I find the schwa /ə/ a fascinating sound. As the excellent webcomic on the right, XKCD, humorously observes, it’s the most common phoneme in the English language and can usually be found in unstressed syllables. What makes it remarkable is that it doesn’t exist in English spelling and the majority of English speakers globally would likely utter a, “huh?” if you were to bring it up in conversation.

Where do we find the schwa and how do we make it?

The schwa is an incredibly versatile sound. It can occur in the initial, middle, or final position of a word, and it commonly appears in unstressed syllables within words and sentences. It is made by slightly opening the mouth, lips relaxed and in a neutral position. We make the vocal cords vibrate, but with very little effort or tension. Try it for yourself: say these content words and feel where the sound comes from.

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It’s also found in function words, such as:

A, an, the, to, for, some, can

It’s everywhere!

What are the implications for teaching and learning in English B?

You may well be thinking, “This is great, but do my students need to know about phonology or phonetics to get a 7?” One practical way you can shine a light on the schwa in your English B classroom is to see how it is used to create natural stress patterns in speaking. In the Individual Oral, these natural patterns are assessed under criterion A (language), with the 10-12 band requiring pronunciation and intonation to be “very clear and enhance communication.”

Explain to your students that English (along with other languages such as German and Russian) is a stress-timed language where stressed syllables are pronounced fully, and unstressed syllables (often containing the schwa) are reduced.

Model this by writing the following on the board and reading it out:

I want to go to the mall.

Ask students to underline the words you stress (want, go, mall). Draw their attention to the unstressed sounds, especially the schwas:

I want to go to the mall.

Explain that using these natural speech patterns make it easier for people to follow what you’re saying as this is a convention of pronunciation in the language. However, it’s important to emphasise that non-native speaker pronunciation isn’t necessarily worse, and they shouldn’t overly worry about having an “accent” when they speak English.

To practise these patterns, you could try a shadowing activity. Find a short recording of someone speaking for up to 20 seconds, or record yourself. Ensure there are several instances of schwas, especially in unstressed function words. Set students a home learning task (it will be too noisy in class!) to record themselves speaking over the top of the recording with a slight delay, or shadowing it, in order to mimic the stress patterns. Here's an example paragraph.

The best way to do this, is for them to use headphones to listen to the original audio, while recording themselves (E.g. via the voice memos app on their phone). This way, the recording will only pick up what they say, not the original.

This activity also works for modelling other features of pronunciation so feel free to get creative with it!