Transcript Unit 2: What Does That Mean?

Chapter 4: Some Theoretical
Aspects of Words?
Words Skills: Language and Activities
for Talking About Words
Last Class
• We looked at classroom interactions for
talking about spelling and meaning. In
particular, we looked clarifying spelling and
defining words with synonyms, antonyms, and
appositives.
Last Class
Quick is spelled Q-U-I-C-K.
That’s K as in KING.
It’s another word for fast.
It’s the opposite of slow.
Today’s Class
We are going to look at some theoretical
aspects of words.
Having a clear conception of these aspects will
help us when we have to explain
pronunciation or phonetic rules to students.
Consonants and Vowels:
A Source of Confusion
• How many consonants and vowels does the
word below have?
THREE
The answer depends on what you mean by
consonant and what you mean by vowel.
Sometimes when we say consonant we mean
a consonant letter and sometimes we mean a
consonant sound. Likewise for vowel.
THREE has three consonant letters: T, H, and R.
THREE has two vowel letters: E, E
THREE has two consonant sounds: /θ/, /r/
THREE has one vowel sound: /i/
Consonant Letters
• Consonant letters are b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n,
p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, and z.
• The are called consonant letters because they
typically make a consonant sound (but not
always).
Consonant Sounds
• Consonants are made by closing restricting
the vocal tract in some way
• Some examples are the /b/ in ball, the /f/ in
fish, or the /w/ in water.
Vowel Letters
• The vowel letters are a, e, i, o, and u.
• They are called vowel letters because they
typically make a vowel sound.
Vowel Sounds
• Vowels are sounds made with an open vocal
tract.
• Some examples are the /æ/ in bat and the /aɪ/
in like.
In class task 1
• Fill out table 4-1 for the following words:
cat
like
bought
sight
ship
Short Vowels
Vowel can be long or short.
The words hat, bed, bit, dot, and sub have
short vowels. They are also called CVC words.
(consonant –short vowel-consonant)
Long Vowels
• Long vowel words are made by adding a
‘bossy E’ which is also called a ‘silent E’ or a
‘magic E’ by teachers.
• Some long vowel words are bike, tape, and
rope.
• When explaining this teachers often say that
the E bosses the vowel (changes its sound).
Other Long Vowels
• Other long vowels are made up of vowel
digraphs such as the ee in seed, the ai in train
or the oa in toad.
Phonemes versus Graphemes
• This brings us to our next point what is a
digraph. First we need to know what a
phoneme is and what a grapheme is.
Phoneme
• A phoneme is an indivisible unit of sound like
the /f/ in fish.
• The word cat for example has three phonemes
/k/, /æ/, and /t/.
Grapheme
• A grapheme is a written representation of a
phoneme.
/k/ is represented by c
/æ/ is represented by a.
/t/ is represented by t.
Digraphs
• A digraph is a combination of letters that
represent a single phoneme (sound).
• Some consonant digraphs are SH, CH, NG, and
CK.
• Some vowel digraphs are EE, EA, OO, OA, and
AI
Consonant Blends
• Consonant blends are combinations of
consonants that do not represent a single
phoneme and can be segmented into their
individual sounds.
• The /f/ /r/ in frog is an example.
R-controlled vowels
• R-controlled vowels are combinations of
vowels followed by r. The r causes the vowel
pronunciation to change (hence it's called rcontrolled). The ar in star, the ir in bird, and
the or in storm are examples.
• These are notoriously difficult for Korean
speakers.
In Class Group Discussion
In groups, discuss and number the following
items with 1 being the first thing you would
teach and 8 being the last thing you would
teach.
__ vowel digraphs,
__ long vowels (bossy E),
__consonants sounds,
__r-controlled vowels,
__ consonant blends
__ consonant digraphs
__ short vowels
__ cvc words
Words that Don’t Fit
• Some words do not have regular phonemegrapheme correspondences. Some example of
these words are:
• one, two, what, does, do, word, and war
• Unfortunately, these are some of the most
common words in the English language.
Sight Words
• Phonics can offer partial help in decoding
these words, but for the most part they must
be learned from sight.
• We call them sight words.
Dolch Sight Words
• In 1936, Dolch compiled a list of the most
common words found in children’s literature
in the English language.
• These are the Dolch sight word list.
• Many of these words have irregular
grapheme-phoneme correspondences.
Syllables in a Word
• This is actually not a well-defined concept and
there is some controversy as to what a syllable
is.
One way to define a syllable is a unit of sound
centered around a vowel. It may or may not
include consonant sounds before or after it.
Language Focus: Syllables
Look at the way we talk about syllables in a
word.
Paper has two syllables.
There are two syllables in paper.
In Class Task
• How many syllables do the following words
have?
attitude
syllable
every
screeched
Chapter 5: Pronunciation
Use these expressions to ask about
pronunciation.
How do you pronounce (this word/this/that/it)?
How is (this word/it/this/that) pronounced?
How do you say (this word/this/that/it)?
Use these expressions to give pronunciation:
You pronounce it /word/.
It's pronounced /word/.
Note: the similarity with spelling.
Letters and Sounds
• When talking about the sounds that letters
make use these expressions:
(The) B makes a /b/ sound.
(The) S-H makes a /ʃ/ sound.
Note: make and sound collocate strongly.
Exercise 5-1
• What sound do the letters in bold make?
century
later
knight
philosophy
ocean
Talking About Silent Letters
• Use these expressions when talking about
silent letters.
Lamb has a silent B.
The T in watch is silent.
Exercise 5-2
• What are the silent letters in these words?
debt
island
raspberry
sign
autumn
Clarifying Pronunciation
• Similar to clarifying letters.
That's /b/ as in boy.
That's /k/ like the /k/ in cat
Choose a well-known noun with a well-known
pronunciation.
Exercise 5-3
• Clarify the pronunciation of the letters in bold:
brother
peach
machine
west
saw
laugh