Job Discussion Forums

[Craig!]

Phonetics is a useful way for students to pronounce words correctly when there's no English teacher. We should know how to write phonetically, at the very least, the vowel sounds.

I'd like to see more Chinese English teachers use it, as they are teaching bad pronunciation -- many "aah"s after words for example -- this makes it difficult for me to make the students "unlearn" what the students have had drilled into them.

On the other hand,

No, we should not make them learn yet another language. The characters are so cryptic; i hate those daburned dipthongs and doodads. And it's untypeable.
We should never require that they learn it, though occasionally it's useful to write it (the vowel sounds) on the blackboard.

What do you think it's important we learn and teach it?
How do you deal with it?

Here's a good reference chart from Cambridge*.
I could not paste it here for you.
*
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/help/phonetics.htm

[Voldermort]

It would be a good idea to be able to teach and reference a phonetic chart, only one problem though, I don't know it myself. In the UK we never learn anything like this, possibly because they are American?

Thanks for the link. I think I should learn them for myself and make use of them in the classroom.

[Shan-Shan]

I learnt a couple of phonetic systems while studying for my TESL at university, and have found them quite useful in the classroom in correcting errors in pronunciation. From my experience so far, most students are familiar with IPA, though sometimes its vowels don't always match with the students' phonetic representation.

For absolute beginners, teaching the phonetic alphabet (which system would be up to the teacher) may be useful for clarifying pronunciation of words which, when represented in English, seem contrary to the way the word ought to be pronounced (knife; philosophy, for example, or when a word might have a tricky cluster of vowels/consonants). IPA is consistent, something stable students can refer to in the unstable world of English spelling.

[Calories]

Some of my students use phonetics. I think it's creepy.

[kev7161]

I teach Phonics to my little 'uns, a lesson every day. We started slowly by having exercises that focused only on the first letter of words (S, T, R, etc.), then moved on to the ending sounds, then short vowels, long vowels, blends, digraphs, and on and on. We just finished the text this past Monday. Now, I'm not going to pretend my kids are fluent or anything, but you should hear (most of) them read aloud and you'd be amazed at how well they read. I've wandered into other 1st grade classes where they didn't have the benefit of a foreign teacher and, sadly, their pronunciation tells the story. My students learn vocabulary that most people would think is far beyond their abilities. Today in Math, for example, we started a unit on "numbers to 1000". I put a paper facsimile of a "tens" counting stick on the board and asked the students what this was. I was seeking the response of "ten", but several of them came back with: "It's a rectangular prism." Why, yes it is. Not the answer I was seeking, but that term was learned over a month ago when we were studying solid shapes! Just one small example of how much they can absorb and retain, yet your average Chinese English class (I believe) doesn't even come close to their students' potential.

I'm pleased at how much progress my kids have made this year. Now that we are nearing the end of the year, I'm concentrating more on spoken English assignments and, again, not fluent by any means, but some of them can chatter on SO MUCH more than any of my Senior kids ever did last year. Did phonics help them? I like to think so. A visiting (Chinese) teacher was very interested in my phonics lessons (as well as the fact we also had Spelling and *gasp!* spelling tests!) - - I think if you get 'em at an early age with a well-rounded English education, it's going to go a long way toward better English as they enter high school, college, and then the real world.

[Fortigurn]

We should certainly teach phonics. But how we can do that effectively without teaching phonetics, I'm not exactly sure.

If we were only teaching an oral language, rather than a literary language, we might be able to get away without phonetics. I need phonetics when I learn Chinese, and I can't think how I would learn without it.

[Leon Purvis]

Phonics is a good way to teach reading as well as speech, but there's one problem: whose version shall be used? IPA shows a British pronunciation as well as an American pronunciation.

Even some of the phonemes are expressed differently.

[Fortigurn]

[Leon Purvis]

I stand corrected.

Though the two terms overlap in their relevance to the spoken language, the term phonics is much more specific in its scope of meaning as it relates to the spoken language while phonetics covers a much broader field as it relates to the spoken language.

[kev7161]

I don't teach phonetics - - lord knows I don't need that kind of headache. And, by the way, I teach them PROPER American English - - you know, the kind you can actually understand when you hear it!

[Roger]

It's an absolute must that's generally ignored. The Chinese side relies too much on romanisation as a phonetic pointer; that's useful in the beginning but gradually you realise they need a better grasp of the various pronunciations and variations. As a matter of fact, most students know how to transliterate into phonetic script English words but they can hardly put that to any useful practice such as actually pronouncing them.

I am currently taking free Mandarin lessons together with tuition-paying foreign full-time students at our university; I am learning far more about the Chinese approach to their language than the language itself: pronunciation is pronunciation is...language! There are pronunciation drills every morning of the week, on and on for months. How long do Chinese practise English pronunciation?

If an FT knows how to put English words into IPT he or she has an edge!

[Mysterious Mark]

Considering that native English speakers argue about which variants of the IPA are correct for which dialects, and even those trained in linguistics can find the system confusing at times, I don't think it's generally a useful tool in a foreign language classroom, especially in China where people have a different concept of what rules are than what we're used to. (Mandarin is codified and regulated by the government. English is codified and regulated, but no-one has the final say.)

On top of this, the authors and editors of textbooks may have little to no understanding of the IPA (just copying the phonetic transcriptions they find elsewhere), so we may find (Chinese) American English textbooks using unambiguously British phonetic transcriptions and the same phonetic symbol being used for phonemically distinct sounds.

In my opinion, the IPA can be a useful stop-gap tool in the classroom, e.g. for consonants like th that don't exist in Chinese, but if you try to get students to learn and consistently use the IPA, it can trap them into thinking of the IPA as a rigidly codified and consistent system like Hanyu Pinyin.

In my experience (and that of others, in and out of China), whole-word memorization without phonic or phonemic awareness makes an apt symbol of the deficiency of rote learning in general. It doesn't lend itself to the kind of adaptability that students will need in order to become fluent in a language so complicated and different from their native Chinese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonics

http://www.juniorenglish.de/jolly_phonics_article_03.htm

"I was working with children who were consistently failing in their reading. I saw how rote teaching could damage them: it�s an anti-child method. I wanted to prevent children from suffering at school..."

http://www.learninglogic.com.au/phonemic.html

Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of a series of discrete sounds. It is the ability to isolate and manipulate sounds in spoken language. Listening for sounds may not be easy for some children because when we speak, the individual sounds in words run together and overlap each other. They are not separate and distinct. When we talk to each other we concentrate on the meaning of what is being said and automatically process the sounds without giving them any specific attention. Most phonemic awareness activities are oral.

Why is it important?

Children who are not aware of sounds or phonemes are at serious risk of [not] learning to read and spell.

Most children are not aware that words are made up of individual sounds as they are concentrating on the meaning of the communication.

The challenge in teaching phonemic awareness is finding ways for children to discover individual sounds, their sequence in words and then manipulate them.

Teaching phonemic awareness accelerates the literacy learning process.

Research:

-indicates that a measure of a preschool-age child's phonemic awareness is a strong predictor of their future success in learning to read. (Adams 1998, Shaywitz 2003).

-it has been clearly shown that phonemic awareness can be developed through explicit teaching.

-teaching phonemic awareness and letter-sound relationships helps build the neural systems for reading (Shaywitz, 2003)

-children between 4 and 6 are at the cusp of learning to read. Their spoken language system is in place. They are ready to build the connection to print. (Shaywitz 2003)

[Neilhrd]

Teaching IPA in China is fraught with practical difficulties.

The most basic one is lack of a common, agreed system of notation. Not only are there differences between British and American English as mentioned earlier but many Chinese parents and some teachers are still using the old notation which was replaced in 1996.

Chinese students are generally incapable of grasping that there can be more than one way of doing anything. I have tried explaining to college students and to primary parents that IPA is at best a guide and not a rigid set of rules for correct pronunciation. I might as well have been talking to the wall.

Another problem is that many Chinese teachrs of English confuse phonemes used in Pinyin with those in English. This even occured in this years national NEAT tests which supposedly come from the very top of the Chinese system.

This may be why many teachers of Chinese refuse to allow English teachers to use phonetics at all in some schools and only after Grade 3 in others on the grounds that using them will harm the students learning of Pinyin. The fact that these teachers of Chinese can't speak English is irrelevant. they have the ear of the Principal and can and do tell us what and how we are allowed to teach. So if you are using IPA in primary schools watch your back!

Persoanlly I regard IPA as a last resort in class if all other methods of improving pronunciation have failed. However I find my Chinese colleagues usually know no methods in between rote repitition and full on IPA and are very reluctant to let me try anything they don't know. So I sometimes have to use it even when I think there are better ways. Has anyone else had this experience?

[amandabarrick]

Avoid teaching phonetics. No one thinks of the phonetic symbols when speaking their native language, and I and most everyone I know who learns and speaks a second language fluently don't think about the phonetics when speaking. It is not necessary. A top down approach is more effective than a bottom up.
But the students in China seem to have already learned it from other Chinese teachers of English. All the more reason to avoid it in your class.

--AB

[elliot]

I feel phonics are a must for learning a second language. I'm learning Chinese and without learning Pinyin I would never be able to string anything together.
Many posters have made the point in using phonics for trouble sounds like v, th, w, and then tricky words using silent letters.
I try to use phonics when I can, I can read them but I'm not very good at writing them and usually have to prepare what words I will choose for class. I feel this is better than making a mistake and further confusing these poor kids pronunciation.
One problem is choosing a standard system. I prefer using the chart used by the Cambridge literature but there are many different scripts that sometimes a student will show me and ask how to say, i look blankly at these new symbols a little embarrassed i can't help.