Although for so many years the concept of phonology within the field of second language teaching seemed to be one of the less important ones, comparing its significance to concepts such as grammar or lexicon; recently, many different researches are being carried out and have already pointed out the importance of understanding and recognising such a concept as well as the need of including its teaching within the process of second language acquisition. Therefore and for the purpose of the present essay, it is essential to provide an accurate definition of the aforementioned term.
Because of that and according to Omolara’s (2011:1) contributions, phonology would be generally defined as the linguistic field or competence that “is concerned with the regularities that govern the phonetic realisations of sounds in words of a language and that looks and tries to establish a system of sound distinctions relevant to a particular language.” Furthermore, this same author states that phonology is that part of linguistics that is focused on the study of how sounds differ and behave in particular speeches, speakers and also in particular contexts.
However, although the previous definition provides such an appropriate approach to the concept, it is necessary to go a little further when talking about phonology. That is, it is quite essential to differentiate and have clearly in mind the different elements phonology deals with and is made up of. Therefore, regarding such an idea, it may be