Phonemic Practice:
The Power of Recycling
As a language student back in the 80s, I can
still recall a crucial explanation by one of my university instructors, -an
explanation on the importance of “recycling” the material that one covers in
any course that you are attending as a student or that you are teaching. My
“phonetic” instructor emphasized and pointed out that as a responsible pupil one must move information from one’s short-term
memory into our long-term memory. If that “data” movement does not take place,
one is bound to forget it and probably lose it as well.
After being teaching English pronunciation
for almost ten years at the university level, I have noticed how essential
“recycling” what one teaches is to better train students in one’s courses.
Although students are not the same if their studying habits are compared, as a
teacher one can sense that some do lots of additional practice and others
barely review what was studied before. The latter behavior, -at least in my
home country-, is quite common and affects language learning and any of the
four skills.
Considering Penny Ur’s words on the
importance of “language practice in class (Ur 1996), as soon as the language
presentation is over, the teacher has to conduct as much practice as necessary
(and as much as it can be achieved in one’s class periods). But going beyond
Ur’s ELT point, to ensure the achievement of learning objectives for students,
it is sensible to “recycle” previous content to assess student understanding
and to reinforce their learning.
Because my Pronunciation 1 (One) students
have some difficulty with phonetic symbols (and transcriptions), recycling
becomes necessary and a must in one’s extensive practice for one’s pupils to
fully ensure content comprehension and phonetic rules application. For that
reason, once they have some basic knowledge of sounds and symbols (about six to
seven weeks of instruction at the university[1]),
the recycling begins with four phonemic exercises: phonetic matching, sound
recognition, basic transcription, and phonemic
reading.
To help the ELT reader visualize how my
worksheets have been designed for my students, below you are provided with
three of them. The first group of exercises mails deals with the /iy/ or tense
“i” in English; the second, with /ɪ/ or lax “i” in English; and the last one,
with /ɛ/ or epsilon. However, Part 4 in all three worksheets include all
possible sounds already studied through the course.
[1] In our university system in Costa Rica, a single term lasts for 15 weeks. So when I begin the recycling of contents, at least a third of the course has been covered.
To sum up, these recycling tasks have proved
quite helpful for my pronunciation students. It can be assumed that similar
worksheets with this philosophy of content recycling for thematic units other
than pronunciation can trigger some good and positive learning reinforcement
and objective accomplishment.
ETo
fully develop and comprehend this teaching issue, it’s advisable to research
and expand these areas:
1
|
Short-term
vs. long-term memory
|
2
|
Recycling
in language teaching
|
3
|
Recycling
in language learning
|
4
|
Recycling
in phonemic teaching
|
5
|
Tasks
to reinforce learning
|
Professor
Jonathan Acuña-Solano
ELT
Instructor & Trainer based in Costa Rica
Freelance ELT Consultant four OUP in Central America
For
further comments or suggestions, reach me at:
@jonacuso – Twitter
Other blogs and sites I often write for my students at
the university are:
