In my last post, I mentioned that there are 26 letters and 44 phonemes in the English language. To make it even more confusing for emergent learners there are over 1,100 ways to spell the 44 sounds (Sousa, 2005). The poor correspondence between pronunciation and spelling is one reason why English is a difficult language to learn. According to David Sousa, this is called a deep orthography (2005). Deep orthography means that phonemes and graphemes do not have a direct relationship, as they do in other languages. Children must begin to recognize and remember a large number of patterns. For example, the “ough” in cough is the same spelling but a different sound than found in dough. Not only must children recall these differences when reading and writing, they must also consider the meaning of the words themselves.
Now consider a child whose first language is Spanish. The Spanish language has approximately 35 phonemes, but only 38 different ways to spell those sounds. There is a direct correlation between sound and spelling. While the Spanish language shares the same written alphabet system as English, the enormous difference between sounds and spelling presents a challenge for ELL students. When working with young ELL students we are faced with a double challenge. Building their vocabulary and background knowledge, but also providing them with the phonics skills to successfully express themselves in written language.
Sousa, D. (2005). How the brain learns to read. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.
Kelly, I so agree that the challenges our ELL students face when learning the English language are enormous. Also factor in that a number of these ELL students do not have English speaking parents at home modeling the language for them. The only modeled English they hear may be at school. I have found that when I am working with my ELL students I generally use a reading recovery method of teaching the letters and sounds. We make booklets that include the letter with a corresponding picture. The picture aides in vocabulary building but also gives context to the letters and sounds. When we read the booklets we say phrases such as A a apple \a\ for each letter, word and sound. It helps my students retain the letters and sounds as well as add to their vocabulary in a fun, sing songy kind of way. I use these books with other struggling students as well as my ELL students. Also there is a variety of technology to help assist these types of students such as www.starfall.com which is a widely known site where there are letter/sound corresponding games that also include pictures for context. I think that is is also importnat to explain to all students what the purpose for these sounds and letters is. The purpose is to be able to recognize the letters which have sounds attached to them in order to be able to decode and recognize words so that we become better readers. When we do activities with letters and sounds I think that it is important to make connections to text so that students see what their hard work will help them be able to do in the future.
ReplyDeleteKelly,
ReplyDeleteWhen I read your blog, the "I Love Lucy" show comes to mind. There was an episode where Ricky attempted to read the story only to stumble through the words "bough, rough, through, and cough." English surely is a difficult and complex language. For a non-native speaker, many of the English phonemes are hard to pick up.
I was six years old when my family settled in the United States. I recalled being hopeless when my teacher (at the time) and I cannot communicate. One of the area I struggled in was pronunciation. There were phonemes in the English language that I couldn't say because I was not exposed to it in my household. After a few years, I caught up with the rest of my classmates. However, I still had some trouble pronunciating some words that seemed like second nature to some of my friends. I guess over time, I manipulated my tongue to produce the desired sound. That's the beauty of learning a new language at a young age. The brain is still flexible enough to make learning multiple language a success.