(Describer) Title: Early Readers - English as a second language. Phonemic Awareness. Jennifer Spiegel, ESL Instructor.
[upbeat music]
(narrator)
Phonemic awareness is
the ability to hear,
identify, and manipulate
individual sounds, or phonemes,
in spoken words.
And then, to read, you need
to match these phonemes
or sounds
with their letters
that we call graphemes.
English learners can have
additional hurdles to jump
in learning
phonemic awareness.
This can lead to problems
in reading, speaking,
and writing in English.
Sound recognition can vary
depending
on your first language.
English has 44 sounds,
and 12 of the sounds
are vowels.
Spanish, on the other hand,
only has 22 sounds,
and 5 of them are vowel sounds.
Other languages may have
even more sounds to learn
in English.
(Describer) Letter puzzles.
Activities can make it easier
to learn English sounds
and to help your child
read better.
Be sure to do
multisensory activities
with your children
that involve their hands,
eyes, bodies, and mouths,
and always continue
your native language
in your house.
It's as important as English.
Another important thing
to consider
is when English learners
were first exposed
to the sounds of English.
Being exposed to these sounds
is best
if it was before the age
of one,
but a lot of times,
for English learners,
it happens when they go
to school
because there is
no English spoken at home.
A good way to expose
your child
to the sounds of English
is to use an app called Epic
and put it
on the "read aloud" format.
Your child will then hear
the sounds,
intonation, and pitch
of English.
Later, when they go to school,
they can match these sounds
to the letters.
(Describer) Jennifer shows a family the app on her tablet.
Mouth cards can show you
what your mouth
should look like
when you're making
the particular sound.
Is the mouth opened or closed?
What is the placement
of the tongue, teeth,
and lips?
You and your child
can practice this
over and over again
until it becomes more natural.
(Describer) The father tries pronouncing and grins.
Another way to practice
the sounds of English
is working with minimal pairs.
These are words that have
a small difference in sound.
If you're working
with vowel sounds,
you would have words
like "hit" and "hat,"
or "top" and "tip."
To practice consonants,
you might use "hit" and "kit"
or "bat" and "bad."
Neat.
Neat...
(all)
Nit.
(Spiegel)
Okay, good.
Are you hearing the difference?
Yeah, the difference.
(Spiegel)
Okay, and feeling your mouth?
You should focus
on one change at a time.
Practice the sounds
that your child
struggles with.
Say and repeat them
several times
until they become
more fluid.
For school-age children,
this can be done
with letter cards as well.
Vocabulary enrichment
is very important
for English learners.
Words must be attached
to meaning.
The average child knows
over 5,000 words
when they start kindergarten.
An English learner
will be missing
many of these words
in English.
They probably know them
in their native language
but not in English.
Pictures can help
fill the gap.
If a child
can associate a word
to a picture,
both in his language
and the English language,
that can help make it stronger
in their brains.
So, for example,
if you have a picture of a dog,
and you're a Spanish speaker,
you would help
your child practice
with dog and perro.
(Describer) Logos appear: Funding provided by the Ohio Broadcast Educational Media Commission, in partnership with the Ohio Department of Education. WOUB Public Media. Copyright 2019. Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.
Accessibility provided by the
U.S. Department of Education.
