Language Comprehension is an overarching term used to describe a student’s ability to derive

meaning from written and oral language. Three components of language comprehension include:
vocabulary knowledge, background knowledge, and knowledge of text and sentence structures.
Comprehending language involves a variety of capacities, skills, processes, knowledge, and
dispositions that are used to derive meaning from spoken, written, and signed language. In this
broad sense, language comprehension includes reading comprehension, which has been
addressed in a separate tutorial, as well as comprehension of sign language.
KEY CONCEPTS
Phonetics: Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the sounds of speech and their
production, combination, description, and representation by written symbols.
Adjective: phonetic. Pronounced [fah-NET-iks]. From the Greek, "sound, voice”. A linguist who
specializes in phonetics is known as a phonetician.
Phonology: Phonology is the study of the patterns of sounds in a language and across languages.
Put more formally, phonology is the study of the categorical organization of speech sounds in
languages; how speech sounds are organized in the mind and used to convey meaning.
Difference between phonology and phonetics
Phonology is concerned with the abstract, whereas phonetics is concerned with the physical
properties of sounds. In phonetics we can see infinite realizations, for example every time you
say a ‘p’ it will slightly different than the other times you’ve said it. However, in phonology all
productions are the same sound within the language’s phoneme inventory, therefore even though
every ‘p’ is produced slightly different every time, the actual sound is the same.
Phoneme: The smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in
meaning, as the m of mat and the b of bat in English. OR A phoneme is the smallest unit of
sound in a word that makes a difference in its pronunciation, as well as its meaning, from another
word.
There are a total of 44 phonemes in the English language, which include consonants, short
vowels, long vowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs. There are 24 consonants sounds and 20 vowel
sounds in English language.
Consonants are pronounced by stopping the air from flowing easily through
the mouth, especially by closing the lips or touching the teeth with the tongue. Except for
the vowels in English – a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y – all the letters are consonants.
Vowel: A speech sound produced by humans when the breath flows out through
the mouth without being blocked by the teeth, tongue, or lips:
 A short vowel is a short  sound as in the word "cup".
 A long vowel is a  long  sound as in the word "shoe".
A vowel sound in which the tongue changes position to produce the sound of three vowels are
known as triphthongs.
Diphthongs are vowel sounds in which the tongue changes position to produce the sound of
two vowels
Sound (=phone) is a vibration or wave caused by an object.
This definition comes from acoustics and underlines physical characteristics of sounds of speech.
Sounds are instances of phonemes in real speech. The word “cat” consists of three sounds and
can be transcribed as follows: [kæt]
Allophone (Gr. allos “other” and phone “sound, voice”) is a variant of a phoneme.
Allophones are different pronunciations of words which do not change the meaning of these
words. Let us consider the following allophones.
[pʰ] as in “pin” and [p] as in “spin”
[l] as in “lean” and [ɫ] as in “fill”
Morpheme: In English grammar and morphology, a morpheme is a meaningful linguistic unit
consisting of a word such as dog. Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language.
They are commonly classified as either free morphemes, which can occur as separate words (cat,
dog, bat etc.) or bound morphemes, which can't stand alone as words (un-, in-, ed- etc.)
A syllable is a part of a word that contains a single vowel sound and that is pronounced as a unit.
So, for example, 'book' has one syllable, and ' reading' has two syllables. Syllables join
consonants and vowels to form words. Syllables can have more than one letter; however, a
syllable cannot have more than one sound.
An open syllable is a syllable that has only one vowel and only one vowel sound. The single
vowel in the open syllable occurs at the end of the word.
 wry
 try
 no
 go
A closed syllable is a syllable that has only one vowel and only one vowel sound. A closed
syllable ends in a consonant.
 clock
 truck
 ask
 bin
The onset and the coda are consonants, or consonant clusters, that appear at the beginning and
the end of the syllable respectively. The nucleus forms the core of the syllable; it is most often a
vowel, or a combination of vowels. In the word “cat” for example, [c] is the syllable onset, [a] is
the nucleus, and [t] the coda.
Difference between conversation and communication
Communication is the act of thinking about what we wish to say before uttering words, of
organizing the thoughts we wish others to hear and discuss so they will result in an appropriate
action. Conversation is an exchange of words, while communication is the transformation of
thoughts and words into meaningful action. Conversation typically involves what you wish to
share with another; communication focuses more on what you wish to accomplish.