Grammar Focused

Phonics: A Multi-Skills

Approach to Pronunciatio

nHeidi Laidemitt, M.A. TESOL, B.A. Linguistics / Psychologyheidilaidemitt@berkeley.edu www.heideologies.wordpress.com

"Looks like we spend most of our time Inging ... You know, like sleeping, eating, running, climbing..."          Dennis the Menace

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Inspiration 1. Reoccurring issues in productive skills

2. Phonology influences pronunciation (and orthography tries to capture it!)

3. History of English and orthography

4. Lack in pronunciation/phonics focus in curricula

5. Resistance to general “because that’s the way it is!” mentality

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Students and Background ESL - English Academic Purposes,

Adult Literacy, General English courses

Intensive English Setting Oral Communication Skills Phonics Classes Beginning Vocabulary + Phonics

Volunteer-Based Literacy Classes Low Literacy (including native

language)Disparity in Skills LearnersFluency-Accuracy Imbalanced LearnersLimited Native-Literacy LearnersBeginning Learners

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Overview of Upcoming Information 1. Theory / Linguistics

Phonics Knowledge (throughout presentation)

Vocabulary Knowledge Morphology (Inflectional Morphemes)

2. Integrating Skills Activities Allomorphs + Activities

3. Building Essential Phonics Skills Vowels + Spelling Phonetics

4. Two Additional Activities with Inflectional Morphemes

6Explicit Phonics Teaching I find useful…• Working Knowledge

• Classification of consonants (see hand out) • Classification of vowels (see hand out)• Syllables (Monosyllabic, Multisyllabic words) • Stress Patterns

• Key Vocabulary • Consonant, Consonant Clusters, Vowels • Elements of phonology: Voiced, Voiceless, Fricative, Affricate,

Nasal, Liquid, Glide • Prefix, Root, Suffix • Word forms (noun, adjective, past participle, comparative,

etc.)

7Morphology

Grammatical tags to words

Identify parts of speech

Our focus: Inflectional Morphemes

Retrieved from: http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/Courses/Psy598/Ling-Morphology.pdf

8Today’s Focus

Inflectional Morphemes

-s plural (s’, -en irregular) -s third person singular

present; -’s – possessive (thought to

possibly just be a “clitic”) -ed/t - past tense; -en past participles (-ed, -d, -

t, -n, -ne, too) -ing - present participle -er comparative -est superlative

And the confusion ensues…

-ing: Use for continuous aspect and verbal nouns

and

-ed: Use for perfect aspect and passive voice Participial phrases Adjectival participles (sometimes

are PURE adjectives)Adverbial participles

And then, irregular forms! But many of them have historical and phonological reasons!!!

9Focus on Word Endings

10Allomorphs

An allomorph is one morpheme that has different “surface” forms depending on phonological rules. “s” endings / “ed” endings

Spelling / Pronunciation disparity.

And how about that double consonant spelling convention?

pin pinned tug tugged sob sobbedbag bagged nag nagged jam jammed tap tapped rip ripped cap capped

11Nonsense Words (from Phonics Pathways, 10th Ed., 2011)

Feck Feek Nesk Putchy

Bot Bole Papsy Dafe

Motchy Fosy Fossy Leze

Resk Meetch Tash Wike

Dush Dake Yunch Rute

Denk Goosh Lon jate

12Vowels!

Let’s refer to the vowel handouts• Many conventions of organization

• Variation in dialects

• What conventions are worth teaching students? • “Long Vowels” / “Short Vowels” • Diphthongs • “r” colored vowels

• Water / standard • Reduced vowels

• About / synthesis / harmony / medium / decimal / syringe

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Vowels with Communicative Meaning

(Celce-Murica; Brinton; Goodwin; 2011, pg. 151)Ahhh! (satisfaction) Aw. (sympathy)Ow! (pain) Oh? (interest)Oh. (comprehension) Uh-Oh (trouble) Ew! (disgust) Oops! (mistake)Aha! (discovery)Huh? (confusion) Boo! (frightening someone) Uh-uh. (no) Uh-huh. (yes)

By the way, I’ve never seen so much interest spark in a class as when “Onomatopoeia” came up and we visited Wikipedia’s list of English words. Phew!

14Spelling Conventions with Vowels + Morphemes

Short-vowels must always have TWO consonants before adding a suffix beginning with a vowel, to keep the short-vowel sound.

Long-vowel words need only one.

(from Phonics Pathways, 10th edition, 2011)

LongShort

- ed -ing -er

Hope Hoped Hoping Hoper

Hop Hopped Hopping Hopper

Bake Baked Baking Baker

Back Backed Backing Backer

Comparatives (and Superlatives)15

(+) r Double the consonant + er*short V*

(+) er

*short/long V*

- (y)+ (ier)

+ more

*syllables*

Irregular forms

Larger Redder (Reddest)

Smaller(Smallest)

Heavier(Heaviest)

More (most) expensive

Better (best)

Looser Hotter (Hottest)

Richer(Richest)

Friendlier(Friendliest)

More (most) important

Worse (worst)

Nicer Thinner (Thinnest)

Younger(Youngest)

Spicier(Spiciest)

More (most) comfortable

Tamer Fatter (Fattest)

Greener(Greenest)

Healthier(Spiciest)

More (most) convenient

Large Red Loose Hot Small ExpensiveNice Heavy Tame Good ConvenientTame Fat Thin Green Healthy ComfortableNice Bad Rich Young Friendly Spicy

16The Balance

• Imbedding these activities into current curricula • Developing a phonics based course that builds on presented skills. • Creating linguistic knowledge with terminology if it makes sense for

your population • Creating games w/ flash cards, colored cards, wall space, etc.

• Your own ideas!

Happy to send you a copy of my slides and resources or answer other questions.

Questions?

heidilaidemitt@berkeley.edu