chryssa laskaridou efl state school advisor. teaching literacy how do you teach young learners to...
TRANSCRIPT
Young learners are already familiar with many words or language chunks but also with sounds which do not exist in their mother tongue.
For example, sound differences such as those between long and short vowels, or those between /s/ and /sh/ sounds are easily discernible by them.
Reading in English
English is an exceptionally inconsistent alphabetic language because it suffers from a large amount of inconsistency in both reading and spelling.
A letter can be pronounced in multiple ways (e.g. the letter ‘a’ in English maps onto a different phoneme in the words ‘cat’, ‘was’, ‘saw’, ‘made’ and ‘car’)
Some letters have more than one sound (e.g., vowels and consonants like ‘c’, ‘s’, ‘y’, etc.)
How to teach phonics
Gradually move on to the more complicated ones(/ph/, /th/,/-th /, /sh/)
Forget about the traditional approach (the alphabet)
When we start teaching phonics, we start with one sound only. We start with the most common sounds (eg. /a/, /t/, /s/, /d/, /e/, /i/, /p/)
When you have given them the first basic sounds, you can start building with them the first simple words (transparent) through simple sound combinations. (sit, sat, tin, pin, pen, ten, set etc.)
Let your students create their own nonsense (or silly) words (testint, piten, satiapata….) and later their own nonsense (or silly) sentences (a mat in the tub, the cat sits on the hat……) and even short stories.
Using TPR in teaching phonicsInvite pupils to:Touch and feel the new letter-sound
A multi-sensory method
Sing and dance it (‘h’ can be hop’, ‘t’ is playing tennis and ‘d’ is drum.
Each sound has its own action and song
This fun way helps the pupil learn the sounds more easily
More complicated sounds Later on start introducing the
different and more complicated vowel sounds and vowel combinations (/ai/, /ee/, /oo/, /ow/, /i-e/, /o-e/ etc).
This needs lots of practice and you will need to employ different approaches and techniques /methods such as games, songs colouring, matching etc
RhymingWe can make up silly rhymes and focus on
specific vowel sounds:
The funny clown is in the townLook! He can bow!
Phonics-based instruction is an ongoing process. We don’t teach all the phonemes till we come to the end.
After 6-7 phonemes we do other activities and projects giving pupils time to assimilate their new knowledge
Why learning with phonics? It helps learners acquire accurate pronunciation
It helps them make associations between spelling and pronunciation It helps them recognize and read
patterns (e.g., if they know how to read ‘leaf’ it will be easier for them to read the words ‘bean’, ‘eat’, etc.)