TEFL Oak Park Michigan

I have been teaching english to egyptian elementary students, for almost five years, from Pre-K to 2nd Grade. In my experience with teaching phonetics and phonology to elementary students, I can conclude that the egyptian learners of english encounter many pronunciation problems because of two main reasons: the english spelling as a poor reflection of the english pronunciation as well as the differences between the Arabic phonetic alphabet and that of english. Examples of such problems are to be classified and highlighted under each of the above reasons. To start with, the english orthography, there are twenty-six letters to represent almost twenty vowels and twenty-four consonants, which is not the case in Arabic where each letter represents one sound only and each sound can only be represented by one letter. Also, in Arabic, there only three vowels and the rest of the phonemes are consonants. Accordingly, when it comes to english, the egyptian learner is surprised to find, for example, letter pairs used instead of single letters to represent a single phoneme such as "ae” and "ch", which gives rise to confusion when they are not taken as a pair as in mean and chest. Another inconsistency is that the same letter or group of letters does not always represent the same sound in english. Some letters can stand for as many as four different sounds. For instance, the letter "c" has no sound equivalent as /c/; it is realized as /k/ as in cup and /s/ as in cellular. The learner cannot predict in which word "c" is pronounced as /k/ or /s/. In contrast, the letter or group of letters does not always represent the same sound. Such examples are the /f/ sound which is spelt as "f" as in fit, "ff" as in offer, "gh" as in tough and "ph" as in photo as well as the /e/ sound which is realized in various spellings like "a" as in many, "ai" as in said, "e" as in let, "ea" as in dead, or "eo" as in leopard. Furthermore, the sounds /p/ as in pizza and /v/ as in violet, are two foreign sounds, that neither appear phonetically nor phonologically in the Arabic language. Students typically have a very difficult time hearing the difference between /p/ and /b/, /v/ and /f/. In Modern Standard egyptian Arabic the diagraph /th/ is often pronounced as /s/. When students speak english, though they are capable of pronouncing /th/, they generally pronounce /th/ as /s/ and it becomes a very difficult habit to break. In summary, egyptian elementary level students tend to struggle with diphthongs and diagraphs, because their native tongue deals less with phonetic blends and generally has a single character that represents a sound. There are far fewer vowel sounds in Arabic as there are in english. It is more difficult for beginners to comprehend the fact that one letter or letter combination could create multiple sounds, and the combinations are my break general rules of the english language, so they must be memorized. Pronunciation problems for egyptian efl students generally originate from the lack of similar sounds in their mother tongue, Arabic. Task 3 – Write an independent research article of 500 to 700 words on a subject of your choice relating to tefl. You can choose from one of the subjects on pages 5 and 6 of unit 20, or suggest a subject for yourself after checking it with your tutor. You can write the article based on what you have learnt from the course, your own experiences, research of the topic, or a combination of any of these. The research can be done online, via any books you may have available to you or through personal interviews. Any sources should be cited.