Teach English in Yichenglu Jiedao - Anqing Shi

Phonetics and PhonologyPhonemic awareness and phonological awareness are considered fundamental skills that should be instilled in children as a basis for literacy. There is strong research and evidence that shows many struggling readers and writers are found to have a deficient awareness and use of phonemic and phonological strategies. This is not to say that using a ?whole language? approach to teaching literacy will not work, but that when assessing the needs of struggling readers and writers it has been found that they often lack solid phonemic and phonological skills to make progress. Phonological awareness relates to the sound of speech, discrimination of sounds, holding sounds in memory, sequencing the order of words and general listening comprehension skills. Rhyming and syllable manipulation are tasks used to develop phonological awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to detect the individual sounds in words. Such as the ?c?, and ?a? and ?t? in ?cat? etc., Hearing individual sounds then makes it possible to hear commons sounds in different words, substitute a sound in a word to make another word, segment the sounds in a word to spell it and blend sounds in a word to read it. This article is about the role of phonemic and phonological awareness in teaching english to speakers of other languages. It could be argued that it is not at all necessary to read or understand the english alphabet system (and its phoneme ? grapheme correspondences) to speak english. Obviously it is possible to learn vocabulary and acquire the ?flow? of the language without knowing the written code ? take bilingual/multilingual children for example. However, in the same way as a native english speaker may struggle to read and write their own language without the ability to perceive and manipulate the sound system and its corresponding code, then english language learners with weak phonological or phonemic skills may also struggle to make progress. Before learning the phoneme-grapheme code, some basic vocabulary and knowledge would be useful. Once the learner has this base, more explicit instruction in phonology and phonemes can begin because you can start adding meaning and context to what is being taught. Thankfully, teaching the phonemes and graphemes in english can be a very efficient process. The learner may have no exposure at all to literacy, or they may already be literate in their own language, they may or may not have a background in a phonetic alphabet in their native language. In any case, a discerning teacher may want to pay attention to the following 3 areas. First of all, there are practical, mechanical articulations to learn. Articulation of the sounds of the english language (the phonemes) is a neglected area of english teaching. Most native english speakers would not put any thought into how or what mechanically makes a sound. However for many non-native english speakers there are sounds in english that do not exist in their language. Teaching articulation can mean using diagrams of the throat, mouth, tongue and teeth ? and careful demonstration of the articulation of consonants and vowels. Drilling and training and making the sounds correctly can be a valuable investment of time and energy. Second, there are many different strategies and programs available for the teaching of phonics. Being methodical is important. The degree to which phonics is taught ? particularly regarding phonology practice, phonics activities etc., would depend on the background of the learner. If a learner already has a sound background in phonemic or phonological strategies in their own language ? it may not be necessary to labour over it in english. The teacher would use discretion as to which areas needed more attention (such as sounds that do not exist in the learner?s native language.) Third, pronunciation of the phonemic alphabet is a very practical tool to represent how sounds are put together as words. The early stages of learning english may appear phonetic, but as learning progresses and more complex vocabulary is learnt, the learner will find many, many, many spelling variables. Then discover that english is not a phonetic language, after all. Learning the phonemic alphabet gives a standardized approach to every speaker of english in pronunciation. The phonemic symbols will be most often found in dictionaries. Methodically learning correct articulation, developing phonological awareness and learning phonics (phoneme ? grapheme correspondences), then at some point learning the phonemic alphabet, will give a solid base of the mechanics and practical aspects to the english language. These concrete skills will benefit the english language learner as they progress to higher levels in english.