I. Introductory Notes.

I.1. Rp is the way to be received in the best circles of society.

(Daniel Jones)

The students are surely aware of the fact that each language has a special sound system. From that system the speakers of that language select certain combinations to construct the many varieties of words used by them. The learner is equally aware that different speakers may be saying these same words somewhat differently. One of such systems is known as Standard English.

The best way to start practising English sounds is to choose such variant of pronunciation that is understandable to the majority of English-speaking population. Of the many existing variants of English pronunciation the so - called Standard English (SE) was selected for the present course. It has the whole spectrum of names, e.g. “Queen's English”, “Southern British Speech”, “Royal Family Speech”, “Received Pronunciation” (RP), etc.. The speech patterns of the educated persons in England vary from “region to region”. One such dialect, however, spoken and maintained by the graduates of the great English Public Schools (actually expensive, private ones) and their families, has come to represent the socially preferred standard of British English. This dialect, once spoken only by the upper classes of the southeast midlands, has come to be known as “Southern British”. Although not so very many people speak that pronunciation variant, it has become our choice, for Standard English or Received Pronunciation is the pronunciation of the educated leaders of England, British radio and television, so it can be perfectly comprehended, perceived and understood by all members of English speaking communities and countries. Actually, this preferred pattern or dialect is found in use today all over England, possessing no real distinctive or local flavour. It is not, as commonly thought, the geographical dialect of educated London English. It is rather the dialect spoken by the educated leaders of England, a dialect of the highest social status. It is known in England as “Received Pronunciation”(RP) denoting that only those people, who speak that type of pronunciation can be received in the best circles of English society. It was carefully described by the leading British phonetician Daniel Jones, former professor of phonetics at the University of London.

I.2. Conscious Approach.

The teacher and the learner of Phonetics shouldn't ignore the fact that a conscious approach to its study is the only correct way to perfect pronunciation habits. It means that the process of mere imitation is of no use. “It may be said that, as we grow older, the acquisition of a new language will normally entail a great deal of conscious, analytical effort, instead of the child’s ready and facile imitation” (p.3).⁶ The rules of psychology say, that if the learner doesn't know the exact mechanisms of producing a sound, a rhythmic model, a pitch contour or the mechanism of forming the assimilation cluster, it will be impossible to reproduce them in a proper way.

If you learn, for example, a particular phoneme of English, you are to know the whole spectrum of things: its place in the phonemic system of the language, its distinctive features, its allophonic family, the rules of its combining with the neighbouring sounds or the overlapping of articulations in the production of sound sequences, the exact mechanisms of articulation, etc. The student is to learn characterizing every sound in accordance with the phonetic transcription.

Thus Conscious approach is the only necessary means of studying such an important part of Linguistics as Phonetics.