Phonics

[bhoydy]

I was wondering if anyone had tried to teach their students phonics as part of their curriculum. If so any feedback, good or bad would be appreciated. I know it helped me when learning the correct Thai sounds, but on a larger classroom scale does it work or not. Thai students seem to have great difficulty getting the right sounds of words and i'm trying to think of ways in which to improve this. Obviously this would be for younger learners in the upper Prathom to lower Mathayom as for senior Mathayom i'm afraid it's already to late and lower Prathom a bit too early.

Thanks in advance

[SEETEFL]

I was wondering if anyone had tried to teach their students phonics as part of their curriculum. If so any feedback, good or bad would be appreciated. I know it helped me when learning the correct Thai sounds, but on a larger classroom scale does it work or not. Thai students seem to have great difficulty getting the right sounds of words and i'm trying to think of ways in which to improve this. Obviously this would be for younger learners in the upper Prathom to lower Mathayom as for senior Mathayom i'm afraid it's already to late and lower Prathom a bit too early.

Thanks in advance

There are many habitual problems Thai students have with pronunciation.

For example,

Initial sounds

/v/ and /w/

/th/ and /d/

The final /ed/ sound causes great problems primarily because there are actually 3 different sounds for this one spelling: 'Wanted' ends with an /id/ sound; 'lived' ends with a /d/ sound; and 'worked' ends with a /t/ sound! Thais are rarely taught the different sounds which leads to all sorts of problems. Many Thai students either produce the sounds so softly they cannot be heard or don't even attempt the sound. Often the lack of the /ed/ sound on the end of regular verbs is interpreted as a grammatical error but it may just be a problem with pronunciation.

There are also 3 different sounds for the final /s/ sound!! And remember that in the Thai language there is no final /s/ sound at all which complicates the teaching of plurals as Thais cannot naturally produce this sound. In a similar way, the final /ng/ sound in a word such as 'song' is never put at the front of English words. Hence the farang problem of saying the Thai word for snake 'nguu' in a way that produces giggle from Thais.

When you drill the different sounds, it's a good idea to use a profile of a head drawn on the classroom's whiteboard to show position and movement of the tongue and shape of the mouth. Play the sound through your head and then draw the tongue and mouth on the profile. Model and drill the sound until a sense of fluency is achieved.

A great resource is the classic 'Ship or Sheep' student book that practices similar sounding pairs of vowel or consonant sounds (minimal pairs). They (I think it's the same people) have a Website 'shiporsheep dot com' that has some great downloadable worksheets.

John.

Edited December 19, 2008 by SEETEFL

[Hannahcopacabana]

Hi Bhoydy,

I teach phonics using the Jolly Phonics books to kids aged from 4 - 10 in both one-to-one sessions and in groups of up to 12 students and I find it works really well. More than that, walking into a new group, I can pick out pretty accurately the kids that have done phonics work and the kids that haven't

I'm no expert on young learners but as far as I know, the only other method is the 'see, say, hide, spell' style methods which seem to rely on children memorising a sequence of letters (in the correct order) as well as the sounds which they represent (a pretty tall order for a kid, IMO). It seems to me that from there, the kid is expected to figure out the rules of spelling in relation to sound and apply it themselves - another tough task for a littler. (But again, this is not the age I was trained to teach so if anyone can correct my thinking here, please do)

As far as I'm concerned, it just makes sense to teach the units of sounds and how to blend them in order to get the kids actually reading on their own as soon as possible and get their reading confidence up. They can learn the rule exceptions after that. Moreover, when they do come up against an unfamiliar word, phonics kids are generally much more likely to have a go at sounding the word out than kids who only learn by sight.

PS: I've also taught phonics to adults who can speak already but want to learn to read and it helped loads. (obviously, I didn't do the actions or colour in the entertaining characters)

[PeaceBlondie]

I like to give them small doses that they can swallow in their contorted Thai mouths. My high intermediate M4's were ready for a long page of verbs ending in ed, but the M1 beginners, less so. I would pick out one or two troublesome sounds a week, and drill that one or two many times. But if you only have one class of 44 active teens once a week, no way.

The side profile of the mouth, showing positioning of the mouth, tongue, teeth, roof, etc., is a good idea. And repetition. And when you hear a student who sounds like he has lockjaw, show him how to loosen his jaw.

When teaching a word with two ending consonants, assume they have to hear it and say it five times. Prompt, ghosts, amongst. thickest.

[orpheus454]

I was wondering if anyone had tried to teach their students phonics as part of their curriculum. If so any feedback, good or bad would be appreciated. I know it helped me when learning the correct Thai sounds, but on a larger classroom scale does it work or not. Thai students seem to have great difficulty getting the right sounds of words and i'm trying to think of ways in which to improve this. Obviously this would be for younger learners in the upper Prathom to lower Mathayom as for senior Mathayom i'm afraid it's already to late and lower Prathom a bit too early.

Thanks in advance

Had I not been implementing a graphophonics program myself, I might have disagreed with your assertion that earlier Prathom is too early, now I'm not so sure. But the apparent lack of success in my Year 1 class might have something to do with its size of 41 kids.

I consider being able to sound out words is crucial for early language learners, at any age, as it makes the written word, in whatever form, a potentially valuable source of language instruction. Without it, only sight words have any meaning.

I've adapted an individual remedial graphophonics program (designed for native speakers with reading difficulties) and been using it on whole classes and it seems to be going well for Years 2-6.

I stress "seems" to be going well because I've only been doing it for 2 months, but I now can have kids attempting to sound out a word, where previously they would have just looked at me strangely when requested to do so.

There has also been one particularly wonderful side effect: because I've effectively gone right back to basics in one area, some kids who'd been left behind somewhere along the line now find themselves quite good at this particular skill and I find them volunteering enthusiastically to participate.

Early language learners need to be able to sound out words, even if initially incorrectly. Some other posters in this thread have seen this as primarily an issue of pronunciation. No, it's bigger than that. It's about turning squiggles on a page into sounds.

[Loaded]

There are many phonics products on the market for teaching kindergarten aged kids. The thinking is get them to produce the correct sounds represented by letters from the alphabet before they start putting these sounds together to create the correct pronunciation of words. Leaving it until they have developed habitual mispronunciation problems is not a logical approach to this aspect of learning language. There are 26 letters in the alphabet but the sounds are represented by 44 symbols in the IPA. IE 44 sounds but only 26 letters! Phonics teaching is important.

[markg]

I agree with Loaded. In the past, i massively underestimated the importance of phonics. Big mistake.

I think it's never too early to learn, and teaching them correctly from the beginning pays dividends later on.

Getting them out of bad habits is harder than teaching them correctly in the first place.

[haihoa]

Bhoydy...

Funny you should ask. I am in the beginning stages of writing yet another (my first) phonetic guide to American English (sorry, not so US-centric as I am ignorant of British transcriptions and related "issues") for Thai students. Geared primarliy to the beginning student (P-1, 2 & 3), I hope to interest teachers and students alike in an English transcription system with the hope of eventually eliminating the often ambiguous and misleading Thai parallel transcriptions of Romanized script. I performed a cursory search in libraries (while home) and on the Internet for an appropriate lesson plan or system, but found nothing to my liking.

I'm neither a linguist nor a very experienced teacher, but when I first saw my daughter's P-1 English workbook, I suddenly realized the overwhelming need to introduce an exclusively English (British English will follow, I hope, if my proposal takes root) phonetic system in an attempt to completely bypass and obviate the need for the cumbersome and frequently redundant existing Thai equivalent.

Presently, my daughter's vocabulary words are presented in three columns in her workbook with: (i) the English word, (ii) the Thai phonetic equivalent (sort of), and (iii) the Thai translation. While I can see the necessity of the translation, obviously, the Thai phonetic equivalent is, I feel, an unnecessary evil, which, more often than not, benefits no one except perhaps the Thai teacher who has never learned or been exposed to an English phonetic system. The Thai pronunciation transcription creates a needless dependency on the native language, rather than attempting to embrace the phonetics of the target language, in this case, English. Further, the Thai pronunciation transcription is typically inaccurate and only an approximation of the English. And finally, the Thai pronunciation transcription does not provide a future guide for the advancing (presumably) student who eventually will need to be able to "sound out" words rather than relying soley on a rote method of learning new vocabulary.

Anyway, I certainly could use any assitance from more experienced teachers and academics who might agree with my premise. I plan to submit a draft of the phonetic system to a linguist friend for her comments before submitting a formal proposal to the Ministry of Education. I will not seek a copyright or patent for my work, as most of what I will be proposing will already have been published in one form or another. I do plan to simplify any and all international phonetic standard tables I might run across, however, and may submit them here for any additional comment. This project is not for profit, and will be donated to any institution or individual who thinks it worthwhile.

Laurence Neber, [email protected]

Bangkok, 1/27/09

[DaiHard]

I teach phonics to every new class I have at my University. For a start I advise them to forget the eI bi: si: alphabet and concentrate on the IPA and the phonetic sounds of the letters. It seems to work too as the students taught this way are about 20 – 30% ahead in listening and comprehension after 2 semesters than those on the more 'traditional' route.

I encourage every student to buy a learner's dictionary (I recommend the Oxford English/Thai mini dictionary from se-ed at 199 baht) and then get them to pronounce random words using the IPA symbols next to each word (usually in conjunction with the free tool from the British Council Download it here) at the start of each lesson. These are usually the keywords I will be reinforcing in that class.

Edited January 31, 2009 by DaiHard

[aussiebebe]

I've bought lots of the 'Jolly Phonics' set for my son to learn at home. No idea whether it works in a classroom - I've never tried. However it has really helped my son , he's three now. I got the seven books, a poster, a wall frieze, DVD and some cute stuffed animals (snake, mouse and bee) and my son can see and say most of the 42 sounds. Jolly Phonics is really cool for teaching your kid at home, I'd recommend it. It has a song and action for each sound and the characters are so funny. If I ask my son about something and he doesn't remember, he just does the action - so cute!

[Firelily]

Aussiebebe - where can you buy "Jolly Phonics" in Thailand? sounds really interesting, I definitely want to check it out.

thanks.

[Africanteacher]

I was fed up with my students referring to 'Wednesday' as 'Wen-day', 'Tuesday' as 'Too-day' and 'Thursday' as 'Thur-day'.

I started a classroom drill of writing the letter 'S' on the board every time they walked into my classroom. Then we played games on Days of the week.

I had a tendency of underlining the '-ce' in 'rice', 'ice' 'nice'.. until my learners got the pronunciation right.

There's a student whose name is 'Ice'. I would pretend I forgot her name every time I felt like reminding the rest. They would all say 'ICE' and not 'EYE'. I sometimes would make fun of the way she couldn't pronounce her name well. I'm proud to say lots has changed.

Now my students say 'ThurSday', 'WedneSday' and can pronounce 'ICE' correctly.

[MrBrad]

Remember that Thai people can pronounce every English sound, and those of us who did not have Thai as our first language can learn to speak every Thai sound also. We are born with the same equipment as everyone else in the world. So, with a little practice--sometimes a lot of practice--your students can and will speak good English.

We need to teach only the sounds that do not occur in Thai language. Bs, Ds, Ms, Ks, Ws, and the like should already be there. No need to waste time on these. Thais can say the F with no problem, but the V is often said as a W. Please teach them that a V is never a W, but rather exactly the same as an F, only the F has no vibration in the throat; turn on the vibration and you have an instant and perfect V. The same is true with S and Z, i.e., S is voiceless but the Z uses the vocal chords...the vibration in the throat. Don't change the position of the tongue, teeth, or lips; just turn on and off the motor in the thoat.

Initial Rs in English require a rounding of the lips as in making a W. Maybe that's why write and wren begin with a W. The final R is a different sound. Most of us also know that in Thai the final L becomes an N sound. Students need to know that we do not change the final L sound in English.

Perhaps the most difficult is the TH. Actually there are 2 TH sounds in English. The TH in thank you is not the same as the TH in the. One is voiced and the other is not voiced (like F and V, and S and Z). Being aware of this ourselves will help our students to speak better. For the TH to be spoken correctly one's tongue must quickly dart between our teeth. This is very strange behavior for the Thais. I used to take a small mirror to class and have the students check out for themselves if they were sticking their tongues out correctly. Actually our ears will quickly tell us when their tongues do not go between their teeth...we don't have to actually see them doing it incorrectly. Ask the students to practice a few TH words in the mirror in the bathroom at home with the door shut if they have to; it's good for a laugh, but they might actually find themselves doing it.

These are a few of the techniques that I found worked well with my students. On the very first day of class--regardless of whether I was teaching young kids or adults--I would start out with a quick review of English sounds. It's by far easier to learn something right from the start than it is to unlearn what you've been doing wrong for so long.

Proper phonetics is essential to sounding like a native. And when the student is complimented on his or her good English, the student will always respond, "It's not that I'm such a good student; I had an excellent English teacher."

As Sr. Soruco, my Spanish professor, used to say, "You can learn to speak good Spanish or bad Spanish. Good Spanish is better." The same is true for English. [And Thai, for that matter.]

[Loaded]

Remember that Thai people can pronounce every English sound, and those of us who did not have Thai as our first language can learn to speak every Thai sound also. We are born with the same equipment as everyone else in the world. So, with a little practice--sometimes a lot of practice--your students can and will speak good English.

As far as I know dipthongs do not exist in Thai. This is where one vowel sound flows into another. For example, 'pay'. The /ay/ vowel sound flows from /a/ to an /e/ sound (can't remember the proper IPA representations). Agree, that practice, practice and more practice helps to solve the problem.