This booklet, part of a course for teaching English to adult Francophones, is designed to assist the student in learning to produce the "th" sound in English. The voiceless and voiced "th" sounds are described, articulation techniques for both sounds are presented, and listening discrimination and production exercises are provided. A special…

THIS GUIDEBOOK WAS DEVELOPED TO ASSIST THE TEACHERS OF NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING YOUNGSTERS WITH THE INSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH. THE 1ST PART OF THE BOOK IS DIVIDED INTO 5 SECTIONS, COVERING INTONATION, PITCH, STRESS, JUNCTURE, AND THE 3 ESSENTIALS OF PRONUNCIATION. A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE SECTION IS ALSO INCLUDED IN THE 1ST PART. THE SECOND PORTION OF…

This book sets out the sound systems of twelve Nigerian languages and English (both British and American) in order to give teachers a better understanding of why students who are speakers of these languages have difficulty in certain areas of English pronunciation. The Nigerian languages are: Efik, Etsako, Fula, Hausa, Ibgo, Ijo, Isoko, Itsekiri,…

Pronunciation of some sounds in Australian English causes ambiguities in cases where phonemes seem to have merged. This paper discusses some of the ambiguities arising from phonemic changes and provides examples of pronunciation variations in British and Australian English--mainly in vowels, but also in consonants and syllabification. Several…

The English spelling system and the teaching of English spelling are discussed in relation to students who are learning English as a second (or foreign) language. The systematic nature of English spelling is described and a brief summary is presented of sound-to-spelling correspondences and of other spelling rules. Specific difficulties which may…

It is well known to anyone involved in teaching English to Finnish students that it is difficult for Finns to distinguish between English /ptk/ and /bdg/. This second volume in a series on a Finnish-English contrastive project reports on a study which attempted to obtain more concrete knowledge about the ability of speakers of Finnish to use the…

Effective teaching of a foreign language to people who already have a command of their mother tongue requires surveying the main elements of the second language to determine differences from the first language. Phonological, lexical, and grammatical systems and cultural differences are considered. (SW)

A discussion is presented that shows that, in teaching reading in a foreign language, the aims, procedures, and techniques can be virtually the same as those once used for the acquisition of reading skills in the mother tongue. (Author/HP)

There are compelling reasons for integrating phonics into the adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) curriculum. The adult ESL student has the analytical capability to understand phoneme-grapheme relationships and can be taught to use any transferable native-language literacy skills in English spelling. In this essay, the potential of phonics…

The effectiveness of an explicit, systematic reading intervention for first-grade students whose home language was Spanish and who were at risk for reading difficulties was examined. Participants were 69 students in 20 classrooms in 7 schools from 3 districts who initially did not pass the screening in Spanish and were randomly assigned within…

This study tested the issue of whether extended length of residence (LOR) in adulthood can provide sufficient input to overcome age effects. The study replicates Flege, Takagi, and Mann (1995), which found that 10 out of 12 Japanese learners of English with extensive residence (12 years or more) produced liquids as accurately as native speakers of…

Very young Spanish-English bilingual children may not perceive sound-clue illustrations presented in the classroom as they are intended to be perceived. For example, when a child is told, "A is for apple," he may also interpret the message as "A is for manzana," confusing the intended message. While the teacher may hear English only, the child's…

This paper highlights the importance of phonology in second language learning, comparing phonetic mistakes made by adult native speakers of English learning Georgian and adult native speakers of Georgian learning English. It emphasizes the importance of a holistic, systemic approach to teaching second languages that involves making the first…

By means of the Kay Elementrics Visi-Pitch and a split screen, students are able to compare their voice traces with the model's, thereby seeing prosodic, phonemic, and allophonic distinctions they were unable to hear. (PMJ)

Native speakers of Egyptian Arabic make errors in their pronunciation of English that cannot always be accounted for by a contrastive analysis of Egyptian analysis of Egyptain Arabic and English. This study focuses on three types of errors in the pronunciation of voiced and voiceless "th" made by fluent speakers of English. These errors were noted…