Phonemic Symbols

  There are two issues that need to be stressed when working with the international phonemic alphabet. First is the fact that we are no longer concerned with how a word is traditionally spelled. Additionally we need to stress that we are only concerned with the sounds needed to correctly produce a word. So rather than numerous spellings, which can often be pronounced in different ways, we have one symbol representing one sound. Once we can isolate a sound, rather than juggling various spellings, we can work with our students on how to say that sound. Doing that successfully is related to manner and place of articulation, which will be covered shortly. To get a better understanding of the phonemic alphabet, let's take a look at our chart. In the bottom half of our chart we have our...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Linguistics is the scientific study of the human language and its structure, and as any other science, it is divided into different branches or areas of analysis. One of these divisions examines the articulation of sounds and has a name that corresponds to its function: phonetics. Despite the crucial character it plays in its scientific field, the one it performs in teaching is considered roughly secondary. Nonetheless, a change in role assignment could improve the learning of the English language immensely. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Keilany G. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Speaking is frequently considered the hardest skill to develop when learning a...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Cuoe Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Xianyang Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. With English being one of the most widely used languages in the world, many individuals are learning English in China. The learners include children, businessmen etc. Although the learners have their own reasons for studying English, there are three main problems that the Chinese learners face while trying to learn English. The first issue is that learners pay too...  [Read more]

  In this TEFL review video a student from South Africa talks about her second week at ITTT's training center in Phuket, Thailand. She discusses some of the course components, the training staff and the rewards of doing the course in Phuket. At ITTT all in-class trainers and online tutors are experienced and qualified professionals and they guarantee to deliver to trainees the most up to date training methods in the teaching of English to non native English speakers. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences With English being one of the most widely used languages in the world, many individuals are learning English in China. The learners include children, businessmen, etc. Although the learners have their own reasons for studying English, there are three main problems that the Chinese learners face while trying to learn English. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Ning G. The first issue is that learners pay too much attention to memorizing a new vocabulary while ignoring the phonetic symbols. In China, memorizing English words is the ‘standard ’approach to learning English. However, this learning approach is not a comprehensive technique for learning English. In the memorization-oriented learning approach, the learners write...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Kecheng Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Linfen Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Note : some written things may not show up correctly because it has tables and symbols. please consider that. I wish it was possible to attach it as word or pdf file. How to teach reading? What was the first word you learned to read and how did you learn it? Most of us don't know what it was. In this essay, we are going to learn how did we learn to read then how do...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas What is phonology? Most students have not even heard about it. Whenever I ask my students whether they know or have ever learned about phonetics, the same answers come out, “No, we don’t know about it at all”. It is no wonder they reply like this because there is no phonetic teaching lesson in English classes from KG to high school here in my country. As for me, I got to study about this only when I attended college. Even then, it wasn’t taught comprehensively and I only learned very little. So I couldn’t read nor write phonetic symbols very well. Thus I thought it was the most difficult part of studying English. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Thein G. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In my experience teaching elementary and junior high school level English in Japan, several different pronunciation problems appear frequently. The Japanese phonemic inventory is smaller than English’s phonemic inventory, and the sounds present in each language differ from each other quite dramatically. Because of this, it can be difficult for native Japanese speakers to learn and master English pronunciation, but there are a few teaching techniques that can help students overcome this difficulty. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Vladlena H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Several consonants are difficult for native Japanese speakers to produce. It is well-known...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Xianggong Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Xianyang Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Many ESL teachers have never even heard of phonetics or phonology, yet they use these aspects of speech naturally when they speak. Phonetics and phonology are two areas of linguistics that study the sounds of language. Phonetics focuses on individual sounds, while phonology studies the features and combination of sounds (McMahon, 1-3). There are two reasons why...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Many ESL teachers have never even heard of phonetics or phonology, yet they use these aspects of speech naturally when they speak. Phonetics and phonology are two areas of linguistics that study the sounds of language. Phonetics focuses on individual sounds, while phonology studies the features and combination of sounds (McMahon, 1-3). There are two reasons why ESL teachers need to know phonetics and phonology: first, it helps them to conceptualize English in a way that their students can understand; and second, it helps them to address their students’ difficult pronunciation problems. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Victoria I. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT....  [Read more]

  Franziska is living and working in Madrid, Spain. She has recently earned her TEFL certification by completing a 120-hour online course with ITTT. In this TEFL review video Franziska tells us about her experience on the course. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. In this unit, I went over the possible different ways to use the necessary vocabulary learning methods (i.e. appropriacy, similarities to students' own language, meanings, etc...) and to not...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Sanhui Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Bazhong Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. When you are teaching English in a class consisting of multiple nationalities, a clear understanding of the issues faced by individual students is important in order to effectively organise your lesson. The teaching techniques have to be adjusted depending on their language background, because they possess different strengths and weaknesses when studying English....  [Read more]

  Telmo lives in Portugal and has completed an online TEFL course with ITTT. In this TEFL review, Telmo tells us how he enjoyed his experience on the course and recommends taking the course with tutor support. ITTT offers a range of course to suit all needs so if you are looking at taking your first steps as an English teacher or wish to refresh your skills you are bound to find something to suit you with ITTT. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. Teaching...  [Read more]

  A better way to go about imparting how to make sounds or what sounds are utilized in a word, is this international phonemic alphabet. Now we have as mentioned one symbol being used in all the words which share that same sound. Now once we get a little bit more familiar with our phonemic alphabet we can also show how different our different sounds can be as in this symbol for ?ooh?, this symbol for ?ow? and this symbol for ?uh?. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Fancun Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Yuncheng Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Japanese is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn, and perhaps vice versa. Though many Japanese programs do not require English teachers to learn Japanese, teachers should study basic Japanese to understand challenges students will encounter when learning English. English and Japanese share almost nothing in common; they have different...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Moujiaba Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Hanzhong Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Phonetics/Phonology. Phonetics refers to the study of speech sounds. In other words, Phonetics is that branch in Linguistics that studies the various sounds that come together to form words in a language. Phonetics happens to be one of the most important aspects when it comes to teaching and learning language. Phonology on the other hand, which is often...  [Read more]

  CELTA is an internationally recognized teaching qualification in the field of teaching English as a foreign or second language. The course is aimed at potential teachers with little or no experience inside a classroom. CELTA courses can be studied in a number of locations around the world and are individually designed and organized by different language institutes. Although there may be some variety between individual courses, the fundamental specifics of the course are dictated by Cambridge ESOL, part of the University of Cambridge. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This...  [Read more]

  In this video we'll be looking at the international phonemic alphabet and how it's used in the classroom. There are other phonemic alphabets but this is the most popular and the system, which is most widely used. You may have seen some of these symbols before as any good dictionary will supplement standard English spellings with the phonemic spellings to aid in pronunciation practice. Here we have a situation where we have what are called phonemes and each phoneme represents a sound within the English language. How is this helpful? Well, what it does is help students understand how to say words rather than simply relying on the often archaic English spellings. To illustrate this point let's for a moment put ourselves in the shoes of our students when trying to understand how to...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Shibalipu Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Liaocheng Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Since the invention of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in 1888, language students everywhere have been reaping the benefits. The International Phonetic Alphabet was a system created to give a correspondence between each sound in language and each phonetic symbol. With the IPA, a student can learn what parts of the mouth are called, and then they will...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Guli Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Tai'an Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. In the classroom the discovery of new words is guided by the teacher who elicits the meaning using different strategies or pre-teaches difficult vocabulary, but what happens when the pupils are at home? Although students should try to guess the meaning from the context, it is likely that they will look up the word in a dictionary. Students with proper training on...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Jieshan Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Tai'an Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. As well as you know a dictionary plays significant role in language learning especially at schools and other educational centers. There are many advantages of using a dictionary: Right pronunciation. When students come across with new words, in order to have right pronunciation of words they can check out a word’s right utterance. Part of speech. It could inform...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Xiying Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Changzhi Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. I began this online program with over two decades of experience teaching adults in a live classroom, and three years teaching adults online. I have created, developed and successfully delivered hundreds of different programs over the last twenty years. I know I was born to teach, as teaching is not only a skill that many can learn, it is also a gift that I know I...  [Read more]

Federico Riva TEFL Information Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas Here perhaps the first thing we should do is to make a distinction between the two main types of dictionary and that distinction is between the monolingual and the bilingual dictionary. In a monolingual dictionary you have a word and its associated meaning and those two are both described for example in English. So the word and the description of that word are both given in English. However, in a bilingual dictionary the word could be for example, given in English and the explanation given in Thai and vice versa. Firstly within the dictionary itself obviously we can get things like how words are spelled or the spelling of the word. We can also get the pronunciation of that word because most dictionaries will involve the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Phonetics and phonology may seem like advanced or ‘bonus’ aspects of teaching the English language, but they are essential and fundamental to successful English communication for English students. While teaching and practicing concepts like pronunciation, intonation, stress, and articulation may be difficult (or seem outright impossible!), there are several methods and tools which English teachers can employ to help their students master them. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Max T. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Grammar and vocabulary are key components of effective communication, but their impact is greatly reduced without the ability to pronounce them clearly...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Miliang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Shangluo Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. I have decided to write a summative task on this subject because I have some experience and observations in the area. I have observed that many Japanese have extreme difficulty pronouncing many English words correctly. The pronunciation difficulties causes some Japanese people to be reluctant to speak English, due to embarrassment, which compounds the problem. I...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas As an English teacher, it is quite common to encounter high achievers, those who are so inspired and self-motivated in learning English, as well as low achievers, those who find themselves with no interest or goals in class. About the former group, there are always ways to encourage them in English learning, while for the latter, the teacher really has to think over and over before taking appropriate actions. I have always had to think of ways to encourage students in my teaching practice because the majority of students from my class are far from being excellent in English. The top student currently only scores 6 in IELTS. Therefore, it takes me much effort to arouse their interest first, without which the task of enhancing their productive and...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Taiping Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Aba Zangzu Qiangzu Zizhizhou —? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. Dyslexia is a learning disorder in children and adults where individuals brain struggles to process visual signs, phonetic sounds and additionally, struggle to connect visual signs to phonetic sounds. Commonly, students with dyslexia have problems recognising the difference between similar sounds, can be slow at learning a new vocabulary, and...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Nowadays, many people in Kyrgyzstan want to learn English. To enter university or find a better job. However, the learners here face some difficulties in learning. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate KWONG C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. English is the third language here, the secondary language is Russian. So the hours available for teaching English is not much in local schools generally. For example, some schools may just provide one hour of English lessons per week. Parents think that the learning hours provided by the school is not enough, as a result, they send their children to a private language center, to have an extra English class. But the income of...  [Read more]

  The next item we're going to consider is the use of dictionaries and here perhaps the first thing we should do is to make a distinction between the two main types of dictionary and that distinction is between the monolingual and the bilingual dictionary. In a monolingual dictionary you have a word and its associated meaning and those two are both described for example in English so the word and the description of that word are both given in English. Whereas in a bilingual dictionary that word meaning could often be for example the word given in English and the explanation given in Thai and vice versa. So what can we use a dictionary for? Well, within the dictionary itself obviously we can get things like how words are spelled or the spelling of the word. We can also get the...  [Read more]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Xiaolukou Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Jining Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language. As an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher, one of our key objectives is to support successful student learning. We strive to meet this objective by incorporating a variety of teaching theories, methods, and techniques – some more effective than others. In fact, as noted in this TEFL coursework, each method and technique has its advantages and...  [Read more]