The weekly column

Article 26, August 2000

Proposal for a Demonstration of a Teaching Method: "Beautiful and Ugly Vowel Sounds in English"

By Steve McCrea

ABSTRACT

I will demonstrate a method for teaching the "long" and "short" vowel sounds of English. Without creating special phonetic symbols, most of the vowel sounds can be taught by using "it sounds like" and a lot of "teacher demonstration" to show the position of the tongue during pronunciation.

BACKGROUND

I teach at a language school in Fort Lauderdale where most of the students come from Brazil, Argentina and Europe. Most of the students have been exposed to the International Phonetic System (IPS) but most are not comfortable in using the system.

I introduced to my class the "long" and "short" vowel sounds to help them use U.S. dictionaries, which use the long a (with a line over the a) and the short a (with the short hat or "u" over the vowel). One of my students said, "The short sounds are so ugly" and I was hit by the simplicity of the concept of "beautiful vs. ugly." It is possible to say hat, pet, bit, hop, cut and extend the vowel sound, thereby confusing the student ("Is that long or short?"). But emphasizing the "ugliness" of these words (by pronouncing them with a slightly gutteral emphasis) can help students hear the difference of hate, Pete, bite, hope and cute. So this title is dedicated to Aida, my student from Venezuela who observed the "ugly" sounds of English (that don't appear in Spanish).

PREPARATION

1. Check that the students know all of the letters in the alphabet. Look for confusions for J, K, G, H, Y, W, Q. My students often mispronounce these letters.

2. Check that all of the students agree with the "pure" or "beautiful" sounds of the vowels. "What are the names of the vowels?" is a good start.

3. Teacher preparation: Be sure that YOU know how to write words in this "Spanicized" alphabet. "he iiir" = hair.

A eii

E iii

I aa iii

O ooo u

U uuuu (blue) or iuuu (university)

METHOD

1. Announce to the class that they will learn the 13 most often used vowel sounds in English.

2. Explain that five are beautiful, five are ugly and three are different.

3. Create a chart similar to Exhibit A

4. Fill in the chart with words (Exhibit B gives some typical words that most intermediate or lower intermediate students will know. For beginners, you might want to reduce the number of words. Try to use single syllable words to help focus on the target sound.)

5. As you fill in the words, ask the students to say the words. Ask them to give you words that have similar vowel sounds but different spellings.

Night, lite (lite beer), buy, why and sky

6. Write them phonetically na iit la iit ba ii u a ii ska ii

7. Then give the ugly sounds.

Grunt from A to U

mat, pet, bit, hop, cut "These are ugly" (Put a little hat over the letters, the small "u") "You can see that there is a small "u" over the vowel to show that it is ugly."

Check comprehension

1. Give a list of 25 words and ask the students to put the words in the right boxes.
2. Homework: Ask the students to find one word in their daily lives to put in each box.
3. Explain that the spelling of the words tell us more about their origins (from German or French or Greek) than about how to pronounce them. The key is to recognize all of the potential ways to pronounce "ough", for example: enough, thought, although, through,

Extend the lesson

1. show the class how to speak British BBC English (the short a and short o sound the same (Here is my hat, it is very hot today), you don't say "r" and you try to be very polite J ).
2. Show how to speak Australian. The long A sounds like long I (good DAI, MA IIT = good day, mate)
3. Show how "I hope, I hoped, I am hoping" change to "I hop, I hopped, I am hopping" by just adding another letter.
4. Title and Little. How are they related? Well, if you double the t in the first word, it is now ugly "I", tittle. If you take out a "t" from little, it is litle. It's not a word, but you can guess how to say it!

After the students are comfortable with the five beautiful and five ugly, it's time to move on to the three "other" sounds that often give students problems: AU, AW and [oo].

AU
House, cloud and loud become "haus, claud, laud", always in quote marks.

"AW"
For French students, this is especially difficult. I pull out a visual prop, like a stuffed dog or cat, cradle it in my arms and look lovingly into its beady eyes. "What do you say when you see a cute animal or a baby? Aaaaaawwwww. You don't say aah uuuuuuuuu, because the jaw must stay down, the chin must go down and stop."

[oo]
I am stumped to find a common method of indicating the sound in cook, good, book, put. So I use these square brackets and just tell the students to memorize these words.

One other vowel sound
Oy as in boy, toy, boil are easy for most Spanish speakers, so I have not added it to this list.

Difficult consonants
I usually cover breath/breathe, bath/bathe, this, thing, through (th rrrr uuu), thread (th rrr ed) and other pronunciation hurdles in a separate unit. That's for another presentation.

I welcome your comments and hope that you will help me refine this method so we don't need to write upside down V for "up" and capital I for "it". It just makes more sense to learn the relationship between two vowel sounds that can be changed often by adding or taking away a silent e (mat, mate) or doubling a letter (title, little).

You can write to me at TALK International School of Languages, Suite 200, 2455 East Sunrise Blvd., Suite 200, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33304, telephone 1+ 954.565.8505, fax 954.565.8718, at englishlesson@mail.com.

If you are in Fort Lauderdale, please stop in and visit our school.

Steve McCrea

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Beautiful or ugly?

A hat, hate, mat, mate, day, rain

E Pete, pet, sweat, wheat, sheet, sea, see, meet, met, read, past read (red), key, me

I bite, bit, it, light, buy, written, write, my

O hope, hop, father, hot, car

U cute, cut, blue, but, shoe, shoot, shut, enough, rough, smooth, blood, food

[oo] cook, look, put, foot, good

A special note about r "rrr"

For the next step in this system, note that "r" can alter the vowel sound.

Car = ugly o, like hot. Sounds like the a in father and the o in hot.

Stern = st rrrr n

Bird, sir = brrrrr d, srrrrr

Or = "AW rrr" (like the baby dog)

Turn = trrrrr n

Notice that er, ir and ur all appear to be pronounced only with "rrr", so that's what I write on the board. Good contrasting words are beer, beard and bird (biir, biirr d and brrrrd).

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