Part II of Getting Started by Judy Thompson

Saturday January 16, 2016

2:00 EST (Toronto time)

Founding Principles

Teaching Model for today and always:

Lesson, Exercises, Transformation – how to get learners using what they’ve studied in real life

An empowering approach I use for teaching speaking -You know this already - in order to say this you have to use the first things students learn in a new language: colors and the alphabet. Also use the sounds and structures from their first language that are the same in English (I’ll help you identify these)

Recap of Part I Revisit the moment English broke into two languages

because it impacts everything we do in class today

Vennglish is the handy diagram that shows how the break lives for students and where to begin teaching speaking

Sound notation: this is a d it makes the sound /d/

slash brackets means /makes the sound/

English uses 24 Consonant Sounds 18 familiar

_,b,_,d,_,f,g,h,_,j,k,l,m,n,_, p, _, r,s,t,_,v,w, _,y,z

and 6 new in English Phonetic Alphabet (EPA)

/Ch/, /Sh/, /TH/, /Th/, /Ng/, /Zh/

Caxton Split English in Two

24 English Consonant Sounds

Six New Consonant Sounds

Transformation:

/Sh/ - shoe, sugar, ocean, machine, nation

Note: Capital letters indicate two symbols work together

Teach Consonants First

It’s validating: Learners have most of the consonant sounds they need for English from their first language

It’s empowering: Students experience real success right out of the gate – “I know all this already”

Customize: Focus on the few sounds that your students are missing, usually the ‘th’ sounds, ‘y’ as /j/ for Spanish speakers, consonant blends and final consonants for Asian speakers, ‘w’ as /w/ not /v/ for East Indian speakers...

Dry Run: Use consonants to teach how the styles of exercises work: Mystery Match, Sound Mazes, Minimal Pairs... so when we get to vowel sounds – which are tricky, students are not overwhelmed trying to figure out how the sound focus exercises work

btw - there are unlimited individual sound focus exercises

https://www.facebook.com/groups/teachingenglishvowels/

Old Friends

Part II Teaching Vowel Sounds Warning: students started feeling a little bit sick in the

Vennglish diagram when they realized there are 16 vowel sounds in English not five – a, e, i, o, u

When you start teaching vowel sounds – which are the Golden Key to conversation, reassure your students. Tell them they are all right – “You know this already!”

And they do because they know their colors

By happy accident the 16 vowel sounds of English are each found in the names of 16 ordinary colors in English. When they know the colors, they can pronounce the words. I’ll show you.

Caxton Split English in Two

What color is this?

Turn the card around slowly

Can you think of other words with the sound /Ay/?

What color is rain? Great? Play?

(* Transformation)

What color is this?

Think of other words with the sound /a/

Turn the card around

Spelling Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Make Their Own Vowel Charts

Old Friends with Vowel Sounds

The Big Picture for Fluency

4 Secret Treasures in the Vowel Chart

Secret Treasure #1 Every word in English is a color – no exceptions

Students learn this organically in the next exercise on Secret Treasure #2

Secret Treasure #2 ExerciseWhat color is your name?

It is one of the colors on the Thompson Vowel Chart

Every word in English is somewhere on that chart!

* Transformation

This is a great class exercise and we can do some right now. JUdy is Blue

Anyone having trouble figuring out the color of their name? We can do it now or email me.

judy@thompsonlanguagecenter.com

Treasure #2 Bonus LessonWord Stress is the single most important feature

of intelligibility.

If Word Stress is wrong or missing no one can understand the speaker

English is a stress-based language

BAnana is not a word

Neither is banaNA

The word is baNAna

There are no variations. Banana is a Black word

The stressed syllable determines the color of the word

3rd Secret Treasure

3. Sentence Stress is the same principle as Word Stress: Some words are important and some are not.

(shout out to Peggy Tharpe who identified the undulating patterns of important/unimportant in all levels of English clearly)

* Transformation Do you want a cup of coffee?

sounds like:

/Jawanna cuppa COffee/

Unimportant words (grammar words) are shrunk to /uh/ the same as unimportant syllables in Word Stress

4th Secret Treasure4. Connected Speech or Linking

The ‘You Know This Already’ is A or An

When a noun begins with a vowel sound you must use An because humans can’t start interior words with vowel sounds – it is how speaking physically works and the foundation of Connected Speech

The consonants neededin the middle of sentences are w or y and they are a built-in part of the EPA notation

I am sounds like /i yam/

you are sounds like /yu ware/

he is sounds like /he yiz/

Conclusion, We Talked About: Context for Speaking English as in not connected to

writing in any meaningful way

The 3-Step Teaching/Learning Model Lesson, Practice,

Transformation I use for everything

You know this already as an approach that harvests tools and information that intelligent, language speaking individuals already possess in order to make your lessons easy to digest, super relevant and validating for learners

The Six-Step Model to fluency and how far the Thompson Vowel Chart takes learners along their path to fluency

Resources

Free 18 YouTube video Playlist of me teaching teachers Speaking Made Simple: http://bit.ly/1H9Sp6R

Email me for free 8.5 x 11 copies of Vennglish, The Thompson Vowel Chart , Old Friends and the Six-Point Model for Speaking English

judy@thompsonlanguagecenter.com The whole system including exercises and answer keys

is in English is Stupid, Students are Not pdf $15

Thanks for watching!

The next video is on Pronunciation and Literacy