Phonics: Cutting out the bopomofo effect

You know what I mean

dog

dog-ge

cake

ca-ke

It drives me NVTS nuts. So what to do? I have started getting the kids to read new vocab (beginning level classes) with their teeth together.

That’s it. My secret is no more. I go with what works and don’t ask why.

If I could get my kids to stop prouncing /n/ like /UN/ I would be happy and feel accomplished. But I’ve come to realize that it’s not me or them, but their teacher. And having the truth told to me a couple of weeks ago by a kid in a class, the homeroom teacher will have more favor because s/he is the homeroom teacher.

So, all the English I teach, tends to go out the window. But there’s hope…

"eh, bee, shee, dee, ee, effoo, dzee, ech, I, dzay, kay, ello, emm, un, oh, pee, koo, arr, essu, tee, you, vee, doubleyou, ekkussu, why, and zee…

blah, blah, blah, blah, eh bee shee,
blah, blah, blah, blah, sing with me."

At first I thought it was a Taiwanese folk song.

I bet that really helps with the short vowels too! :laughing:

[quote=“jdsmith”]
That’s it. My secret is no more. I go with what works and don’t ask why.[/quote]
“Phoincs” is your great secret? No wonder you’re a laoban! :bravo:

When I first arrived I did some chant like “A A A ah ah ah B B B buh buh buh C C C cuh cuh cuh.” Now after doing some reading, research and practice in the classroom, I learned that…

C, F, H, K, P, S, T don’t make noise. Never add -uh to the end of those. Air just blows out. The ones that do get -uh (b, d, etc.), get it, but short and sweet like. Dog, not Dog-uh.

I was also AMAZED to learn that the T and D sound are exactly the same, except one has sound and the other doesn’t. I’ve actually been amazed by a lot of things (like the b in climb is silent, laugh if you like.)

Another correction I make all the time is that the final S sound often sounds similar to z depending on what’s in front of it. It’s not lion/s/ it’s lion/z/ (or some shit like that.)

I’m now approaching phonics grand wizard status. Speaking of certifications, someone needs to make one for phonics (I’m serious.)

Uh, the one that still irks me is the tendency to pronounce the unstressed final “a” in a word as “ah,” although unstressed vowels are schwa and sound closer to “uh” than “ah.” Commonly heard examples:

pizzAH
extrAH
yoGAH
zeBRAH
pasTAH
gorillAH
coLAH
koaLAH
vanillAH
panDAH
papaYAH
camerAH
guaVAH
eneMAH

To prevent dog-UH, as soon as students get to the g sound, try having them clap their hands over their mouths. Or have students make a v with their fingers over their mouths and “cut” off the extra sound. Or use your fingers to count syllables as you say the word slowly; when students do it, do the same and show them where you hear an extra syllable. Or give the class a thumbs up model pronunciation and a thumbs down (which you can really ham up).

BTW, my favorite thing to say when a student would say “deener” for “dinner” etc. was, “How many e’s are in that word?”

Smell the Phonics

I’ve fouund that mockiung the kids teunds to help.

If they say “un” iunstead of “n”, write “un” oun the board.

They say “chineesuh” ask them why the chinese died (Chinese 死).

Let them know that gouda is a kind of cheese, not the opposite of bad.

If they say “orange-jee” draw an orange “G” on the board and point to it every time it is mispronounced.

If they don’t get it right, make them repeat until they do.

If some kid thinks it’s funny to say it wrong on purpose, embarrass the kid. Put him in the spotlight he wants so bad until he gags on it.

This is war.

[quote=“naijeru”][quote=“jdsmith”]
That’s it. My secret is no more. I go with what works and don’t ask why.[/quote]
“Phoincs” is your great secret? No wonder you’re a laoban! :bravo:[/quote]

Now see, being the ethicallyminded Moderator that I am…I won’t go back into your post and change the GLARING FUCKING MISTAKE that I made. :laughing:

Thank you for pointing this out…I usually send PMs, but now that you decided to publically humiliate me, I shall take it upon myself to REMEMBER YOU NAIJERU! Oh yes, remember you I will.

You will rue…oh yeah…serious rueage in your future. :raspberry: :raspberry: :raspberry:

:wink:

I don’t think the addition of vowel sounds to consonants by Chinese learners of English has anything to do with bo-po-mo-fo. They certainly don’t learn to do that with MPS, and I’ve never heard a Taiwanese or mainlander do that with either MPS or HYPY. The symbols in these systems represent discreet sounds, and that’s how students learn to use them.

IMO, a likely cause of learners adding sounds to letters is that they have difficulty distinguishing what sound is what without tagging that extra vowel sound on. Why don’t native English speaking kids do this? It may have something to do with NES’s already having mastered the basic phonological system of English before they begin to learn how to spell. They already have a large bank of words in their heads; phonics only serves to help them spell those words and broaden out their vocabulary by giving them pronunciation guessing skills for when they encounter new words in print. To me, the solution to the problem of non-native speakers adding in funny sounds when trying to sound words out with phonics is simple: stop or cut back on the teaching of phonics and instead try to build their vocabulary and pronunciation to the point where they have a good grasp of the sounds of English. For a learner at very low level, phonics is more likely to slow down their acquisition of the sound system of the language rather than speed it up.

[quote=“R. Daneel Olivaw”]I’ve fouund that mockiung the kids teunds to help.
[/quote]

I don’t mock them but ask them in a repeat question form. Is Fuun or FUN? Emphasis on the /n/ sound. Then I write it on the board to drill it home. But alas, the next day we are still back to /un/ but there’s hope…

Uh, the one that still irks me is the tendency to pronounce the unstressed final “a” in a word as “ah,” although unstressed vowels are schwa and sound closer to “uh” than “ah.” Commonly heard examples:

pizzAH
extrAH
yoGAH
zeBRAH
pasTAH
gorillAH
coLAH
koaLAH
vanillAH
panDAH
papaYAH
camerAH
guaVAH
eneMAH

[/quote]

That’s because when they speak Chinese, they add that “ah” to the end of every other sentence. Really. Overhearing the locals talk, it’s “bla bla bla AH!” this and “blee blee blee AH!” that. I know it’s their native language, but it’s so annoying.

True. It simply comes from the phonological rules of their own language, which state that no syllable may end with a consonant other than -n or -ng.

or luh.

Uh, the one that still irks me is the tendency to pronounce the unstressed final “a” in a word as “ah,” although unstressed vowels are schwa and sound closer to “uh” than “ah.” Commonly heard examples:

pizzAH
extrAH
yoGAH
zeBRAH
pasTAH
gorillAH
coLAH
koaLAH
vanillAH
panDAH
papaYAH
camerAH
guaVAH
eneMAH

[/quote]

That’s because when they speak Chinese, they add that “ah” to the end of every other sentence. Really. Overhearing the locals talk, it’s “bla bla bla AH!” this and “blee blee blee AH!” that. I know it’s their native language, but it’s so annoying.[/quote]

It’s even more annoying when you have the Chinese teacher reinforcing this in the way she speaks English-uh.

I’ve used the clapping thing and extending sibilants and fricatives when possible like to keep from hearing ‘fish-uh’ I say ‘fish’ and put my finger to my lips to extend the ‘shhh’. Being taught that the sound that B makes is ‘buh’ and D is ‘duh’ makes for a lot of retraining. I had students who had learned sounds from a really cute song, except it focused on only one sound and they had little other experience learning the alphabet. So when I showed them a card with the letter B on it, the kids insisted it was a “bee-says-buh” and when shown an ‘A’, that the letter A is “ai-says-aa”.

True. It simply comes from the phonological rules of their own language, which state that no syllable may end with a consonant other than -n or -ng.[/quote]

Which is probably why they velarize their nasal consonants - /n/ and /m/.

Truth is, once the kids have to learn K.K at school, everything that you’ve taught them in phonics will be at the mercy of their teacher at school. If it ever becomes a choice between what is right and what means grades, well, I think we all know that grades will win every time.

True. It simply comes from the phonological rules of their own language, which state that no syllable may end with a consonant other than -n or -ng.[/quote]

Which is probably why they velarize their nasal consonants - /n/ and /m/.[/quote]Right. I think that both “dogguh” and the “bo-po-mo-fo” pronunciation are results of the phonemic system of Mandarin. Children acquire the phonemes of their 1st languages very early. There is even evidence that newborn babies show a preference for the sounds of the mother tongue (even when spoken by strangers) over the sounds of other languages.

Not to worry too much though. As long as foreign/second language acquisition is started before children are 12 years old or thereabouts, they have a good chance of achieving native-like pronunciation. (If, of course, that’s the desired goal! As long as people can be understood, there’s nothing wrong with a foreign accent. And some people actively hold on to their accents as a badge of identity; a kind of defence against assimilation. It can get quite political).

I really don’t know what the big deal is. I can take a group of 30 kids with wacked out phonics pronunciation and have them OK within thirty minutes (assuming they have the basics.)

If Chinese teachers say it wrong, fix it. My co-teacher did the same thing when I started (-uhs and -ahs), now her pronunciation is much better.

And I’ll never let anyone ever slip with pronunciation. When I catch it, it gets corrected.

I don’t know all the tricks, but it helps to know how the tongue and mouth should be positioned when making the different sounds. Show them how to properly recreate sounds they mess up. An easy one to fix that comes to mind is the “th” sound like in mouth. Kids are always messing that one up.

I have a feeling people just don’t take the time to correct these problems. I know I didn’t use to. I would just stop at “good enough.” Now I demand perfection from everyone when it comes to pronunciation and enunciation. The only ones I let slide a little bit are the ones that are also having difficulty pronouncing things properly in Chinese. Then I figure something else is going on.

I also take the time to know the correct pronunciation of the words I teach. While going over “different” in class today I noticed that I said it two ways, once with 3 syllables and once with 2. I took the time to check a dictionary and find out that both are correct, though I’ll stick to using one variation.

I also found out some time ago that some people say palm with a silent L. I don’t, and no one is incorrect (though it’s good to know these things.)

And these problems do come from something Taiwanese. Me niece is 2 or 3 now and was saying “effoo” last weekend (as taught by her 奶奶.) When I corrected her in the past she wasn’t able to make the proper F sound, but she did last weekend after one try.

It’s not really all that serious. I just like looking up words in dictionaries and don’t get to share my excitement about it much with others :smiley:.

Yawannabesureyerteachinenglishasit’sreallyspokentoo, inthoughtgroups
thatrorganizedgrammatically
npronouncedexactlylikeoneword.