Class #4

This class helped me clear up some confusion I had about the reading in Chapter 4. Dr. Smidt really helped me to understand allophones better, and also how to figure out whether words are a basic underlying form or not. Although I read those things in the chapter, I ended up having more confusion about them than I expected once different examples were used. I appreciated the time she took to explain them further.

It would be very interesting to me to see the actual spellings for the words we studied in the exercises. I think that if I were to ever learn Fijian or Samoan, I could probably have a better accent because we have studied the phonology of the words. This is good to keep in mind when teaching English language learners. Although we would never instruct them in the full complexities of linguistics, bits and pieces could go a long way in aiding students with their pronunciation.