TEACHING THE SOUNDS OF WORDS

In the history of humans, the spoken word existed long before the written or printed word appeared.

The written word is an attempt to describe the spoken word and convey information. But, since there are at least 50 spoken sounds in languages that use the roman alphabet and only 26 letters in that alphabet, the written word has never perfectly described all spoken words.

Because the spoken word changes constantly over time-and-place, the best we can do is approximate the sounds of the language at any one time-and-place with the printed word.

Fortunately, it turns out that this imperfect, good-enough system can be handled easily by the magnificent average brain and that brain's word sense (our innate sense of the spoken language).

Since reading is basically a translation of the written word, and we know that written word imperfectly describes the spoken word, we should never accept or expect the written word to be the gospel on how words should be pronounced.

Reading irregular spelling is not a problem for most intelligent adults -- we simply ignore the goofiness and read the word before us as it is meant to be said by our friends and family or by our word-sense -- not by how the printed word looks. Basically we ignore the spelling because we trust our knowledge of the language. When we see the words “to” and “I’m” -- we know that rhyming the word “to” with “who” and “ I’m” with “time” does not reflect the way we and our friends say those words most of the time in sentences such as “I’m going to go to the store” -- which is usually said “ahm goan tuh thuh stor”

Is it impossible to logically teach that sentence to beginning readers? You can’t very well logically teach the single words independently and you can’t logically teach the sentence as a whole. Both methods give you significant problems.

There are literally hundreds of words that present the same problem -- including every word which contains a schwa.

Our suggestions are: (1) teach all words as though the sounds of the letters correspond with those on an alphabet-to-speech-sound chart, (2) ignore all schwas and (3) know full well that the students will pronounce those words in conversation as they hear them said by their teachers, family and friends.

You will not be teaching these words as you expect them to be used, but you will be teaching the most reasonable system.

Remember -- “Good-enough” is way more than adequate for teaching pronunciation.

Don’t be a nit-picker when it comes to pronunciation: nit-picking will drive kids away from reading.