English Spelling Should be More Phonetic
The interest in the scientific description of sound has led to the invention of the International Phonetic Association (IPA) in 1888. IPA is an association to develop a phonetic alphabet to symbolise the sound of all languages. According to Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams. (2003), the use of Roman alphabet in the English writing system had inspired the IPA to utilise many Roman letters in the invention of phonetic symbols. Unlike ordinary letters that may or may not represent the same sounds in the same or different languages, these alphabetic characters have a consistent value (Fromkin et al., 2003).
According to the phonetic transcription which is governed by the principle, “One Sound, One Symbol”, there should be a list of 26 distinct sounds in English alphabet since there are only 26 letters in English alphabet which can be further divided into consonants and vowels. However, there are 42 different phonemes for the 26 letters in the English alphabet. There are 15 vowel sounds and 27 consonant sounds in English language. The 15 vowels are /i/, /ɪ/, /e/, /ɛ/, /æ/, /ʊ/, /uː/, /ʌ/, /o/,/ɔ/, /a/, /ə/, /aj/, /aw/,and /ɔj/ while the consonants are /p/, /b/, /f/, /v/, /m/, /w/, / /, /ð/, /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/, /r/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /j/,/k/, /g/, /ŋ/,/ h/, /?/ and /hw/ (Fromkin et al., 2003).
Hilton & Hyder (1992) stated that some English words are not spelt as they are pronounced; the pronunciation can also vary according to one’s regional accents as well as from one English-speaking country to another. Cases where English words are not spelt as pronounced can be seen in words like business, /bIznəs/ and what, /wɒt/. Rubba (2003) stated that it is important to remember that an IPA symbol always has the same sound which differs from English spelling. For example, the English letter s has various sound values in English spelling, for instance the words that are pronounced as /s/ like 'so', 'bus' and the /z/ of words like 'easy', 'busy'. In IPA, the s in English letter always represents the sound /s/ in 'see', and 'bus'. The sounds represented by the letter s in 'easy', 'busy', are transcribed phonetically with /z/. Thus, this clearly shows that the English spelling has violates the principles of the phonetic transcription, “One Sound, One symbol” (Rubba, 2003).
It is always a problem for English learners since they often find it hard when they discover some English words that do not actually follow the “One Sound, One Symbol” principle.
In an experiment, around 350 Chicagoans, were recorded reading the following paragraph, titled “Too Hot for Hockey”, this script was written specifically to force readers to vocalize vowels “that reveal how closely key sounds resemble the accent's dominant traits” (Wbez). The paragraph is as follows:
The phonemic restoration phenomenon was first demonstrated by Warren (1970). He conducted an experiment on a number of listeners where he got them to listen to the sentence, “The state governors met with their respective legislatures convening in the capital city”. However, in the word “legislatures” a cough completely masked the medial “s”. Listeners stated hearing the masked phoneme. This showed that when phonemic restoration occurred, listeners were not able to identify the masking sound position in the sentence. What they received was unconsciously interpreted. In other words, the efficiency of phonemic restoration reached the extent that the listeners did not notice it. (Kashino, 2006). Amazingly, the phonemic restoration effect was not observed when “s” was masked with silence!
the spelling of certain words can seem illogical and may have no other similar spelling in
Lila is a second grade student who participated in a Primary Spelling Inventory and the reflection of her results are as follows. After her spelling inventory was finalized I noted that the student spelled ten of the twenty-six words correctly giving her a power score of 10/26. Most of the words that she mastered was in the Late emergent and early of Letter Name Alphabetic stage. I also noted that Lila accomplished 36 features out of 56 total features during her spelling inventory. Based on the results of the Primary Spelling Inventory the orthographic features that Lila recognizes are the consonants, short vowel, blends, and is familiar with diagraphs. Although she mastered blends which falls in the late Letter Name-Alphabetic stage she failed to master diagraphs which is the middle stage.
The lesson covers various sounds of the vowel “u” including “oo”, “ew”, “ou”, “ue”, and “ui”. This phonics lesson is broken down into explaining, modeling, and guided practice. Explaining includes telling students a vowel sound can be spelled several different ways, and then listing sounds on the board with an example of each spelling. Modeling consists of writing examples of the different spellings, underlining the vowel sound, and model blending the word. Guided Practice is writing several more examples and asking the students to underline the letter or letters that spell the vowel sound. Finally have the students sort the words by their vowel sounds. Students should be able to group the list under labels such as: music, hook, and
In the article it discuss that for North America students it will be confusing to refer to the letter only by their sounds. There was a study done in Virginia were students were taught letter names and letter sounds and another group were they was taught only letter sounds. This study concluded that North American student to refer only the letters by their sounds was not normal and confusing. As well that students should be taught both, their letter sounds and their names and how to apply this skill while reading and writing.
Spanish and English share a similar alphabet, with the Spanish sound system being more concise. Many differences are revealed when comparing the phonologies of the two languages. These differences will influence the speech of Spanish speakers learning English. Speakers may transfer their knowledge of Spanish to English. Understanding these differences is important to the speech-language pathologist in order to realize why some English sounds are more difficult for the Spanish speaker to produce than others (Gorman & Kester, 2001).
This chapter covers the principles of syllabification, with a specific focus on the phonotatic restrictions of English branching on onsets and on codas.
As explained phonological awareness develops through a gradual process of refinement of sounds, starting with broad distinctions between general sounds, moving ultimately towards fine gradations of phonemes (Barratt-Pugh, Rivalland, Hamer & Adams, 2005a). Studies David Hornsby and Lorraine Wilson from suggesting that children learn phonic before they learn how to read and write. Children at young ages explore the relationships in sound and letter, this leads there phonics to a graphic symbol.
In the partial alphabetic phase individuals pay attention to different letters in a word in order to attempt its pronunciation, usually the first and final letters of a word are focused on, Ehri referred to this as ‘phonetic cue reading’. This is a skill which along with others which shows phonological awareness.
A phoneme is the basic unit of sound. Different phonemes signal different meanings. (Reed, 2007) Educators define phonemic awareness as the mindfulness that words are made of individual sounds. Reading instruction begins like language acquisition. Phonemic awareness is easily fostered in early childhood classrooms. Teachers and students can chant nursery rhymes, manipulate magnetic letters and clap syllables. Children can learn to recognize words with the same phonemes through rhyme and alliteration. They learn to blend sounds together to make a word by listening to a variety of texts read loud. Students can learn how to break a word into its different sounds by singing and chanting written words. (Bertrand and Stice, 2002) Phonemic awareness is especially important in ELLs. ELL students heard a different set of phonemes as babies. The sounds of the English language may be drastically different than the sounds of their native tongue. Phonemic awareness must be explicitly taught among ELL students in order to foster reading. All children that develop phonemic awareness make connections between the sounds they hear and the symbols they
1.2. PHONOLOGICAL BACKGROUND. This part of the first section presents the inventory of Hasawi phonemes as a good reference for Results section.
Due to the phonetic differences between the Arabic and the English language, Arab ESL learners often experience difficulty in pronouncing English vowels. The vowel quantity and the vowel quality are the two phonetic parameters through which vowels are described. The vowel quantity refers to the duration of the phonetic segment that is symptomatic of phonetic identity. On the other hand, the vowel quality means the knowing the precise way of articulating a vowel, which includes the shape of lips, position of the tongue in the vocal tract or the nasalization of vowels. Every vowel has its own pattern of speaking.
As in Arabic language (which is my learner's first language) there are not silence letters such as the /l/ in walk, the /b/ in comb, the /h/ in where, and the /s/ in island and so other letters that are not pronounced in English. Moreover, there are letters that can be pronounced in different ways such as the `s’ can be pronounced as /z/, the ‘t’ can be pronounced in at least 5 ways, and the ‘n’ can become /m/ or /ŋ/ and that’s just consonants. English contains 19 vowel sounds, but it only has 5 vowels to spell them with, for example ‘foot’, ‘food’ and ‘blood’ all contain different vowel sounds (/ʊ/, /u:/ and /ʌ/), but still have double O in them. All of that confuses the learners when they start reading, they cannot produce correct or accurate pronunciation unless they are informed with these special