English Phonetics, Phonology and Spelling for the English Language Teacher

This resource supports TESOL preservice and in-service teachers and curriculum designers in teaching pronunciation more effectively. Laurie Bauer examines the patterns of pronunciation found in English, comments on common errors made by learners, provides advice on what must be taught and what can be allowed to pass, and offers commentary on which parts of the curriculum are necessary for beginners and which are of value only to advanced students. Part I introduces the phonetic background; Part II covers phonetics in more detail (consonants, vowels, prosody, phonotactics and syllables); Part III covers phonology (sound changes influenced by adjacent sounds, morphophonemics, stress rules and free variation); and Part IV covers spelling (English spelling, spelling consonants and vowels, and spelling particularly difficult words). The helpful content can be tailored to one’s teaching needs and will support an educator’s efforts to teach pronunciation seriously, whether it is a matter of pronouncing particular vowels accurately or knowing how to interpret the spelling system to get at the appropriate pronunciation.

Laurie Bauer FRSNZ is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is the author of over twenty books including being one of the authors of The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology (2013), which won the LSA’s Leonard Bloomfield Prize. In 2017 he was awarded the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Humanities Medal.