Short vs. Long vowels sounds.

       As a conclusion I can say that English short vowels sounds have some similarities to our mother tongue in the way how they are pronounced because in Spanish we do not exaggerate the pronunciation of the vowels that is why short vowels can be taught easier than long vowels. However, long vowels can differ in the way how are pronounced in English and Spanish, because in Spanish we generally do not pronounce the sounds so longer and we tend to pronounce any sound shorter.Furthemore,we do not have any complication when we try to pronounce these kind of sounds, But in order to develop  a good communication with others it is really necessary to learn how to recognize short and long vowels  to avoid misunderstandings.

Plosives.

     This chapter helped me to understand how a plosive consonant is produced. It says that one articulator moves against another. Also it is really important to form a stricture where the air is compressed and after that the air is released you can be able to produce a noise loud enough to be heard. It is called plosion. Besides, we can find that in order to describe a plosive sound is important analyze what happen in some phases. For example: we have closing phase it is when an articulator moves to form a stricture, Compression phase it is when the compressed air is stopped from escaping, we have release phase when the articulators are moved to allow air to escape, at the end we have post-release phase that is what happen after the last one. In English we can find six plosive sounds that have different places of articulation. They are: p,t,k,b,d,g.In that way we can classify them according to their location.First,p,b are bilabial because the lips are pressed together.Also,t,d are alveolar because the tongue blade  is pressed against the alveolar ridge, On the other hand, k,g are velar because the back of the tongue is pressed against to the hard palate. All six occur in initial, medial, and final position.

Diphthongs and Tripthongs.

      When I began studying this chapter I was able to identify what a diphthong is. It says that it is the combination of two vowels sounds. One is a strong vowel and another is weak vowel. As for example: the word eye /ai/ the first one tends to be longer or stronger while the second one is shorter. In total there are eight diphthongs and we have a way to remember them easily. We can divide them into three groups: Centring Diphthongs. They glide towards the ə (schwa) vowel.

Also we have the closing diphthong which has the characteristic that the all end with a glide towards a closer vowel. As for example some words glide towards /I/ and another glide towards /ʊ.Here you have a web page where you can find some chart that will help us to recognize the different diphthongs in English, also, you can download audio files that can allow you to pronounce in a better way: https://notendur.hi.is/peturk/KENNSLA/02/TOP/VowelsDiphth.html

Talking about the triphtongs it is said that they are the most complex sounds and difficult to recognize them because a “Tripthong is a glide from one vowel to another and to a third” as we can notice in this example: lower /ləʊə / in this case it can be a little difficult to recognize when a native speaker pronounce it rapidly.

Long vowels.

          In this chapter I learnt that in English we can find five long vowels that tend to be longer than the short ones. Also, there was a way that can help us to identify a long vowel. For example: A long vowel has a mark made with two dots (a :). Besides, I could notice that the five long vowels are different from the six short vowels not only in length, but also in quality because the position of the tongue or the lips can change. About the use of the marks to identify the long vowels it is not necessary to keep them because they only have the role to help learner to remember the length difference because there is no presence or absence of stress in this sounds. However, thanks to the symbols we can be able to recognize the difference between long and short vowels even if we omitted the length mark.

The production of speech sounds

      First of all, there was an explanation about how a sound is produced. It says that the muscles that are located in the chest that we use to breathe can help us to produce the flow of air that is needed for producing the speech sounds. Also, in this chapter I was able to learn the different parts of the vocal tract as for example: The pharynx, soft, hard palate, alveolar ridge, tongue, and teeth. On the other hand, I learnt that vowels and consonants can be a little difficult to define because a vowel is a sound that does not have obstruction, however, when we pronounce a consonant we can notice that there is an obstruction. Besides, in order to facilitate the study of vowels and consonants it is necessary to study their distribution because it can differ for each language.Furthemore; IPA (International Phonetic Association) has designed a chart where cardinal vowels are located for a better comprehension. According with the English short vowels should be described in relation with the cardinal vowels and also we can find that the schwa sound has one short vowel with the symbol / ə /. 

Introduction

       When I began studying this chapter I was able to learn how English is pronounced with the accent that is used in England. “The pronunciation that you are likely to hear from most Americans does sound noticeably different from BBC pronounciation”.For this reason it is really important to notice the difference between the American and British pronunciation because in that way we will be able to avoid misunderstandings just at the moment to communicate with others. On the other hand, there was something that really got my attention that was that the accent can be pronounced differently according to the geographical places from different social clases, of different ages and different educational background. Besides, the term accent is generally confused with the term dialect; however, the word dialect is the variation of a language, not only in pronunciation, but also in the use of vocabulary, grammar and word order.