Do you have problem understanding what your little one says? Do you get frustrated trying to teach your child to pronouce a word properly? Over my years of teaching English, the best way to help your young child overcome his pronunciation problem is learning phonics.
Phonics is also the key to reading and spelling effectively. To start off, teach your little one the 26 short sounds of the alphabets(44 sounds in the English Langauge). Not sure of the sounds? Go to www.starfall.com and learn from there. It's free. :)
Once the child knows the sounds, start to associate different things with the same beginning sound and eventually your child will understand how to associate them. For example, if your child knows 'F' is 'fff'... associate it with 'fff' fish, 'fff' fan and so on....
It's a very effective way to correct their pronunciation of words. Reese is quite good in his pronunciation but there are words that he can't get it right. Last week I started to associate the phonic sounds with the words that he can't pronounce properly. It actually work very well.
Some words that he can finally pronouce properly:
Aki mouse (Mickey mouse) = 'M', 'mmm' Mmmickey
Utterfly (Butterfly) = 'B', 'berh' Butterfly
Santa (Fountain) = 'F', 'fff' Ffffountain
Uttershoot (Parachute) = 'P' 'perh' Ppparachute
Now I also make it a habit of telling him the beginning sound of a new word that he learns in preparation to teach him reading.
I will be attending the National Early Childhood Conference this weekend. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Lilian Katz, a world renowned early childhood educator. She will be talking about Nurturing Thinking Learners In The Early Years. There are also several concurrent sessions on different areas of learning and I will be attenting the ones on Math and Science! by Dr Elizaberth Munroe. This is to prepare me to teach Reese Math and Science! Not one of my strong subjects...haha.. Next week I will share some of the things I will be learning at the conference!!! Have a good weekend everyone!
6 comments:
I home you are not too pressured by his not being able to pronounce certain words properly yet. After all, he is still a quite young for all the things he can already do.
Keep teaching, but also enjoy these fleeting traces of baby-ness in him.
Oops. Sorry, typo. I meant,
"I hope you're not too pressured..."
Oh Kathie,
Don't get me wrong... I have no pressure at all...hahaha... It's just one of those very effective way of getting a child to pronounce properly that's all. Just wanted to share with everyone. I love hearing Reese's 'baby talk'....
Now when I make sounds like that, Christopher also looks at me and you can see he is wondering how to make that sound!!
Especially the "T" sound!!!
He likes making sounds like that, which I am glad! :)
I'm not too worried abt my boy pronounciation at this age but will def correct him when he is older.
Agree that phonic is the key to reading and spelling but be careful on overlying on Phonics. Not all words can be spell using phonics.
Blessed Mum,
Phonics is the foundation to reading. Most kindy or schools will only teach the basic 26 sounds or maybe an extra or two but if your child learns all 44 sounds, even words are not phonetically spelled can be easy for them. :) and phonetics is also a foundation for them to learn good spelling.
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