Chapter 4: Some Theoretical Aspects of Words?

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Chapter 4 Some Theoretical Aspects of Words?

• Words Skills Language and Activities for Talking
  About Words

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Last Class

• We looked at classroom interactions for talking
  about spelling and meaning. In particular, we
  looked clarifying spelling and defining words
  with synonyms, antonyms, and appositives.

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Last Class

• Quick is spelled Q-U-I-C-K.
• Thats K as in KING.
• Its another word for fast.
• Its the opposite of slow.

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Todays Class

• We are going to look at some theoretical aspects
  of words.
• Having a clear conception of these aspects will
  help us when we have to explain pronunciation or
  phonetic rules to students.

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Consonants and VowelsA Source of Confusion

• How many consonants and vowels does the word
  below have?
• THREE

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• The answer depends on what you mean by consonant
  and what you mean by vowel.
• Sometimes when we say consonant we mean a
  consonant letter and sometimes we mean a
  consonant sound. Likewise for vowel.

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• THREE has three consonant letters T, H, and R.
• THREE has two vowel letters E, E
• THREE has two consonant sounds /?/, /r/
• THREE has one vowel sound /i/

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Consonant Letters

• Consonant letters are b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l,
  m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, and z.
• The are called consonant letters because they
  typically make a consonant sound (but not always).

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Consonant Sounds

• Consonants are made by closing restricting the
  vocal tract in some way
• Some examples are the /b/ in ball, the /f/ in
  fish, or the /w/ in water.

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Vowel Letters

• The vowel letters are a, e, i, o, and u.
• They are called vowel letters because they
  typically make a vowel sound.

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Vowel Sounds

• Vowels are sounds made with an open vocal tract.
• Some examples are the /æ/ in bat and the /a?/ in
  like.

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In class task 1

• Fill out table 4-1 for the following words
• cat
• like
• bought
• sight
• ship

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Short Vowels

• Vowel can be long or short.
• The words hat, bed, bit, dot, and sub have short
  vowels. They are also called CVC words.
• (consonant short vowel-consonant)

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Long Vowels

• Long vowel words are made by adding a bossy E
  which is also called a silent E or a magic E
  by teachers.
• Some long vowel words are bike, tape, and rope.
• When explaining this teachers often say that the
  E bosses the vowel (changes its sound).

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Other Long Vowels

• Other long vowels are made up of vowel digraphs
  such as the ee in seed, the ai in train or the oa
  in toad.

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Phonemes versus Graphemes

• This brings us to our next point what is a
  digraph. First we need to know what a phoneme is
  and what a grapheme is.

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Phoneme

• A phoneme is an indivisible unit of sound like
  the /f/ in fish.
• The word cat for example has three phonemes /k/,
  /æ/, and /t/.

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Grapheme

• A grapheme is a written representation of a
  phoneme.
• /k/ is represented by c
• /æ/ is represented by a.
• /t/ is represented by t.

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Digraphs

• A digraph is a combination of letters that
  represent a single phoneme (sound).
• Some consonant digraphs are SH, CH, NG, and CK.
• Some vowel digraphs are EE, EA, OO, OA, and AI

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Consonant Blends

• Consonant blends are combinations of consonants
  that do not represent a single phoneme and can be
  segmented into their individual sounds.
• The /f/ /r/ in frog is an example.

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R-controlled vowels

• R-controlled vowels are combinations of vowels
  followed by r. The r causes the vowel
  pronunciation to change (hence it's called
  r-controlled). The ar in star, the ir in bird,
  and the or in storm are examples.
• These are notoriously difficult for Korean
  speakers.

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In Class Group Discussion

• In groups, discuss and number the following
  items with 1 being the first thing you would
  teach and 8 being the last thing you would
  teach.
• __ vowel digraphs, __ consonant blends 
• __ long vowels (bossy E), __ consonant digraphs
• __consonants sounds, __ short vowels
• __r-controlled vowels, __ cvc words 

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Words that Dont Fit

• Some words do not have regular phoneme-grapheme
  correspondences. Some example of these words are
• one, two, what, does, do, word, and war
• Unfortunately, these are some of the most common
  words in the English language.

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Sight Words

• Phonics can offer partial help in decoding these
  words, but for the most part they must be learned
  from sight.
• We call them sight words.

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Dolch Sight Words

• In 1936, Dolch compiled a list of the most common
  words found in childrens literature in the
  English language.
• These are the Dolch sight word list.
• Many of these words have irregular
  grapheme-phoneme correspondences.

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Syllables in a Word

• This is actually not a well-defined concept and
  there is some controversy as to what a syllable
  is.
• One way to define a syllable is a unit of sound
  centered around a vowel. It may or may not
  include consonant sounds before or after it.

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Language Focus Syllables

• Look at the way we talk about syllables in a
  word.
• Paper has two syllables.
• There are two syllables in paper.

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In Class Task

• How many syllables do the following words have?
• attitude
• syllable
• every
• screeched

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Chapter 5 Pronunciation

• Use these expressions to ask about
  pronunciation.
• How do you pronounce (this word/this/that/it)?
• How is (this word/it/this/that) pronounced?
• How do you say (this word/this/that/it)?

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• Use these expressions to give pronunciation
• You pronounce it /word/.
• It's pronounced /word/.
• Note the similarity with spelling.

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Letters and Sounds

• When talking about the sounds that letters make
  use these expressions
• (The) B makes a /b/ sound.
• (The) S-H makes a /?/ sound.
• Note make and sound collocate strongly.

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Exercise 5-1

• What sound do the letters in bold make?
• century
• later
• knight
• philosophy
• ocean

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Talking About Silent Letters

• Use these expressions when talking about silent
  letters.
• Lamb has a silent B.
• The T in watch is silent.

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Exercise 5-2

• What are the silent letters in these words?
• debt
• island
• raspberry
• sign
• autumn

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Clarifying Pronunciation

• Similar to clarifying letters.
• That's /b/ as in boy.
• That's /k/ like the /k/ in cat
• Choose a well-known noun with a well-known
  pronunciation.

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Exercise 5-3

• Clarify the pronunciation of the letters in bold
• brother
• peach
• machine
• west
• saw
• laugh