Spoken English is composed of forty individual sounds including 24 consonant sounds and vowel sounds sixteen. With only 26 letters of the ABC's, the Latin alphabet has never exactly English-speaking.
While ABC's worked enough for written English, since 1476, there has not been a suitable phonetic alphabet to indicate the sounds of the language until 2001.
The English phonetic alphabet
24 consonants
/ B /, / d /, / f /, / g /, / h /, / j /, / k /, / l /, / m /, / n /, / p /, / s /, / s /, / t /, / v /, / w /, / y /, / z /
/ CH /, / SH /, / TH /, / th /, / ng /, / Zh /
16 vowels
/ Yes /, / a /, / Ey /, / e /, / IY /, / i /, / Av /, / o /, / uw /, / u /, / ^ /, / Oy /, / Aw /, / Is /, / Ar /, / or /
Impact of ABC's ESL - May Chan's Story
The secretary broke in my classroom. "Can you come - now" she pleaded, and disappeared back into the hall. I waved to my class to work on their own and followed her. From the computer room at the far end of the school, I could hear the sound of a man shouting. When we came into the lab, he stopped: "I can not understand what she says" the repairman broke when he backed away from a young Chinese woman.
The computer lab in our Midtown adult community school was lined with used office computers. May Chan, a graduate of our school was hired as an assistant. It was her job to download the relevant software for computers for each class. The day she stood alone indicates a bulky old unit. A single tear rolled down her cheek. In my experience, the Chinese model students: they are proud, quiet man. I had never seen a Chinese student cry and it broke my heart. May Chan point whispered monitor and, "That soon? Eyehook. That soon."
She was ashamed of her Chinese accent and rude technician had humiliated her. I asked her what was wrong and she repeated: "To soon. Eyehook. That soon." But I could not understand her reply. "Can you write it down?" I asked and gave her a pen.
E C H O, she printed and it all made sense. The computer was sent two sounds, it had an echo. She knew the right word, but in English, know the right words do not always help. What May Chan did not understand was English, you should not letters represent sounds. The connection between English letters and sounds are so weak, nobody can speak English from reading it.
The Lesson: Spelling is Random
May Chan made the classic mistake of ESL learners' pronunciation of a word, how it looks. English does not work like that. Understand the differences between written English and oral English is the most important. The alphabet, spelling, grammar and punctuation is all about writing and has nothing to do with speech. In English, spelling and casual speech is not to write said aloud.
When a student's ability to read and write English far outstrips their ability to speak it, write it down is a great strategy for communication hiccoughs (pronounced / HIK ups / - example). Some ESL students surprised to learn that English speakers do not know how to pronounce words from reading them, either. English spelling has been hopeless for a long, long time.
Old Problem
English as spoken language has evolved since 450 AD and generally uses 40 sounds. The Latin alphabet (or ABC) with its 26 symbols has only been used by the public to print the English language since 1476 AD, when William Claxton set up his printing press in London. English uses more sounds than it has letters! The Latin alphabet has never exactly spoken English.
For example, what is the sound of the letter 'g' in beige, garage and genre What is the sound of the letter 's' in
The solution does not work
Dictionaries often use a set of symbols called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Sadly alphabet does not work well for English. The origin of the IPA is French, where the letter 'e' is known as "EUH 'and' I 'is known as' e' and so on. Despite the inherent confusion IPA had a good run and survived for more than 120 years. Today there is little tolerance for the system because they obscure the IPA symbols have no representation in the ordinary keyboard.
The solution worked
In 2001 the English finally got his own 40 - symbolic, computer-friendly phonetic alphabet where each symbol represents one and only one sound in the English language.
Students should learn their ABC's of literacy and the English phonetic alphabet / ingle SH funned Alphabet / to speak. When students can see how words sound, they said it with confidence!
Summary
• Write it down, is an acceptable strategy if the word is not working
• English writing and speaking English are different languages
• The Latin alphabet does not represent English sounds
• The English phonetic alphabet (EPA) is a phonetic system that works
*** And be sure to fire pig that makes your pupils cry.
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