Phonetic Chart

Pronunciation and Phonology in the EFL Classroom - Issues with the International Phonetic Alphabet   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...  [Read more]

Fri, 24 May 2019 Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Top Reasons Why Rules of Pronunciation are Extremely Important for Teachers 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. Table of Contents Why Students Suffer from Pronunciation Issues? Lack...  [Read more]

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas Phonological Awareness for Developing Language Abilities Phonology involves studying how sounds are organized in a language to create meaning. It differs in every language as sounds are organized to create words, which are then organized in sentences. Table of Contents Understanding both phonology and phonetics is important when teaching language to others. The English IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) utilizes symbols to represent single sounds. Do you want to teach English abroad or online? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: Check out what our course grads say in our many video testimonials! This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Jane M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the...  [Read more]

Pronunciation and Phonology in the EFL Classroom - Traditional Spellings to Phonemic Spellings Pt. 2   "As mentioned before our four words here all are similar in using the ?b? and ?t? sounds at the end. So we know that those phonemes will be used in spelling each one of those words phonetically. Now what we're left to do is assign a phoneme for our vowel sounds. So if we analyze the word, it's ?e? as in bet. We look at our chart, we see the phoneme which corresponds to that sound and that happens to be the standard ?e? that we all recognize. Here, bet phonetically looks very similar to bet in the Roman script. Now let's take a look at ?i? bit. Now we look at our chart and we see that this symbol represents the ?i? sound and that resembles a capital I not a lowercase I but a capital...  [Read more]

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 Mark Crocker Teaching Ideas Top Online Lesson Plan Resources for New and Advanced Teachers For many new and experienced EFL teachers, one of the most challenging aspects of their career is coming up with lesson plans that are both engaging and effective. Even if your employer provides a specific textbook to follow as a curriculum, you will often find that this can be rather dull for the students unless you spice things up by adding in some fun and original ideas from an outside source. By searching online you will find a huge amount of sites offering all manner of resources of varying quality and relevance. To save you the hassle of searching through them all, we have listed our 5 favorite websites that you can use to find quality lesson plans free of charge. Table...  [Read more]

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas The Most Effective Strategies to Teach Reading Reading competence involves making sense of the written text and requires the complex interaction of knowledge and skills. When children learn to read, they need to learn to integrate the use of visual, phonological and semantic cues and relate to their own experience to construct meaning. An effective reading instruction thus involves a combination of phonological instruction (decoding) and whole language (reading for meaning), with the use of authentic literary experience. This paper will provide a summary of essential areas of reading instruction, coupled with various strategies that I have used in my work as an educational psychologist and teacher, helping young children to read....  [Read more]

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas 7 Ways to Teach Reading The above is a topic that I want to particularly used to teaching reading to young learners. There are some points given below, they are. Table of Contents 1. Use songs and nursery rhymes to build phonemic awareness 2. Make simple word cards at home 3. Engage your child in a print-rich environment 4. Play word games at home or in the car 5. Understand the core skills involved in teaching kids to read 6. Play with magnet letters 7. Harness the power of technology to keep your child engaged Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Angeline J. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or...  [Read more]

Theories, Methods & Techniques of Teaching - The Silent Way   Our next methodology is called the silent way and it's accredited to Caleb Gattegno and was developed in or around the 1970s. This particular methodology moved on from the behaviorist stimulus response to what's called a theory of constructivism and this constructivist approach was very very different, very radical to anything that had been tried before. The background to this particular methodology was that there was a French mathematics teacher who found that his students were finding it very difficult to understand particular concepts. What he realized was that what they needed was a more visual representation of the information. So he came up with a series of colored rods to help with those concepts in...  [Read more]

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Problems for ESL Learners in Turkey I have started teaching English in Turkey, since 2018. If you are planning to start your teaching career here, I would like to mention several pros and cons and problems of learning English for the speakers of the Turkish language. Table of Contents Expectations Syntax Usage of the First Language Students' Efforts Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Hanie s. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Expectations First of all, learners expect teaching to be prescriptive rather than descriptive, which indicates, they tend to memorize the sample...  [Read more]

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas An Overview of Drilling Method as a Part of an ESL Class This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Ma. C. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Table of Contents Assessment: Goal: Examples for effective method includes: Instructions: Activity: Gesture to the class to repeat the model all together twice. This is called a chorus drill. Keep suitable and fun for the whole activity so that the students will cooperate and learn. Observations Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: Assessment: The assessment of drilling is to monitor students learning and identify strengths and weaknesses. the teacher helps recognize where students...  [Read more]

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas My Expectations and Hopes for Teaching at a University in China I took this top-up course to have a stronger background for teaching English as a foreign language in preparation for teaching at a university in China. I have already been in contact with the university and have "passed" the initial interview. I have done a lot of unpaid volunteer teaching, tutoring, and mentoring some of which have included English language learning. I have mostly worked with young children or adults. This time around I will be working with young adults. I am nervous but also very excited for the experience. I am looking forward to the chance to test the knowledge I have learned in this course and develop my skills specifically as an English teacher....  [Read more]

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences The English Language's Most Surprising Peculiarities The English language is a peculiar, fascinating beast to teach and to learn. It comes with a long legacy of Anglo-Saxon and Norman invaders, empire-building, and globalization of the 20th century. With multiple layers of rules and culture, it overflows with idiosyncrasies and peculiarities to confound native and learning speakers alike. Whether it's pronunciation, grammar, or even just the system of time, English is a welcoming lingua franca and an intimidating coil of strangeness at the same time. Table of Contents Cultural Historical Conceptual Orthoepical Grammatical Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course today! Related Articles: This post was written by...  [Read more]

Wed, 18 Sep 2019 Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Best Methodology for EFL Teaching Teaching English to foreign-speaking students comes with much responsibility, creativity, patience, and kindness. On the opposite end, learning another language is challenging, requires practice and can be frustrating. To make the teaching and learning exchange seamless there are a variety of lesson structures and independent/ group activities available for teachers to implement into classrooms. Although many methods can be used, grammar, vocabulary, reading, listening, writing, and speaking are all important structures taken into consideration as learning the language comfortably and fluently is always the end goal. Throughout this summative task, different methodologies will be paired and...  [Read more]

Tue, 19 May 2020 Elizaveta Pachina Alumni Experiences Reason for Embarking on a TEFL Journey The introverted Nathaniel struggled immensely through primary, high school, college, and music school. His first battle was learning how to read. At this point, no one knew he possessed a learning difficulty. Table of Contents Personal Experience Berlin, Germany Learning Efforts Colombia Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course today! Related Articles: This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Nathaniel F. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT. Personal Experience Although he had an impressive spoken vocabulary for a boy, when he looked at words on a page he could not match them to their sounds,...  [Read more]

Fri, 21 Feb 2020 Elizaveta Pachina Teaching Ideas What are the Different Techniques that Have Been Used to Teach Students a New Language? Throughout history, several different teaching approaches and methodologies have been tried and tested with some being more popular and effective than others.There are various teaching methods and techniques that are employed to help students learn a new language and this critique explains the advantages/disadvantages and effectiveness of some of the more important approaches. Table of Contents Grammar Translation The Audio-Lingual Method The Structural Approach Suggestopedia Total Physical Response (TPR) The Silent Way Task-Based Language Learning The Lexical Approach Do you want to teach English abroad? Take a TEFL course! Related Articles: ...  [Read more]