ABSTRACT
Language conveys meanings from one person to another through spoken sounds, written letters or gestures. Speakers know how to pronounce the words, sentences and utterances of their native language. At one level they can tell the difference in pronunciation between ‘drain’ and ‘train’, the sound patterns of the language; at another they know the difference between ‘Fine’, ‘Fine?’ and ‘Fine!’, the intonation patterns in which the voice rises and falls. The phonologies of languages differ in terms of which sounds they use, in the ways they structure sounds into syllables, and in how they use intonation, hard as this may be for many students to appreciate, and difficult as it may be for teachers to teach. It is impossible to imagine a non-disabled speaker of a language who could not pronounce sentences in it.
