonemes since
the first lessons, so learners gradually identify the sounds that do not exist in
Portuguese and progressively familiarize with them.

The Relevance of Teaching Pronunciation

The purpose of language is communication, and language has four skills that
enable people to communicate: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Reading and
listening are receptive skills, because they involve responding to language rather than
producing it, whereas writing and speaking are productive skills, because they involve
producing language rather than receiving it.
This paper focuses on speaking and on an essential feature to produce oral
language accurately: pronunciation, because this feature has been neglected in most
Brazilian regular schools and in language schools too. In our country, many teachers
are not able to teach pronunciation correctly, because they did not learn it appropriately
and because they do not know tools and methods that can help them teach their
learners how to pronounce words and sentences in a fitting way. English classes
frequently base on grammar, and learners have few opportunities for listening and
speaking. When such rare opportunities happen, teachers restrain pronunciation to
listening to words and sentences and repeating them carelessly, instead of doing it with
techniques that can help students develop consciousness about English pronunciation.
Another obstacle for the teaching of pronunciation is that some students believe
that learning English means overestimating the culture of English-speaking countries
and underestimating the culture of the learners’ country. Paula (2010, p.4) emphasizes
that such an idea must be demystified. Lindsay and Knight (2011, p.10) say,
“Nowadays this is less significant as English is used extensively as a world or

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international language, not associated with any one country”. In fact, the more one
knows about the culture of English-speaking countries the better one can understand
English and, consequently, the better they can speak and learn pronunciation;
however, it does not mean despising one’s own culture, because knowledge of the
world widens perception.
According to Lindsay and Knight, “speaking […] involves putting a message
together, communicating the message, and interacting with other people. […] As with
listening, this is a complex task and learners need a lot of practice to develop this skill.”
(LINDSAY; KNIGHT, 2011, p.57). From such statements, one can understand that
speaking means interaction, and that there has to be an intensive practice for the
learners to become able to communicating efficiently. Among other factors, interaction
demands an intelligible pronunciation, since it can provide a clearer communication.
“Clearer” does not mean perfect, because even native speakers of any language
sometimes ask each other for clarification and/or explanation, i.e. mistakes are natural
among native speakers of English as well. One must understand that people who do
not speak clearly are often misunderstood, and sometimes mistakes may be harmful.
That is why pronunciation cannot be neglected in English classes.
According to Bilefsky and Minder (2017), in 2015, teenage Dutch Vera Mol went
to Spain with her friends, and the group decided to practice bungee jumping, a very
dangerous sport. After attaching the harness to her body, the Spanish instructor told
her “No jump!” because the rope had not been tied to the harness yet; however, she
misunderstood the order and jumped towards death. This interaction between non-
native speakers of English resulted in a tragedy because of two language mistakes.
First, according to English grammar rules, the phrase should have been
“Don’t jump!”, but the instructor was influenced by Spanish syntax (“No saltes!”) and
said “No jump!”. Second, he mispronounced the adverb no, so Vera Mol understood
“Now, jump!” instead of “No jump!” As a matter of safety, the instructor should have
avoided to use the verb jump, he had better say “Wait!” besides making gestures that
meant that the girl could not jump yet. This tragedy must warn people that although

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English has become an international language, speaking it demands respecting
grammar rules, and requires an intelligible (not “perfect”) pronunciation.
Teaching pronunciation requires parameters that help teachers do their job; that
is why among all Englishes around the world, this paper focuses on American English
since most of the movies and TV series shown in our country come from the
USA. English, as any other language, varies. If in a small country like England there
are many varieties of English, in a large one as the United States, there are even more
varieties. Due to this fact, it is necessary to decide which variation of American English
will be the parameter for the teachers to work with, although some linguists reject the
label “Standard English”. Oliveira (2015, p.41) rejects this concept, stating that it is just
ideological and abstract, because it is not possible to define what standard means and
where the so-called Standard English is spoken. Moreover, according to him, accepting
such a concept would be admitting that there is only one correct way to speak English.
Other linguists disagree about the concept of Standard English as well, since,
according to them, it means the imposing of a variety by the elite, which regards it as
the best one whereas the others are labelled as inferior.
Richard Nordquist mentions a statement by Zoltán Kövecses, who explains how
unfair the label “Standard English” can be:

Standard American English is not a variety of English

that is inherently standard, or better, or more
beautiful, or more logical than other forms of English.
What makes it standard is that some speakers of
American English have the social power to impose
the variety of English they happen to use on speakers
of other varieties. They are in a position to make their
English the prestigious form of English. They can do
so thanks to their social power. Since this social
power is desired by other people, the English spoken
by people with power is also desirable for others. In
this sense, the possession of the prestigious variety
is the possession of social power. (KÖVECSES,
2000 apud NORDQUIST, 2017)

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Despite this controversy, some linguists claim that there is a prestigious variety of
English called Standard American English (SAE) or General American (GAE).
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary,

Standard English is the English that with respect to

spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary is
substantially uniform though not devoid of regional
differences, that is well established by usage in the
formal and informal speech and writing of the
educated, and that is widely recognized as
acceptable wherever English is spoken and
understood. (THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER
DICTIONARY, 2017)

The intent of this paper is not to discuss whether the concept of Standard English
is correct or not; its target is to suggest some pedagogical strategies for teaching
pronunciation. Therefore, using Standard American English and its grammar rules is
only a way to reach the objective of helping Brazilian learners of English to speak
accurately, especially because in formal situations that is the kind of speech which will
be required. It means that, according to the interests of the learners, other varieties of
English may be taught, that is, the suggestions presented in this paper are worthy for
Creole, British English, Australian English, Jamaican English, and so on.
One must understand that learning informal English is essential as well because
most of the time people speak such a way; therefore, English teachers must be very
careful so they do not teach their learners to stick to bookish English. Nonnative
speakers of English must try to sound as natural as native speakers do.

The Relevance of Knowing Phonetics and Phonology

According to Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin (2007, p.3), a revolutionary

step for the teaching of pronunciation happened in 1886, when phoneticians Henry
Sweet, Wilhelm Viëtor and Paul Gassy founded the International Phonetic Association
and developed the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which consists of all the
phonemes that humans can produce. A phoneme is the minimum distinctive sound in

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any language, and every word is formed by the combination of phonemes. In the
aforementioned alphabet, each phoneme is represented by a written symbol that
enables readers to understand how it sounds. As each symbol represents a different
phoneme, it is possible to transcribe all the words phonemically, which means that for
those who know phonemic transcription, a dictionary is not only a source of meaning
or translation, but also a means to learn how to pronounce words they have never read
and/or heard before. For example, if someone looks up the word “foodstuffs” in a
dictionary, they will not only find its meaning and/or translation but they will also find its
phonemic transcription /’fu:dstʌfs/, which will help them learn how to pronounce it. To
get such an achievement, students need to learn know how each phoneme sounds
and how the vocal tract articulates to produce it.
Some teachers and students are likely to claim that knowing phonemic
transcriptions is useless since nowadays electronic and online dictionaries provide
audio recordings of the words pronunciation. This point of view may not be wrong;
however, the more resources one has the better one learns. Teachers must be aware
that learners, especially beginners, may mishear some phones if they are not quite
familiar to the sounds of English, i.e., many learners tend to hear a word the way they
believe it sounds, especially if its spelling is similar to that of another word they already
know, including words from their mother tongue.
It is essential to understand that English is not a phonetic language, so according
to Szynalski (2018), “the spelling of an English word does not tell you how you should
pronounce it.” That is the reason why the best dictionaries, including electronic and
online ones, have phonemic transcriptions. Listening to words and trying to repeat them
without criteria helps few students learn accurate pronunciation, whereas practicing
pronunciation with the help of phonemic transcriptions and audio recordings together
accelerates the learning process because learners can develop their consciousness
and realize how the phonemes really sound. With such resources, students can focus
on the sounds they consider as the most difficult. The following statement by Amanda
Lillet shows how practicing pronunciation is important:

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 One of the comments I frequently hear from my
students is how working on pronunciation greatly
improves their listening comprehension. It’s true.
Practicing pronouncing specific sounds has the
fantastic side benefit of training your ears to hear
things that you may have never heard before. You
see, it’s very difficult to pronounce something that you
can’t hear, and our brains – after we’re 13 or 14 years
old – stop easily hearing sounds that we haven’t been
exposed to. The good news is that that doesn’t mean
you can’t learn to hear sounds even if you’re older
than that […]. (LILLET, 2016)

Phonemic transcriptions also help learners to know where stress falls in words,
which is hard to realize based only on spelling, since English words do not have a
graphic symbol to identify the stressed syllable, and stress placement in English is not
as predictable as it is in languages as Portuguese. The most common sign used in
phonemic and phonetic transcriptions to show the stressed syllable is a superscript
accent mark (ˈ) before such a syllable, whereas the secondary stress syllable is
indicated by a subscript accent (ˌ) placed before it; the unstressed syllables have no
mark. For example, in the word meningitis the stressed syllable is gi-, while the
secondary stress syllable is men-, so it is transcribed /ˌmɛnɪnˈʤaɪtɪs/. Another reason
to be able to read phonemic transcriptions is that sometimes it is not possible to have
access to audio recordings.
In short, everything stated so far means that English teachers must know
Phonetics and Phonology, since this knowledge allows them to identify and classify
phonemes, read phonemic and phonetic transcriptions, and understand the operation
of the vocal tract because all of these abilities are essential to provide good English
pronunciation classes. However, as stated before, Brazilian EFL learners have few
opportunities to speak during classes, and most of the time it is done without criteria,
which impedes them from acquiring an accurate and intelligible pronunciation. It
happens because many teachers do not know Phonetics and Phonology and
consequently, they do not know the vocal tract and the IPA phonemic chart. Indeed,
they do not even know what a phoneme is, and thus they fail in teaching pronunciation
appropriately. This situation needs to change immediately.
One needs to know that although humans are able to produce many different
phonemes, each language uses only a few of them. This way, during the acquisition of
our mother tongue, we learn only the phonemes that feature in it. That is why
pronouncing phonemes from other languages may be hard to some learners, since
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their vocal tracts are not familiarized with such articulations. That is another reason
why during English classes teachers must show students exactly how to articulate their
vocal tracts in order to get the intended sounds.
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2017) defines Phonetics as “[…] the
study and systematic classification of the sounds made in spoken utterance […]”. The
sounds mentioned in this definition (phones) are produced by the articulation of the
elements of the vocal tract. The image below shows the vocal tract.

Image 1. The Vocal Tract

Source: https://pronuncian.com/the-vocal-tract

According to Spratt, Pulverness and Williams (2008, p.13), “Phonology is the

study of the sound features used in a language to communicate meaning. In English
these features include phonemes, word stress, sentence stress and intonation.”

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One of the first things students need to learn is that phonemes and letters cannot be
confused with each other. Firstly, because one single letter can represent different
phonemes; for example, letter a can sound as /æ/ /ɪ/ /ə/ /ɑ/ /ɔ/ /ɛ/ and /eɪ/, as it does in
cat, leverage, about, hot, chalk, dictionary and mate, respectively. Secondly, because
more than one letter can combine to make a phoneme, as sh do in sheep /ʃi:p/. Finally,
because each phoneme represents only one sound. Phonemes are vowels
(monophthongs and diphthongs) and consonants, and humans produce each one of
them due to a different articulation of the vocal tract.
Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin (2007, p.93) define vowels as “sounds in which
there is continual vibration of the vocal cords and the airstream is allowed to escape
from the mouth in an unobstructed manner, without any interruption”. Dubois et al.
(2014, p. 388) state that “a monophthong is a vowel that does not change perceptibly
in the course of its emission [...], as opposed to diphthongs [...], triphthongs, etc”.
Dubois et al. (2014, p. 190) advocate that “a diphthong is a vowel that changes its
timbre once in the course of its emission, so that one can hear some vocal quality at
the beginning and another at the end”. Finally, Dubois et al. (2014, p. 135) define a
consonant as “a sound whose articulation involves obstruction, totally or partially, in
one or several points of the vocal tract. The presence of this obstacle in the passage
of the air causes a noise that constitutes the consonant or an element of the
consonant.”3
According to Williamson (2015) the vowels are classified according to five
criteria: openness of the mouth (close, close-mid, open-mid, open), tongue elevation
(high, mid, low), position of tongue elevation (front, central, back), length (long, short),
and lip shape (rounded, unrounded). In fact, according to their roundness, lips can be
spread, half-spread, nearly rounded or rounded. According to Cristófaro-Silva (2015,
p. 38), instead of considering the length of the vowels, some scholars of NAE classify
the long vowels as tense and the short vowels as lax. This criterion comes from the
fact that the articulation of the tense vowels demands more muscle tension than that
of the lax vowels, with the result that the tense ones feature in the more extreme

3
All the concepts by Dubois et al were translated from Portuguese by the author.
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positions in the mouth, while the lax vowels feature in the more centered positions.
Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin (2007, p. 42-46) state that each consonant is
classified according to three criteria: place of articulation (bilabial, labiodental, dental,
alveolar, palatal, velar, glottal), manner of articulation (stop, fricative, affricate, nasal,
liquid, glide) and voicing (voiceless, voiced).
English teachers must be aware of all these criteria and classifications so they
can effectively teach their learners how to pronounce unknown phonemes accurately.
However, they must remember that regular speakers of any language do not know
such technical terms; they just speak naturally. Therefore, in order to avoid the classes
from being disgusting and causing learners to give up studying English, explanations
about the phonemes and the vocal tract must be simple, i.e. learners do not need to
memorize all those names, they just need to understand how to articulate their vocal
tracts consciously until they are finally ready to do it naturally. In other words, English
classes must be pleasant and stimulating.
As not all the phonemes feature in each language, every language has its own
phonetic alphabet, as part of the general IPA. Adrian Underhill (2018) considers that
SAE has 40 phonemes: 16 vowels (11 monophthongs and 5 diphthongs) and 24
consonants as shown on the phonemic chart below:

Image 2. Standard American English Phonemic Chart

Source: http://www.adrianunderhill.com/the-pronunciation-charts/ (2018)

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Although on the board above the so-called “short e” (LILLET, 2016) is represented as
/e/, in this paper the original IPA symbol /ɛ/ will be used such as Cristófaro-Silva (2015,
p.86) and Lillet (2016) do because, as a matter of fact, in SAE the phoneme /e/ occurs
only in the diphthong /eɪ/. Using /e/ instead of /ɛ/ would not allow the author of this
article to do a contrastive approach between the Portuguese and English vowels, as it
will be seen further. Furthermore, the long vowels will be followed by a colon (:).

Contrastive Approach

Brazilian learners of English usually find it hard to identify and pronounce the
sounds of English that do not exist in Portuguese, both vowels and consonants, so
before listening and speaking, it is essential to learn and understand such phonemes.
A suggestion to do it is through a contrastive approach so learners can be aware of
what sounds are common and which ones are different between L1 (Portuguese) and
L2 (English). Such an approach consists of comparing English phonemes to each other
as well.
From the 24 consonants of SAE, three do not exist in Portuguese: /θ/, /ð/ and
/ŋ/. The “th” phonemes, /θ/ and /ð/, are the strangest English consonants for Brazilian
speakers of English because they are interdental, an articulation that does not happen
in Portuguese and causes shy students to feel embarrassed when pronouncing them.
However, teachers can give a simple explanation about such phonemes, by telling their
learners to try to pronounce /t/ and /d/ or /s/ and /z/ with the tongue between the teeth.
Teaching these consonants in a fun way can help learners overcome shyness.
Learners must realize they cannot pronounce /θ/ like /f/ or /s/ because it may change
the meaning of the words. For example, three cannot be pronounced as /fri:/ because
it becomes the word free; the right pronunciation is /θri:/. Likewise, think cannot be
pronounced as /sɪŋk/ because it becomes the verb sink; the right pronunciation is
/θɪŋk/. Equally, pronouncing /ð/ as /d/ may change the meaning of the words. For
example, they cannot be pronounced as /deɪ/ because it becomes day; the correct
pronunciation is /ðeɪ/. When speaking ng-ending words Brazilian speakers of English

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tend to pronounce the final g. However, such syllables end with the velar consonant
/ŋ/. For instance, typing is pronounced /ˈtaɪpɪŋ/, not /ˈtaɪpɪng/; lung is pronounced /lʌŋ/,
not /lʌŋg/. Phoneme /ŋ/ sounds a little like the Portuguese uvular consonant / /, and
Brazilian learners of English can realize that especially when an -ng ending word
precedes a word that starts with a vowel, e.g. making it /ˈmeɪkɪŋɪt/. Besides these three
consonants, the voiceless glottal consonant /h/ does not exist in Portuguese either,
however pronouncing the voiced uvular consonant /R/ instead of /h/, as most Brazilian
speakers of English do, causes no misunderstanding, e.g. house /Raʊs/ instead of
/haʊs/.
Another sound we need to deal with in a contrastive approach is the phoneme
/r/ (retroflex r) because in some cities of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso, Mato
Grosso do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul this phoneme exists
only at the end of syllables as in dor /dor/, and not at the beginning and in the middle
of syllables as it does in English, e.g., relegate /ˈrɛlɪgeɪt/ and break /breɪk/.
Moreover, in most the Brazilian territory such a phoneme is not spoken. Consequently,
producing utterances like American Horror Story may not be easy for many Brazilian
learners of English. As the Portuguese phoneme /R/ and the English phoneme /r/ are
both represented by the letter r or the rr digraph, it is essential to contrast them with
each other, in order to prevent learners from pronouncing /R/ or /h/ instead of /r/
because it may change the meaning of words. For instance, if a learner pronounces
rabbit, Rome and rate as [ˈhæbɪt], [hoʊm] and [heɪt], respectively, in fact, they will be
saying habit, home and hate. These words must be pronounced as /ˈræbɪt/, /roʊm/ and
/reɪt/, respectively.
The phonemes /t/ and /d/ deserve a special attention from teachers and students
of American English because when they come at the beginning of unstressed syllables
and occur between vowels or between an r and a vowel sound, they are pronounced
as an alveolar r / / sounds in Portuguese, such as in areia /a eia/. When the
unstressed syllable spells with t, some American books and dictionaries transcribe the
flap allophone / / as a flap t /t̬ /; for example: better /ˈbɛt̬ ər/, party /ˈpɑrt̬ i/. When the

unstressed syllable spells with d, the flap allophone / / is transcribed as /d/; for
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example: daddy /ˈdædi/, doodle /ˈdu:dl/. In both words while the first /d/ is a stop, the
second is a flap and sounds as / /. This happens because for native speakers of SAE
the flap allophone is a quick d sound. Therefore, words as matter /ˈmæt̬ er/ and madder
/ˈmæder/ sound the same: /ˈmæ er/.
As L1 (Portuguese) sometimes influences in the learning of L2 (English), when
reading words spelled with a t or a d preceding a vowel that represents long e /i:/ and
short i /ɪ/, learners need to remember that the phonemes /t/ and /d/ are alveolar in
English, in order to avoid pronouncing the palato-alveolar phonemes /ʧ/ and /ʤ/. For
example, Dean /di:n/, not /ʤi:n/, which is the pronunciation of Jean; tip /tɪp/, not /ʧɪp/,
which is the pronunciation of chip. In English, the digraph ch often represents the
phoneme /ʧ/, so Brazilian learners of English must be careful with the influence of
Portuguese, in order to avoid pronouncing /ʃ/. For example, chip /ʧɪp/, not /ʃɪp/, which
is the pronunciation of ship.
In English letters l, m and n represent phonemes /l/, /m/ and /n/ respectively, so
at the end of syllables and words they sound that way, whereas at the end of
Portuguese syllables, letter l sounds as /u/ and letters m and n nasalize and
diphthongize the previous vowel sound. Brazilian students of English can more easily
realize that when words ending with such consonants precede words that start with
vowel sounds. Therefore, besides comparing the English pronunciation of these
consonants in final position to their Brazilian counterparts, it is important to expose
learners to utterances in which such a linking occurs. For example, Pam is alone in the
house /pæmɪzæˈloʊnɪnðəhaʊs/; Fill in the form /fɪlɪnðəfɔ:rm/.
Lindsay and Knight (2011, p.28) warn: “Italians tend to add an extra vowel to
some final consonants such as big, or lead”. Such a warning is worthy to Brazilians
too. For example, Brazilians tend to pronounce haze as [ˈheɪzi], instead of [heɪz], and
this extra final vowel turns the noun haze into the adjective hazy.
The hardest difficulties in pronunciation come from the vowels, since realizing
the articulations of the vocal tract to produce them is harder than realizing those which
are needed to produce the consonants. Furthermore, SAE has seven vowels that do
not exist in Portuguese, /æ/ /ɪ/ /ə/ /ʊ/ /ɜ/ /ʌ/ and /ɑ/, and vowels may be reduced in
unstressed syllables, which does not happen in Portuguese. These facts cause great
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confusion for Brazilian learners of English. Therefore, teachers must tell learners the
differences and similarities of English and Portuguese vowels carefully, showing them
vertical and horizontal positions of the tongue, lip posture and openness of the mouth.
If learners fail in pronouncing vowels accurately, their interlocutors may misunderstand
them, because their pronunciation may not be intelligible. Contrasting the English
vowels to the Portuguese vowels is essential since it helps students perceive the
similar ones and the different ones. Then, contrasting English vowels with one another
will show learners that replacing one by the other often causes misunderstanding.
According to Cristófaro-Silva (2017, p.171), some speakers of Brazilian
Portuguese know the English vowel /ʌ/, which sounds similarly to the Portuguese vowel
/ɐ/̃ ; however, they find it hard to pronounce when it precedes an oral consonant such
as in the word above /əˈbʌv/ because in Portuguese this phoneme is a nasal vowel as
in cama /ˈkɐma/ and ̃ amanhã /amɐˈ̃ ɐ/̃ . Brazilian learners of English tend to confuse
/ʌ/ with /ɔ:/ or /o/, especially when the syllable spells with o, due to Portuguese
influence, then they pronounce /əˈbɔ:v/ or /əˈbov/ instead of
/əˈbʌv/ (above); /ˈɔ:ðər/ instead of /ˈʌðər/ (other). Phoneme /ʌ/ is a low near-back half-
spread vowel, while /ɔ:/ is a low-mid back nearly rounded vowel; and /o/ does not exist
in SAE, except in the diphthong /oʊ/.
Vowel /ɑ:/ is usually confused with /ɔ:/ by Brazilians since both are often
represented by letter o, phoneme /ɑ:/ does not exist in Portuguese, and they sound
similarly. However, /ɑ:/ is a low near-back nearly rounded vowel and /ɔ:/ is a low-mid
back rounded vowel. For example, Ford /fɔ:rd/, rock /rɑk/.
Brazilian students of English tend to consider two sounds of the oo spelled
syllables as the same, however, they are different: /ʊ/ and /u:/. For example, hood
/hʊd/, hoof /hu:f/. Vowel /ʊ/ also spells u (full), o (wolf) and oul (should), while /u:/ also
spells u (illusion), o (prove), ou (coupon), wo (two), ui (fruit), oe (shoe), ue (true), ew
(few), eu (accurate), ieu (lieu), ioux (Sioux). Replacing /ʊ/ with /u:/ or /ɑ:/ by /ɔ:/ is not
too harmful to communication since there are no competing words. However,
pronouncing the right vowels provides learners a more native-like accent and avoids
clarification requests.

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The next pairs of vowels deserve a very special attention from teachers and students
because realizing the ones that do not exist in Portuguese is not easy and pronouncing
them is not easy either. Besides, replacing one with the other will often change the
meaning of the words. Brazilian learners of American English usually find it hard to tell
the short a /æ/ from the short e /ɛ/ because they sound quite similar to each other. The
difference between them is that /æ/ is a low front spread vowel, while /ɛ/ is a low-mid
front spread vowel. Therefore, contrasting these phonemes is very important so
learners become able to distinguish them when listening and speaking.
For example, Pat /pæt/, pet /pɛt/.
Distinguishing the vowels /i:/ (long e) and /ɪ/ (short i) is a hard task for Brazilian
speakers of English, including teachers. Influenced by Portuguese, they tend to
pronounce the letter i as /i:/ when it does not sound as /aɪ/ because in Portuguese the
oral letter i always sounds as /i/. Consequently, Brazilians may be misunderstood by
interlocutors because changing such phonemes often changes meaning, as these
pairs of words show: peel /pi:l/ and pill /pɪl/; bean /bi:n/ and bin /bɪn/. It means that
vowels length is a very important feature to understand English words meaning. When
teachers show such a contrast, learners realize these vowels are different. However,
as /ɪ/ does not exist in Portuguese, learners are inclined to believe it sounds as the
Portuguese vowel /e/; that is why explaining and comparing these vowel articulations
is essential. While /i:/ is a high front spread vowel, /ɪ/ is a high near-front half-spread
vowel and /e/, which does not exist in SAE, except in the diphthong /eɪ/, is a high-mid
front spread vowel.
The long vowel /ɜ/ is not familiar to native speakers of Portuguese; so, it may be
confused with /o/ due to the spelling of some words as work /wɜ:rk/ and word /wɜ:rd/.
Phoneme /ɜ/ is a near-high central half-spread vowel, which teachers can contrast with
/ʌ/, a low near-back half-spread vowel. Linguists classify /ɜ/ as an rcontrolled vowel
since it is always followed by an r /r/, such as in dirt /dɜrt/ and concern /kənˈsɜrn/. This
vowel always features in stressed syllables.
Considered as the most common vowel sound in spoken English, phoneme /ə/,
called schwa, is a high-mid central half-spread vowel, whose length is very short. It

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occurs in unstressed syllables of multi-syllable words and as a reduced vowel sound
in function words. Any of the five vowel letters can represent schwa, which is a lax
vowel, i.e. the vocal tract is completely relaxed when pronouncing it. According to Lillet
(2018), “the purpose of schwa is to allow unstressed syllables to be said more quickly
so the main beats of spoken words are easier to place on the stressed syllables”.
Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin (2007, p.132) state, “the difference between
stressed and unstressed syllables is greater in English than in most other languages
[…]”. So, unstressed syllables are reduced in some multi-syllable words, such as
perfection /pərˈfɛkʃn/, although not all multi-syllable words have reduced vowels, which
is the case with educated /ˈɛʤu:keɪt̬ ɪd/.
Although considered as not pertaining to the inventory of Portuguese, in fact,
according to Cristófaro-Silva (2015, p.198), the schwa articulates and sounds similar
to the unstressed final a of Brazilian Portuguese; for example, boca /ˈbokə/ and caixa
/ˈkaɪʃə/. As native speakers of Portuguese consider this final vowel as an a, they do
not recognize the vowel /ə/ in English, because it occurs not only at the end of words
as it does in Portuguese, but also at the beginning and in the middle of multi-syllable
words, such as obey /əˈbeɪ/, apartment /əˈpɑ:rtmənt/ and disproportionate
/dɪsprəˈpɔ:rʃənət/. The pronunciation of the schwa is very close to a short u /ʌ/, which
is a low central half-spread vowel, but this one features on stressed syllables.
In order to better understand the relevance of the schwa to spoken English, it is
necessary to move from segmental features towards suprasegmental features.
According to Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin (2007, p.152), in spoken English
“the length of an utterance depends not on the number of syllables […] but rather on
the number of stresses”. It means that content words – nouns, main verbs, adjectives,
possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, interrogatives, negative contractions,
adverbs and adverbial particles – are often stressed. On the other hand, function
words: articles, auxiliary verbs, personal pronouns, possessive adjectives,
demonstrative adjectives, prepositions and conjunctions, are usually unstressed,
except when emphasized or in final position. Function words can have two different
pronunciations: a citation form, which features in a dictionary transcription, and a
reduced form, which features in spoken utterances; the citation form also happens

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when such words are spoken isolated or are emphasized in sentences. For example,
the citation form of the preposition for is /fɔ:r/, and its reduced form is [fər]. Reduced
form: We’re searching for it [wi:rˈsɜrʧɪŋfərɪt]. Citation form: It’s what we’re searching for
[ɪtswətwi:rˈsɜrʧɪŋfɔ:r]. Citing Avery and Ehrlich, Nordquist shows us how natural
pronouncing the schwa is.
It is extremely important to recognize that
pronouncing unstressed vowels as schwa is not lazy
or sloppy. All native speakers of Standard English
(including the Queen of England, the Prime Minister
of Canada, and the President of the United States!)
use schwa." (AVERY; EHRLICH, 2013 apud
NORDQUIST, 2018)

Therefore, EFL teachers and their learners must realize that learning to use the
schwa appropriately is also an essential key to get an accurate pronunciation and a
more native-like accent.
After discussing some aspects of English pronunciation through a contrastive
approach, one can see that learning an intelligible pronunciation of English is possible
and essential to provide a good communication. Contrasting the known phonemes with
the unknown ones and telling the students how to articulate their vocal tracts correctly
in order to produce the sounds they are learning accelerates the learning process and
increases the chances of success. That is why teachers of English need to graduate
from College knowing Phonetics and Phonology and need to find out strategies which
enable them to help each learner overcome individual difficulties as well.

Final Considerations

Teaching English pronunciation in a country where English is not spoken outside

the classroom is not an easy task. However, teachers who are well trained in Phonetics
and Phonology have a greater possibility of success. Ranging from segmental features
to suprasegmental features, they can teach EFL learners how to pronounce phonemes

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accurately so they become able to pronounce words and sentences intelligibly, i.e.
students can become fluent speakers of English.
The average native speaker of any language ignores the study of phonemes in
their mother tongue because they speak naturally, so there can be an initial resistance
to Phonetics and Phonology in the foreign language classroom. Consequently,
teachers must be able to handle the situation by teaching phonemes in a fun way,
without demanding that learners memorize all those technical names, but showing
them that learning the articulations is not that hard and that it is essential for them to
speak confidently and fluently. Being aware that pronunciation is only one feature of
spoken English, teachers also need to teach word and sentence stress, connected
speech, rhythm and intonation, otherwise learners will learn an artificial English and it
may become frustrating for native speakers and Brazilian speakers of English to try to
communicate. However, teachers must never offer their learners the illusion that they
will speak exactly like native speakers of English because eliminating the first language
accent is almost impossible and needless. An intelligible pronunciation is a realistic aim
that can lead to an effective communication if learners make an effort to increase their
vocabulary and to improve their ability to speak English every single day.
The conclusion of this study is that it is possible to improve the teaching of
pronunciation in the classes of English as a foreign language in Brazil, since it is done
with the use of Phonetics and Phonology and with a contrastive approach between the
Portuguese and English phonemes in order to provide an effective learning.

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