The Phonology of English and the Phonemic Script
Describe a pronunciation problem you had in learning a foreign language. How did you overcome that difficulty? What did your teacher do to help you with pronunciation?
Explain why the English alphabet alone is not a very good guide to the pronunciation of English. Give examples (beyond what you may have seen here).
What are some of the advantages of using the Phonetic Chart in class to help your students with their pronunciation problems?
Describe a specific student/teacher interaction in which it would be used.
When I learnt French I had quite a few pronunciation problems. I would listen to how the teacher would pronounce a word and try to copy the teacher. Practice made perfect in pronouncing the word. Nasal vowels were challenging and I would push air though the nose and mouth and it sounded like I had a stuffy nose! The trickiest were the silent letters for e.g. letters m and n are usually silent however, they cause the vowel preceding them to be nasal. French is not a phonetic language and so they have letters that can be pronounced in different ways and sometimes not at all. My teacher would let us listen to a recording of two people speaking and we would hear how they pronounce words as well as writing and listening exercises to help us with spelling and the meaning of words. This helped me tremendously, after a few weeks my pronunciation was one of the best in class. My weakest part of learning the language at one point was writing and I overcame that difficulty by reading some passages and articles in French that started off as simple conversational passages and articles relating to various contexts such as learning how to order food in a restaurant. I then progressively read tougher articles. It gave me a confidence boost especially when we had to do a mock template for a hotel reservation by email. The English alphabet alone is not a very good guide to the pronunciation of...
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