By Alexa Rojas Ulloa – Student of English Teaching and Translation

The author Hismanoglu (2012) states in his article that “(. . .) good pronunciation is key to establish successful interaction with others beyond classroom context” (p. 2). Interaction is essential in people’s everyday life and proper pronunciation, in any language, is significant if the goal is to communicate appropriately (Bottari, 2020). Language is part of the culture and its identity that is capable to link people together from around the world. However, interacting with other people in their language and not respecting their culture can produce cultural bias and disrespect towards their society. To prevent this, language learners and teachers must acknowledge the importance of phonemic and phonology awareness because it will help them to respect the structure of the language, appreciate different cultures, and respect multicultural environments.

When there is the proper development of the approach of phonetics and phonology, students build respect for the language and its structure. Phonological awareness plays a big part in the communication process since it is the ability to identify and use the parts of speech correctly. The features that come with phonological awareness create a more open space to comprehend better a language and to make the spoken language more comprehensible for others. However, students still have struggled while understanding words that are written or spoken. Therefore, these approaches help them be able to manipulate units of sounds in the different aspects of a language to make it understandable for other people. This raises awareness of how important it is to respect the language as well as admire and value the culture in which it is spoken (Racism. No Way!, 2021).

More than providing learners with many language skills to improve, languages create a bond to unite communities all over the world. One of the biggest advantages of being able to talk in a second language is getting to communicate in context with more people in different countries that engage learners with the language’s culture and its society. Being aware of the different ways a language can be spoken and how some words can mean something different in every culture shows admiration to it, which leads learners to be more engaged to the language. Holidays, curse words, phrasal verbs, and cultural approaches are important to the community involved in the language, and paying respect to it creates more unified societies that can be able to share more than their language with learners (NCTE, 2005).

Being aware of phonological and phonemic components enhances respect towards language culture. Language is a cultural identity and understanding its components lead to comprehending the multicultural identity in second language acquisition. However, learners don’t need to know and respect the culture of the language to speak it perfectly. These people can respect the structure of the language, so they don’t need to understand the culture to speak perfectly in that second language. Yet, these people might feel superior to native speakers, which can cause hate, racism, xenophobia, and even hate crimes. It's not about rejecting people that don’t speak the language perfectly; it's about teaching the phonemic and phonological awareness of languages to appreciate the cultural approach that this can give to the language learning process (Barailo, 2019, p. 3).

Learners of new languages must give the needed importance to the aspects of learning any language and a new culture. Phonemic and phonological awareness benefit language learners to acquire better pronunciation, rhythm, rhyme, and listening and speaking skills to communicate better in a second language. It provides respect to the native speakers to follow the rules and be aware of their language structure. However, people must be more conscious about the pronunciation of words because that is the correct way to learn a new language, with all the different structures in it. Teachers are a very essential part of teaching phonology and pronunciation because that leads students to be mindful of the diverse aspects that include the learning of a language.

MOXIE es el Canal de ULACIT (www.ulacit.ac.cr), producido por y para los estudiantes universitarios, en alianza con el medio periodístico independiente Delfino.cr, con el propósito de brindarles un espacio para generar y difundir sus ideas.  Se llama Moxie - que en inglés urbano significa tener la capacidad de enfrentar las dificultades con inteligencia, audacia y valentía - en honor a nuestros alumnos, cuyo “moxie” los caracteriza.

References:
  • Barailo, A. (2019). Importance of Cultural Awareness in Speech Language Pathology Importance of Cultural Awareness in Speech Language Pathology Education Education. https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1353&context=honors_proj
  • Bottari, M. (2020) What are Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness. https://heggerty.org/blog/phonological-awareness-and-phonemic-awareness/
  • Hismanoglu, M. (2012). An Investigation of Phonological Awareness of Prospective EFL. https://heggerty.org/blog/phonological-awareness-and-phonemic-awareness/
  • NCTE. (2005, July 31). Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education. https://ncte.org/statement/diverselearnersinee/
  • Racism. No Way! (2021). Culture, language and identity - Understanding racism. https://racismnoway.com.au/about-racism/understanding-racism/the-importance-of-culture-language-and-identity/