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Is The Teaching of Phonetics Phonology ImportantPhonetics is the physical production of sound, while phonology is the study or science of sound patterns, how it alters words with different sounds e.g. rise and fall. Increasingly today the word phonology is used to describe the whole sound system. Having researched this subject there is definitely some conflicting advice as to whether it is important or not. What I have found by reading different articles is that phonetics and phonology are the back bones of the english language. english is such a complex language to understand that I believe it is vital to assist in the learning process that phonetics and phonology to a certain degree are taught. Pronunciation is the first thing someone notices when you speak to them in their native language, they will tend not to remember how poor or good your grammar was or the extent of your vocabulary, they will just remember whether they could understand your pronunciation effectively. The more I read into this subject the more important I think it is, if you take, for instance, a group of students from a country that does not have a Roman alphabet, to them a group of words written on a page doesn’t mean a thing, they have no prior knowledge of the letters and what sounds they represent. To understand further put yourself in their position, for example trying to learn chinese, when we look at this language written down the letters or symbols mean nothing to us because we have no knowledge of the sounds they represent. So how do we expect a student to learn english competently without being taught phonetics and phonology. Similarly, although students who do have a Roman alphabet will have some prior knowledge of the sounds represented by individual letters they will still have difficulties because they may have different sounds for groups of letters or may not sound certain sounds when put with another sound, so even though they are at an advantage over a non Roman alphabet country they will still require phonetic and phonology teaching to enable them to make the sounds appropriate to the english language. Some people think it is impossible to teach phonetics and phonology, they think classroom tuition of pronunciation has very little effect on the students quality of communication, some go as far to say when teaching a second language it is beyond the control of the teachers to be able to teach different pronunciation skills. I personally do not agree with this and I think devoting time to teaching phonetics and phonology is time well spent and enables the students to communicate more effectively. english is not written phonetically, words can have the same vowels but be pronounced in different ways, such as meat, great and threat, or words that sound the same can be spelt quite differently, e.g. great, date, wait, this is the reason I feel that phonetics, phonology and spelling are of great importance in a bid to learn to speak english confidently and clearly. Dictionaries are an effective tool in helping to understand pronunciation, they will always show the word written in the phonetic alphabet, but for students to understand this without the need for a teacher they must first have been taught how to use the phonetic alphabet. I think therefore it is of the upmost importance for students and teachers alike to be able to understand phonetics and phonology. At the same time we must not have unachievable goals, we cannot expect a student to pronounce the language like a native speaker, but to be able to make themselves understood a good level of ability is needed. I feel that pronunciation, phonetics and phonology are an integral part of learning the skills required to be able to speak english, such as grammar, vocabulary, reading and writing. If the learner wants to learn how to speak english, to communicate intelligibly to another english speaker it is vital to have a sound knowledge and understanding.