Phonetics and Phonology (The Study of the Sound Productions)

Have you ever wondered and given questions to yourself how the sounds are produced when you're speaking? What organs of your speech are involved when you produce vowels or consonants? We have 5 vowels in Bahasa Indonesia, do we have the same numbers of vowels in English? These questions can be answered in through Phonetics and Phonology. Phonetics and Phonology are concerned with speech with the ways in which humans produce and hear speech (Clark & Yallop, 1990:1). These two production and reception of speech sounds in all its complexity. That is, they study the whole process and all the mechanisms involved in the production and reception of speech.

What is the difference between the two? Phonetics is concerned with the anatomy and physiology of speech, with the production organs (Articulatory Phonetics). Therefore, what we are going to focus on is the anatomy of the speech organs involved in the production of sound. Thus, phonetics is simply the study of how the sounds are produced. There are three important aspects of studying phonetics; 1) how the sounds are produced (articulatory phonetics; 2) the physical characteristics of the speech organs to which the sounds are produced (accoustic phonetics), and; 3) how the sounds are perceived (auditory phonetics). What about phonology? Phonology is concerned with the "systems and patterns"  of sounds that occur in the particular language. For instance, we might be interested on the intonation or stress of the sound when we are speaking. However, both disciplines must be studied together. Phonetics and phonology only study the two different aspects of the same reality. In short, speech is complex human phenomenon which involves mental and physical components and both phonetics and phonology aim at accounting for this complexity.

Now we turn to the first discussion on Phonetics. At first, we'll begin with the discussion of the speech organs. Speech organs are the organs needed for the sound production. It is also called the vocal organs. The speech organs are divided into two categories; active and passive articulators. Active articulators are the speech organs that move to passive articulators to produce the speech sounds, in different manners. For instance, the most active articulator refers to the "tongue". Meanwhile, the other two active articulators the lower lip and glottis. Compare to the active articulators, passive articulators refer to the speech organs that remain static during the articulation of the sounds. Upper lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, soft palate, uvula, and pharynx wall are passive articulators.


To be continued...

Writing a News Report

Before you go further to know what a news report is and how you should report (write) the news, try to think of the answer for the following questions?

1. What is a news report?
2. Is there any specific format for the news report? Then, what needs to be included?
   

What is a news report?

The answers to the above questions will lead you to a clear understanding of the general questions about what the news report is and how you should write it. First, it is better to pick the word "news". When talking about news, there are some words that might come to your mind such as informative, factual, and fresh. From those three words, we must assume that a news must contain of at least an information and that information should be both  factual and fresh. It should be informative as the writer has to present important information with a very limited space (i.e. newspaper article, magazine, etc). Thus, informative words are necessary to the news value therefore it would not seem to hang around the topic. However, a news must also be factual in the way that it presents the fact to its readers. A news should also be fresh. By the word "fresh" it means that the information you present must be current. Besides, the article that you write as your news report must have a very interesting title (as appear in the news headline). Make it more eye-catching, so that it will attract the readers to read your article. Second, what about news writing? Simply, a news writing is a kind of report writing on what you have observed. Before you start writing, in a news report you are required to learn and observe your object. During observation, you must collect supporting data (interview, field-noting, or recording) so that you are might get the big picture on what you have to write. This is perhaps something that differentiates between news report (writing) with the other types of writing that do not need such kind of observation.

Is there any specific format for the news report?

Yes, there is! there are, at least, 6 parts that you should remember in a news writing. Those six parts are summarized as follows:

1. News Headline
2. Byline
3. Placeline
4. Lead
5. Body
6. Quotation (gathered from interview), and
7. End

News headline is the most integral part in a news writing. It shows what your article is about and this must be an eye-catching headline that would attract the readers to read your writing. For instance, instead of writing "Culinary Place in Balikpapan", you might write "The Most Visited Culinary Place in Balikpapan or The Booming Culinary Place in Balikpapan". The first option seems to use a very standard language and thus it does not affect the readers to read the article in the same way with the second (optional) place. Second is the Byline. It consists of the information about the writer and the date your writing gets published. Meanwhile, the Placeline refers to the place or the setting of your writing. Thus, if you write an event that takes place in Jakarta, you should begin your writing with the place followed with the dashes and then body of the news report (i.e. " Jakarta--The police announced that the thieves.....".  The Lead is the first sentence that introduce the news. It should sum up the whole story that you write. As the news headline, you should make interesting, eye-catching, yet informative. In addition to that, you may give the supporting details to your Lead. Remember, the supporting details (in the body of the paragraph) should be related with what you write on your lead. It means that do not give any irrelevant details idea to your Lead. Since the news should be factual, you need to give something factual that will support your writing. The way to do this is to conduct an interview, field-noting, or recording in order to get close to factual information. After interviewing the respondent, you might transcribe the interview and put it into the body of news writing with the "quotation marks" to indicate that you have conducted the interview and your writing is valid. 

The last part of news writing is an "END". The ending or the closing of news writing is called end. The -end part of a news writing do not mean that you have to end the news writing in certain way rather just to end your writing. 

Arapa Efendi

Here is the website to see the example of news writing :http://www.thejakartapost.com/