LCD720

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LCD720 04/16/08

• 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
• 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
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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?

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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?

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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

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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