What teachers need to know about phonetics (part 1)

As an MFL teacher with a dual degree in linguistics and French, I am passionate about teaching phonics well, and I have the subject knowledge to back it up. Therefore, here is my explanation of some important terminology in phonics, and some ways of categorising consonant sounds in linguistics, to better understand them and how to teach them.

When teaching phonics, I think teachers need to have a solid grasp on the key terminology, and I recommend using these with students too. Firstly, we have phoneme: the smallest unit of sound, and grapheme: the letter(s) used to write a unit of sound. The number of phonemes and/or graphemes in a word do not necessarily correspond to the number of letters. Phonemes can be written by many different graphemes, (ie. the many ways the sound/phoneme 'f' can be written, such as in funny, puff, photo, laugh), and graphemes can be used to write many different phonemes, (ie. the many sounds/phonemes that can be represented by the grapheme 'o' in odd, no, son, to). 

We can link these quite easily to students’ prior knowledge of English. To demonstrate the difference between phonemes and letters, I typically start by asking students to count the phonemes in some English words. My usual examples are ‘cat’, ‘shop’ and ‘thought’, which all contain 3 phonemes each. I then ask students to think of all the different ways we can spell the sound/phoneme ‘k’ in English, for example k (as in king), c (as in cat), ch (as in choir), qu (as in quiz), ck (as in brick) etc. After having practiced with English, to secure their understanding, they may also be able to practice similarly with TL and the target phonemes you have taught. 

There are also some terms that may be helpful for a teacher’s understanding of phonetics. When teaching literacy in English we typically put letters into just two categories of consonants and vowels. In linguistics, however, we categorise sounds based on how they are produced in the mouth. I think these are much more useful for teaching phonics; we do need to be aware, for example, that there are many more than just 5 vowel sounds! 

Consonants can be produced with different amounts of airflow. Plosives (eg. p/b/t/d/k/g) are a type of consonant produced by stopping the airflow momentarily. Fricatives (eg. s/z/sh/zh) are created when airflow is forced through a narrow opening in the mouth. Approximants (eg. l/r/w/y) have a larger opening in the mouth for the airflow; these are the closest consonant category to vowels, which have no restriction of the airflow.  

Linguistics also categorise consonant sounds depending on the place of articulation, or where in the mouth they are produced, ie. where the closure stopping or restricting the airflow happens. The infographic below helps you to picture this: 

For example: when attempting to say the French ‘r’ sound, it can be helpful to explain the science behind how we make this sound with our mouths. Although ‘r’ is an approximant sound in English, in French it’s a fricative, so we could tell students their mouths should be more closed. In English, the sound is produced at the alveolar ridge, but in French it is uvular, so in French is also a bit further back in the mouth towards the throat. 

There are many sounds in common between English and French. Where this is the case, the main challenge for students is related to the link between the sound and the potentially different spellings in each language. Students need lots of practice listening to the target phoneme AND linking it to the written form and the spelling. 

I will discuss vowels in part 2. See you then! 

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