Review Text of a Book

Phonetics and Phonology

An Introductory Course Book

Created by               : Refnaldi

Year released           : 2008

Size                          : 20.3 cm x 14.3 cm

Pages                        : 240 pages

Chapters                   : 14 chapters

Purpose                    : Student’s hang out

Phonetics and phonology, an introductory course book, was created by Refnaldi in 2008.  This book was special for students in English language teaching study program at Universitas Negeri Padang.  This book used in phonetics and phonology subject for students in the third semester. It consisted of 240 pages and it is available in every book store with reasonable price. The interesting one was the bibliography which had thirty eight sources (normally, it less than 25 sources).

This book discussed as many as fourteen chapters and several sub-chapters. In the First, discussion began with introduction, which was about phonetics and phonology and the differences.  The second was production of speech, students learned about articulation; included the place articulation and manner articulation. Consonants were in the third chapters, it had several sub chapter; fricatives, stops, Affricates, Nasals, Liquids, Glides, and Syllabic Consonants. Forth was vowels, it discussed about how vowel was produced and the classification. In Fifth was acoustic phonetic which also had two sub-chapters; fundamental and speech sound.

In the sixth chapter was natural class of sound or distinctive feature. The phoneme and the English phoneme were in seventh and eight chapters which about identifying phonemes and the rule. Next, phonological alternation, process and rule discussed the differences between three of them.  Structure of the syllable can be discussed in the next chapter “Syllables”.  Then, English word stress and the rhythm of English were focused on tenth and eleventh chapters. The twelfth was connected speech and intonation which would discuss about assimilation and tones group.  The last was constrains: optimally theory, it was focused on the basic concept of optimally theory.

According to me, this book had excesses and the lacks side. The excess of this book was the completeness. The student could learn about phonetics and phonology with more detail. It also has many pictures that emphasize the writer’s idea. Every chapter also had exercises that would test the student’s knowledge about the lesson. For the lacks, the language that was used in this book was little bit hard to understand. Sometime, the students are difficult to find the core of the lesson. 

In conclusion, I suggest all of the students who learn phonetics and phonology to read this book. The completeness can give more knowledge about phonetics and phonology. This book also easy to find, the students can buy this complete book in every book store.  I believe this book will better if the writer can revise this book and use the words can be easy to understand for the students.