LCD720

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LCD720 04/22/09

• Pronunciation and orthography

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Announcements

• Homework
• Look at the lesson plan, and answer the following
  questions.
• What is being taught?
• Which of the five stages of pronunciation
  teaching are covered. Give examples, and explain
  why each activity fits a certain stage.
• What are the strong points of this lesson plan?
  What are its weaker points?
• What would you do to improve this lesson plan,
  and why?
• E.g., change activities, add more activities, or
  different order?

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Homework

• Select an activity from Phonics they use, Chapter
  2
• Can you modify these activities for older
  children and adult? (If so, how?)
• Consider
• What is the objective of the activity?
• Do you think the activity will be effective? Why?

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Interfaces, or How pronunciation is involved in
other parts of language knowledge and skills

• Listening perception
• Grammar
• Orthography (spelling)

Today
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English spelling

• How regular is English spelling?
• Not regular because
• Regular because

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Vowel pairs

• Consider these pairs
• -VCØ -VCe
• fat fate
• pet Pete
• bit bite
• mop mope
• -VCe indicates that the vowel is pronounced as a
  long vowel
• Note that these are not the tense-lax pairs we
  know from the vowel quadrant

short/lax vowels
long/tense vowels
æ
ey
?
iy
ay
?
?
ow
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Vowel pairsPhonologically
FRONT
CENTRAL
BACK
iy beet
boot uw
HIGH
? bit
put ?
ey bait
boat ow
MID
? Rosa
? bet
? butt
more ?
æ bat
LOW
bomb ?
æ/ey fat/fate ?/iy pet/Pete ?/ay
bit/bite ?/ow mop/mope
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Vowel pairsOrthographically
Why this difference?
FRONT
CENTRAL
BACK
iy beet
boot uw
HIGH
? bit
put ?
ey bait
boat ow
MID
? Rosa
? bet
? butt
more ?
æ bat
LOW
bomb ?
æ/ey fat/fate ?/iy pet/Pete ?/ay
bit/bite ?/ow mop/mope
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Vowel pairs

• The same vowel pairs can also be signaled as
  follows
• In multisyllabic words Consonant doubling for
  short vowels
• latter later
• mopping moping
• In monosyllabic words Vowel digraphs (instead of
  -e) for long vowels
• bait, heat, loan
• These vowel pairs have a historical origin
• The Early Middle English Vowel Shortening rule,
  and
• The Great Vowel Shift

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The Great Vowel Shift

• Between 1400 and 1600 the long vowels changed

Middle English Modern English Middle English Modern English
mice mis mays i ay
mouse mus maws u aw
geese ges giys e iy
goose gos guws o uw
break br?ken breyk ? ey
broke br?ken browk ? ow
name nam? neym a ey
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The Great Vowel Shift
ay
aw
The colon indicates long vowels,e.g., /i/ is
similar to our /iy/
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The Great Vowel Shift

• That is why the vowels sound differently in pairs
  like divine-divinity please-pleasant
  serene-serenity crime-criminal
• First, the vowels sounded the same
• Then, there was the Early Middle English
• Vowel Shortening rule
• E.g., divinity i gt ?
• Finally, there was The Great Vowel Shift
• E.g., divine i gt ay
• The Great Vowel Shift didnt affect divinity,
  because the i had already been changed to ?

Can you think of more pairs?
Appendix 9, p. 387
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English spelling is more regular than youd think

• English retains many older spellings
• It retains information about pronunciation in
  earlier stages
• divine/divinity sane/sanity
• It retains etymological information
• Silent b in debt, because of the Latin root
• It spells certain morphemes consistently
• cats and dogs (s for s and z)
• English spelling doesnt represent pronunciation
  exactly
• But that makes written English mutually
  intelligible (cf. American, British, Australian
  accents)

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• Some more regularities

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The letters c and g

• The letter c can represent /s/ and /k/
• /s/
• Before certain vowels e, i, y
• Before silent -e ice, piece
• Mnemonic center-circle-cycle
• /k/
• In clusters clean, crime
• With k sick, jacket
• Word-finally tic, chic, zinc
• Before certain vowels a, o, u

This explains electric electricity criticize
critical medicine medication deduce - deduction
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The letters c and g

• The letter g can represent /g/, /?/ and /?/
• /g/
• In clusters grass, grumpy
• Word-finally log, bag
• Before certain vowels a, o, u
• Before e and i in Germanic words get, give
• /?/
• Before e, i, y in Romance words gentle, giant,
  gyro
• /?/
• French-sounding words in -ge beige, garage

This explains analogy analog(ue) prodigious -
prodigal
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The letters c and g

• /g/ or /?/? Why?
• got
• gin
• dig
• green
• get
• gesture
• German
• Why is there a u in guess and guilty?

before o before i syllable final in
cluster before e but Germanic origin before
e before e (not Germanic origin)
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The letter x

• The letter x can represent /ks/, /gz/ and /z/
• /ks/ in extra, laxity, box
• /gz/ between vowels, before a stressed syllable
  exact, example
• /z/ in initial position xylophone, xerox

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Invisible y

• Addition of /y/
• Before /uw/ if its spelled as eu, ew or u
• /y/ no /y/
• feud, few crew
• eucalyptus rude
• heuristic, pew
• menu, music
• confuse
• unity, humid
• NAE Except after t, d, s, z, n, l, x (e.g., new)

Exceptafter r
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Invisible y and palatalization/?, ?, ?, ?, y,
k?/

• Palatalization of /s, t, d, ks/
• /sy/ ? /?/ issue
• /ty/ ? /?/ virtue
• /dy/ ? /?/ arduous
• /ksy/ ? /k?/ sexual
• Always with certain word endings
• e.g., vacation, question, expression, revision,
  measure

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Silent consonant letters

• We know that the vowel e can be silent
• E.g., bite, worked
• Consonants can also be silent
• knee, gnat, pneumonia, mnemonic
• psychology, write
• Why are these consonants silent?
• Some silent letters are pronounced in related
  words
• crumb-crumble sign-signify, paradigm-paradigmatic
  
• Why?

English doesnt allow these clusters
because the consonants are in two different
syllables now
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Practice

• How would you write these nonsense words? Why?
• Transcribe them
• Propose one or more plausible spellings
• Explain your choice of spelling

1. pæf
2. k??
3. d?n?
4. kweyt
5. dr?k

1. kiym
2. ?æpl?
3. s?ri
4. kayp
5. wown

paff cutch dinch, dynch quate, quait drock
keam, keme, keem japple serry, serrey kipe,
kype woan, wone
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Other writing systems

• ESL learners may have a writing system that is
  very different from English
• Alphabetic systems with different letters
• Greek, Korean, Cyrillic, Arabic
• Note In Hebrew only consonants are written
  (although vowels can be used too)
• Characters in Chinese

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Chinese

• Chinese has characters
• Each character represents a word or morpheme
• Chinese doesnt have a lot of inflections, so it
  doesnt needs many extra characters for them
• Chinese readers need to know about 5,000
  characters to be able to read a newspaper
• There is now a spelling system based on the Roman
  alphabet pinyin
• Used for internet and foreign visitors

Chinese dragon
long2
traditional
simplified
pinyin
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Teaching spelling

• There are too many regularities to address them
  all
• Dont present too many regularities at once
• This will overload the students working memory
• Present a few regularities and exceptions
• Give a lot of examples
• When there are many rules and exceptions, its
  often easier to learn by analogy to examples
• Watch out for spelling pronunciation
• How would you teach spelling at different levels,
  and to students of different ages?

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Phonological and phonemic awareness

• Everything so far assumes phonological and
  phonemic awareness
• Phonological awareness
• The ability to separate sequences into words,
  words into syllables, and syllables into onsets
  and rimes and to manipulate these
• Phonemic awareness
• The ability to recognize that words are made up
  of a discrete set of sounds, and to manipulate
  these individual sounds
• Children and non-literate adults need to develop
  phonological and phonemic awareness

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Reflection

• Do you believe there is any relation between a
  learners ability to spell English and the
  ability to pronounce it? Why or why not?
• Do you feel that the concept of long and
  short vowels is useful for understanding the
  relationship between English spelling and
  pronunciation? Why or why not?
• Do you agree or disagree with the commonly heard
  statement that English spelling is unsystematic?
  Explain.
• Do you think English spelling should be reformed?
  Why or why not?

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Next week

• Read Phonics they use, Chapter 14
• What do you think of the authors personal
  phonics history?
• Select one or two things you found the most
  interesting about
• how good readers read words
• about how children learn to read words?
• For example, what did you not know yet, or what
  can you use in your classroom?
• Practice homework about orthography