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Jeanice Lewis

FrontPage

The Schwa //

OUTLINE

Introduction

Most Common Sound

Why Teach Schwa?

Introduction

The schwa sound is found in the following words:

The a is schwa in adept

The e is schwa in synthesis

The i is schwa in decimal

The o is schwa in harmony

The u is schwa in medium

The y is schwa in syringe

Most Common Sound

"In stress-timed languages such as English, stresses occur at regular intervals. The words which are most common for communication of the message, that is, nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs, are normally stressed in connected speech. Grammar words such as Auxiliary Verbs, pronouns, articles, linkers and prepositions are not usually stressed, and are reduced to keep the stress pattern regular. This means they are said faster and at a lower volume than stressed syllables, and the vowel sounds lose their purity, often becoming a schwa. The same thing happens with individual words. While stressed syllables maintain the full vowel sound, unstressed syllables are weakened" (Morley, 2007).

Why Teach Schwa?

"To understand the Concept of Word or sentence stress, learners also need to be aware of the characteristics of 'unstressed', which include the occurrrence of the schwa. If learners expect to hear the full pronunciation of all vowel sounds, they may fail to recognize known language, especially when listening to native speakers. Even if they understand, students often do not notice unstressed auxiliaries, leading to mistakes such as, ‘What you do?’ and ‘They coming now’. Helping your student -to- notice the schwa won’t necessarily lead to an immediate improvement in listening skills or natural-sounding pronunciation, but it will raise their awareness of an important feature of spoken English” (Morley, 2007).

References

Schwa. Retrieved February 8, 2007, from English Plus Web site: http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000383.htm.

Auxiliary Verbs. Retrieved February 8, 2007, from English Plus Web site: http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000319.htm.

Schwa. Retreived February 16, 2007, from Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa.

Commentary by Elizabeth Walker

Hi Jeanice - I enjoied your paper, I just found a couple of things you may want to look at. You could may be put the examples in a chart. The sentence that starts with "Helping your student" I would change to helping your studnets notice and remove the to. The only other thing I could find was under the paragraph Most common sound your refferece needs a space between the coma and the year. Hope this helps. I loved the examples, and you did a great job expaining exactly what schwa is.

Commentary by Maleesa Redish

I am guessing that your still searching for more info on this topic but I think that some related internal links would really help support your page. This was probably a difficult subject to research, I dont know much about it myself. I liked that you provided examples of the a word in which each vowel creates the schwa sound, that gave me a more clear picture of what you were talking about.

Commentary by Crystal Wise

This is a more difficult topic to research. Great examples! I did however find a website that may be of some help for your page. =)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa