Phonetic Symbols And Sounds

  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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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 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]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Phonology involves studying how sounds are organized in a language to create meaning. It differs in every language as sounds are organized to create words, which are then organized in sentences. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jane M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Phonetics involves understanding how sounds are physically made, what part of the vocal tract is used, and how air is used to produce sounds. It enables teachers to analyze how sounds are made which helps teachers to assist students in grasping new and or difficult sounds and help students with the production of these sounds. Specifically, when teaching English as a foreign language, a teacher can...  [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 Each student faces their difficulties when it comes to English pronunciation depending on their country of origin. This essay will focus on the pronunciation difficulties facing ESL students in France and will also propose some solutions to help students overcome these difficulties. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kerri M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The number of English vowel sounds greatly outnumbers those found in the French language. As such, French students will have to produce sounds that they have never produced before. The short ‘ɪ’ used in ‘bit’ does not exist in French. In this case, they will pronounce ‘bit’ as ‘beet’ [biːt] as the...  [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]

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 Yanping 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. Why do Japanese tend to have trouble with pronunciations of the English language? In the English alphabet there are 26 letters that represent not just one sound, but multiple depending on how it is used or its placement in a sentence. This is called phonetics. Phonetics is a difficult but important subject of learning to grasp and understand in order to pronounce...  [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]

  Here we have a set of five words, which all share one sound: the ?oh? sound, as in ?go?, ?show?, ?dough?, ?note? and ?boat?. They?re five different spelling patterns to tell our students so they can identify when to make the ?oh? sound. We can have a simple letter ?o?, ?ow?, ?ough?, ?o? with the magic ?e? which turns our vowel into what we knew as long sounds and the ?oa? as in ?boat?. Now, for a non-native learner, perhaps they can handle something like this. They remember that these spelling combinations help to produce the ?oh? sound and they can go about their business looking at the words and memorizing this knowing that these spelling patterns will produce the sound ?oh?. Now that?s okay until we get to a situation where we can also have words like ?to?, ?cow? and also...  [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]

  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 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]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The above is a topic that I want to particularly used to teaching reading to young learners. There are some points given below, they are. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Angeline J. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Children's songs and nursery rhymes aren't just a lot of fun—the rhyme and rhythm help kids to hear the sounds and syllables in words, which helps them learn to read. A good way to build phonemic awareness (one of the most important skills in learning to read) is to clap rhythmically together and recite songs in unison. This playful and bonding activity is a fantastic way for kids to implicitly develop the literacy skills that will set them up for...  [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 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]

  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 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]

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Anle 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. If you ever find yourself driving in French Canada, you will be stopped by stop signs that say ‘arrêt’, which is stop in French. Almost all drivers in North America would know that this means stop because it’s the same octagon red stop sign. In Japan it’s very different, stop signs are triangular with Japanese script on them but, beneath the Japanese, you can...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences If you ever find yourself driving in French Canada, you will be stopped by stop signs that say ‘arrêt’, which is stopped in French. Almost all drivers in North America would know that this means stop because it’s the same octagon red stop sign. In Japan it’s very different, stop signs are triangular with Japanese script on them but, beneath the Japanese, you can find English subtitles which read ‘stop’. In fact, if you travel anywhere in Japan, the majority of signs and announcements related to travel are offered in Japanese and English. English has been taught in Japanese schools since the American occupation after World War Two. However, according to an EF English Proficiency Index in 2017, Japanese English proficiency is 35th out of...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The study of language acquisition has long been a topic of interest to both psychologists and linguists alike. The manner wherein we acquire language is broken into two categories, depending on the developmental stage of the student being thought. First language acquisition refers to how children learn their native language. Second language acquisition refers to the learning of another language differing from their native language. This essay is concerned with the effect reading has on language acquisition. Reading is a core area in the acquisition of language. However, the statement is interchangeable as the language acquired by a student greatly predicts their reading acquisition. This essay will discuss briefly the manner a student firstly acquires...  [Read more]