Understanding Phonemic Awareness & Pronunciation
Phonemic awareness is when learners can manipulate and read phonemes, the smallest units of sound. It is essential that students understand how to decipher and pronounce basic phonemes. As reading teachers know, this awareness is the first step for beginning readers.
Strategies |
Phonemic awareness includes an understanding of sight-sound correspondence. At the most basic level, students need to be taught the difference between letters, words, and sentences. In the English language, letter names often do not correspond with the letter sound. Students must be explicitly taught beginning and ending sounds, as well as long and short vowel sounds.
Pronunciation: I Can't Say it Right! For many students, simply hearing a sound is not sufficient modelling. They need to be shown how to make the sounds. For example many English sounds, such as the <th> sound do not exist in other languages. How can a teacher show how to make sound? The first step is to explicitly ask students to observe the teacher's mouth while making a particular sound. The teacher can exaggerate and repeat the movement as she or he makes the sound. Often, a visual of the internal part of the mouth and vocal tract on the board is helpful. Then, students must be active and reflective participants. Small mirrors, partner work, and tools are helpful in examining the mouth placement. For the /th/ sound, for example, the lollipop exercise is especially useful. Students put a lollipop directly in front of their lips. If the tip of the tongue does not hit the lollipop when saying such words as "Thursday" or " think", the replication of the <th> sound will not be made. Listening activities are good, too. Students can check boxes if they hear the <th> sound as opposed to the <t> sound. An important point to keep in mind is that teachers should never aim for perfect pronunciation. Instead the goal should be focused on understanding. Accents are never a "bad" thing. But, if words such as "Thursday" are pronounced as without the <th> sound, confusion occurs and it is important to correct this type of error. Intonation, syllable stress, and word stress are also very important elements in pronunciation. One way to help students understand stress is to clap or stomp out stressed syllables, pull them with rubber bands, or underline them in a word or sentence. Another way is to use kazoos while saying common phrases. There is a sing-song quality to the English language, which once mastered, can help ELLs become more comprehensible to listeners. |
Resources |
Minimal pairs activities are always good for students to listen for the differences between similar words such as "zoo" and "shoe". The student or teacher can say the word and the student must hold up the correct notecard or swat the correct word posted on the wall with a flyswatter.
Jazz Chants, as popularized by Carolyn Graham, are a great way for students to repeat common sounds in a fun and memorable way with an emphasis on intonation and rhythm. Teachers can create their own jazz chants using relevant content material. Teaches can make their own short selfie videos that emphasize the production of different sounds. Here are my examples. Websites such as Starfall and certain games on Spelling City are great for listening activities, as they break words into phonemes and syllables. Apps that practice phonemic awareness on tablets and smart phones are numerous. Readers Theater is a fun way for students to practice reading and pronunciation. Video apps that facilitate digital storytelling, a great way to practice pronunciation, include Sonic Pics , Adobe Voice. and Voice Thread . |