Sounds problematic
Report and reflections after meeting with colleagues
at Løken school.
There were 4
teachers present, including myself, and the headmaster. Mostly for practical
reasons only teachers from 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th
grade were present.
Reading the article Sounds problematic by Charles Januzzi in the group left us
with some points that we discussed regarding our own teaching practice. I had
prepared some questions but as the discussion went on I found my prepared
questions redundant. However, I wanted us to keep in mind that the Knowledge
Promotion should always be in the back of our minds when planning and conducting
our teaching, therefore I also presented the aims and what they say about
teaching of English sounds.
In fact, teaching of English phonemes is a part of the English subject
from 1st grade. According to the Knowledge Promotion already after 2nd
grade the students should be aware of and be able to recognize and use English
phonemes. The Knowledge Promotion says:
The aims of the studies are to enable pupils to
·
listen
for and use English phonemes through practical-aesthetic forms of expression
·
recognize
the relation between some English phonemes and spelling pattern
After 4th grade they extend the aims in written communication:
·
understand
the relation between English phonemes and letters and put sounds together to
form words
In addition there are aims, especially after 4th grade that demands
the knowledge of and ability to use English phonemes. (The Knowledge Promotion,
2006)
Although we agreed that we were all aware of the aims, there were some
differences in how we teach the English phonemes. While 1st and 2nd
grade almost never talk about specific sounds, 3rd and 4th
grade had more specific teaching of sounds, more in 4th than in 3rd.
The article mentions two sounds that can be seen as problematic; the /r/
and /l/. (Jannuzi, p. 46). This led us to discuss several other sounds, like
the TH, in words like three, or the
U, in words like cup that might be
problematic for Norwegian learners. While discussing different sounds we also reflected
somewhat on the reasons that some sounds are more difficult than others and that
most of our pupils find it easier to pronounce the sounds the American way. When
it comes to the /r/, most students seem to automatically use the American pronunciation
in most words and that this is caused by the fact that the English they are
usually exposed to is American English through movies, music and games. This
fact led us to discuss the importance of out-of-school exposure and I presented
some findings from a study by Muños and Lindgren that claims that out-of-school
exposure is the most significant learning platform for most of our students,
but the more we expose the children to English in school, the less significant
the out-of-school exposure will be. (Muños and Lindgren, p. 119) We agreed that
although it is not important what kind of English we use, it is important for
us as teachers to be consequent in the way we pronounce words when teaching. We
also agreed that already from the very beginning we should talk about different
ways of pronunciation in order to not cause insecurity and conflicts when
children are working with tasks at home.
Another question that came up was the necessity of teaching English
phonemes. Why should we teach sounds and focus on sounds problematic? We have
probably all heard and been more or less embarrassed by well-known persons speaking
in public where a lack of skills both of pronunciation and intonation is highly
visible. That leads us to consider the importance of having a reasonably
correct spoken language to be taken seriously and not appear foolish when using
a foreign language professionally. The foundation for this is made already in
the start of foreign language learning. Starting to focus on sounds already
from the 1st grade is therefore a necessity. Teaching the youngest
children proper pronunciation makes it easier for them when the demands for even
more oral participation will come at a later stage. We believe that the more
secure they are of how to say a word, the more secure they will be of speaking
the language when it is required, and the more they learn.
Agreeing that teaching English phonemes to students is important raised
another question: How should we do it and how are we doing it already? All teachers
present at the meeting use songs and rhymes to learn words and sounds. We
listen, we repeat, we learn songs and poems by heart, but we seldom work on
specific problem sounds, at least this is the case for the youngest children.
In 3rd and 4th grade there is more focus on particular
sounds through reading simple texts and talking about words and pronunciation.
Teaching sounds in all grades should neither involve sounds without context nor
should it be teaching of words that has no meaning to the children. (Pinter,
2006, p. 68) But it is possible and necessary to focus on specific sounds that
occur in texts, songs and rhymes. Especially with the older children that is
starting to have a knowledge of many words, it is possible to withdraw some
words from texts we are working on and have a closer look at them by for
example reading and comparing words with same sound but different spelling, or
find all the words that have a particular sound. Another factor we found
important was the exposure of English as we also discussed earlier. Having a “focus
sound” that is also visualized in the classroom by words, drawings, pictures or
objects might be a way to go. There are many roads towards learning English
sounds, but the main thing is that we actually do it.
To sum up the task at hand; these are the kind of discussions that we
feel that we always have too little time for. The feedback from my colleagues
and the head master was that such educational discussions, especially when they
are planned around a certain theme, are very fruitful. Two of the teachers made
a positive point about the fact that we were so few and that all of us were
teaching in the lower grades, this, they said, made them more comfortable with
participating in the discussion and to ask questions if they wondered about
something. Although we might have arrived a bit far from the details of the
article we were presented with, we still had a very interesting and inspiring discussion
with a lot of reflection on teaching of English phonemes and sound problematic.
Bibliography
Carmen Muños and Eva Lindgren. Out-of-school factors –
the home. Early Language Learning:
Evidence from the ELLiE study, 103-122
Jannuzi, Charles, (2013), Sounds problematic, English Teaching Professional (88) at www.etprofessional.com , 46-49
Pinter, Annamaria (2006), Teaching
Young Language Learners, Oxford University Press
I keep wondering
if sometimes the changes are done for the purpose of changing rather than for
the purpose of making the school better. The words are different but is the
contents really that much different?
