International Phonetic Alphabet To English

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas I chose this topic for my essay because it is not something I had ever given much thought to. As a native speaker, I don’t recall studying correct pronunciation in school along with other aspects of language learning such as grammar and vocabulary. Correct, or at least acceptable and understandable, the pronunciation was something that just happened. I was initially somewhat surprised when I saw that an entire online module had been devoted to the topic, but as I read the module, I realized that it is a rich and complex component of language learning, to which serious students of English as a second language should be exposed. And the sample lesson video demonstrated to me that teaching phonetics could also be...  [Read more]

  In this TESOL review, ITTT graduate Miguel talks about his experience taking the online TESOL course. Miguel had already been teaching English for several years in Korea before deciding to take an online TESOL course with ITTT. Although reluctant to take the course at first, he found it to be very informative and helpful. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. Planning lessons are essential in teaching even though there is no one special way of...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Many ESL teachers have never even heard of phonetics or phonology, yet they use these aspects of speech naturally when they speak. Phonetics and phonology are two areas of linguistics that study the sounds of language. Phonetics focuses on individual sounds, while phonology studies the features and combination of sounds (McMahon, 1-3). There are two reasons why ESL teachers need to know phonetics and phonology: first, it helps them to conceptualize English in a way that their students can understand; and second, it helps them to address their students’ difficult pronunciation problems. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Victoria I. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily...  [Read more]

  In this video we'll be looking at the international phonemic alphabet and how it's used in the classroom. There are other phonemic alphabets but this is the most popular and the system, which is most widely used. You may have seen some of these symbols before as any good dictionary will supplement standard English spellings with the phonemic spellings to aid in pronunciation practice. Here we have a situation where we have what are called phonemes and each phoneme represents a sound within the English language. How is this helpful? Well, what it does is help students understand how to say words rather than simply relying on the often archaic English spellings. To illustrate this point let's for a moment put ourselves in the shoes of our students when trying to understand how to...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas In my experience teaching elementary and junior high school level English in Japan, several different pronunciation problems appear frequently. The Japanese phonemic inventory is smaller than English’s phonemic inventory, and the sounds present in each language differ from each other quite dramatically. Because of this, it can be difficult for native Japanese speakers to learn and master English pronunciation, but there are a few teaching techniques that can help students overcome this difficulty. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Vladlena H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Several consonants are difficult for native Japanese...  [Read more]

  There are two issues that need to be stressed when working with the international phonemic alphabet. First is the fact that we are no longer concerned with how a word is traditionally spelled. Additionally we need to stress that we are only concerned with the sounds needed to correctly produce a word. So rather than numerous spellings, which can often be pronounced in different ways, we have one symbol representing one sound. Once we can isolate a sound, rather than juggling various spellings, we can work with our students on how to say that sound. Doing that successfully is related to manner and place of articulation, which will be covered shortly. To get a better understanding of the phonemic alphabet, let's take a look at our chart. In the bottom half of our chart we have our...  [Read more]

  In this TEFL review video, Krystle talks about how she took the online TEFL course with ITTT. Now she has finished her course with ITTT, Krystle is planning to do some volunteer teaching with some local institutions to gain some classroom experience before she starts looking for a job teaching English abroad. Krystle notes that the course is very flexible and is reasonably priced making it an ideal option for those on limited budgets. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Each student faces their difficulties when it comes to English pronunciation depending on their country of origin. This essay will focus on the pronunciation difficulties facing ESL students in France and will also propose some solutions to help students overcome these difficulties. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Kerri M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The number of English vowel sounds greatly outnumbers those found in the French language. As such, French students will have to produce sounds that they have never produced before. The short ‘ɪ’ used in ‘bit’ does not exist in French. In this case, they will...  [Read more]

  A better way to go about imparting how to make sounds or what sounds are utilized in a word, is this international phonemic alphabet. Now we have as mentioned one symbol being used in all the words which share that same sound. Now once we get a little bit more familiar with our phonemic alphabet we can also show how different our different sounds can be as in this symbol for ?ooh?, this symbol for ?ow? and this symbol for ?uh?. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Japan is a Pacific Island nation whose history is marked by periods of nationalism and seclusion, as the Japanese government closed the borders to international trade. The lack of foreign influence in Japan has enabled a unique culture to flourish and the population to remain nearly 98% homogenous, meaning nearly everyone that lives in Japan is Japanese. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Andrew C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Within the past hundred years, government policy has changed and Japan has opened its borders to trade and tourism, becoming a major global economy and popular international tourist destination...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences French are bad at speaking English, it’s a fact, proven by many studies but also by the shameful spectacle of our politician trying to say things in Shakespeare’s language. The Elite not having a decent level it is hard to blame the population for not trying very hard. International studies are all putting French students at the last position in Europe for mastering English skills. Even more alarming in 2008 the TOEFL results were putting France at the 69th rank on 109 countries. In 9th Grade, only 14% of the students have an “independent level” according to a 2011 study of the European Commission (we also note that only 9% of English 9 graders are “independent” in French). This post was written by...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Teaching English pronunciation to students of other languages is always a big deal. English teachers from other countries may think that it is a topic to be skipped or only briefly introduced to students, but it is one of the most important subjects and it should be an integral part of an English course. As a matter of fact, the full understanding of a language and good communication actually depend, to a certain extent, on how correctly words are pronounced. Also, it is not only a matter of pronunciation but intonation. Every language has its own intonation and stress on words, so an English learner could find it difficult to get used to a new way of pronouncing words in another language. This is true for...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Pronunciation is an essential part of the English language. Clear and cohesive speech can create meaningful conversations, meanwhile incorrect pronunciation can lead to misunderstandings. Every, non-native English-speaking country has pronunciation problems. One of the countries which come across with pronunciation errors is my homeland Azerbaijan. It is a lovely country, with nice traditions and people. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Narmina M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. There are many different nationalities that live in my country. People speak various languages. Our official language is Azerbaijani; however, the...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Japan is a nation that has tried to increase its citizens’ English ability, especially with the upcoming 2020 Olympic Games being held in their country. However, progress has been slow and not fruitful. There are various reasons for this slow stagnation of the nation’s English abilities such as the larger academic system and access to proper education in rural areas. However, I will focus on three main hurdles that Japanese learners of English must face that can impede their English education. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Michael H. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. These are the differences in phonology between...  [Read more]

  Here we have a set of five words, which all share one sound: the ?oh? sound, as in ?go?, ?show?, ?dough?, ?note? and ?boat?. They?re five different spelling patterns to tell our students so they can identify when to make the ?oh? sound. We can have a simple letter ?o?, ?ow?, ?ough?, ?o? with the magic ?e? which turns our vowel into what we knew as long sounds and the ?oa? as in ?boat?. Now, for a non-native learner, perhaps they can handle something like this. They remember that these spelling combinations help to produce the ?oh? sound and they can go about their business looking at the words and memorizing this knowing that these spelling patterns will produce the sound ?oh?. Now that?s okay until we get to a situation where we can also have words like ?to?, ?cow? and also...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Learning a second language can be difficult, and this is especially true when the learners L1 and their target language are completely different in structure, sound, and tones. An English as a second language student who speaks French, German, or any other European language will have an easier task than one who speaks a language that is not of European origins. One such language is Mandarin Chinese. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Ashley L. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. The areas that native Mandarin speakers most often run into difficulty are pronunciation, tones, tenses, and sentence structure. A Chinese speaker might...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas According to a study by scholars and experts in the field of linguistics, more specifically in the article of Riney & Anderson-Hsieh from International Christian University, the native language (L1) is a good predictor of pronunciation accuracy in English as researched by Suter in 1976. In the same article, it was mentioned that a subsequent study by Purcell and Suter in 1980, found that non-native speakers who are most likely to pronounce English (L2) poorly, fit the profile in Japanese ESL students. This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Cherryl T. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. In my two years of teaching ESL online, I’ve...  [Read more]

Linda Dunsmore Alumni Experiences Teaching Ideas A multilingual class is a class where the learners speak a variety of first languages. A monolingual class is a class where all the learners speak the same first language. I have been working in international school setting for over 13 years. The classes are multilingual classes where students come from different cultures and English is the common language for them to communicate with their teachers and classmates. By contrast, English classes in local schools and universities in China are considered to be monolingual classes since the students use their first language, Chinese, to communicate. The teacher has to remind them to not use their mother tongue constantly during class...  [Read more]

Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Stefania F. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. English teachers from other countries may think that it is a topic to be skipped or only briefly introduced to students, but it is one of the most important subjects and it should be an integral part of an English course. As a matter of fact, the full understanding of a language and good communication actually depends, to a certain extent, on how correctly words are pronounced. Also, it is not only a matter of pronunciation but intonation. Every language has its own intonation and stress on words, so an English learner could find it difficult to...  [Read more]