Teaching the impact of silent e on the vowel in the cluster vowel + consonant + e to children at the age of seven to ten research work at the university level 2007

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH WORK AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL - 2007 TEACHING THE IMPACT OF SILENT E ON THE VOWEL IN THE CLUSTER 'VOWEL+CONSONANT+E' TO CHILDREN

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

RESEARCH WORK

AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL - 2007

TEACHING THE IMPACT OF SILENT E

ON THE VOWEL IN THE CLUSTER

'VOWEL+CONSONANT+E' TO CHILDREN

AT THE AGE OF SEVEN TO TEN

Supervisor: NGUYỄN THỊ THU NGÂN, M.A

Students: LÂM THANH TRINH

TRẦN THỦY TIÊN LÂM NHƯ BẢO TRÂN Class: 04G

Ho Chi Minh City, 2007

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

RESEARCH WORK

AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL - 2007

TEACHING THE IMPACT OF SILENT E

ON THE VOWEL IN THE CLUSTER

'VOWEL+CONSONANT+E' TO CHILDREN

AT THE AGE OF SEVEN TO TEN

Supervisor: NGUYỄN THỊ THU NGÂN, M.A

Students: LÂM THANH TRINH - 0471249

LÂM NHƯ BẢO TRÂN – 0471245 Class: 04G

Faculty of English Linguistics and Literature School year: 2004-2008

Ho Chi Minh City, 2007

ABSTRACT 1

INTRODUCTION 3

1 REASON 3

2 THE PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH 3

3 RESEARCH HISTORY 3

4 METHODOLOGY 7

5 THE SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANT OF THE PROJECT 7

6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY 7

Chapter 1 : IMPACT OF E IN THE CLUSTER “A+ CONSONANT +E” 10

1.1 The pronunciation of the cluster “A+CONSONANT” 10

1.2 The pronunciation of cluster “A+CONSONANT+E” 11

Chapter 2 : IMPACT OF E IN THE CLUSTER “O +CONSONANT + E” 13

2.1 The pronunciation of the combination of “O + CONSONANT” 13

2.2 The pronunciation of the cluster “O + CONSONANT + E” 14

Chapter 3 : THE IMPACT OF THE SILENT E IN “U +CONSONANT + E” CLUSTER 17

3.1 The pronunciation of the combination “U + CONSONANT” 17

3.2 The pronunciation of the cluster “U + CONSONANT + E” 18

Chapter 4 : TEACHING THE IMPACT OF SILENT “E” IN THE CLUSTER OF “VOWEL+CONSONANT+E” TO VIETNAMESE CHILDREN 20

4.1 Preparation: 20

4.2 Teaching method 20

CONCLUSION 23

REFERENCES 24

ABSTRACT

When it comes to learning English, no one can deny the fact that the major weakness of Vietnamese learners lies in their pronunciation One of the reasons is that the training in foreign languages at Vietnamese schools tends to focus more

on grammar, reading and writing than pronunciation and conversational fluency Students who acquire this learning habit from a very young age may have a very good command of grammar and a wide range of vocabulary but their pronunciation and communication skills are rather poor From this reality, this study is conducted to put forward a method of teaching young learners to read and pronounce words by learning the phonetic value of letters, letter groups, and especially syllables This approach is called Phonics Our target is Vietnamese beginners from the age of seven to ten because children this age have already had some basic knowledge of English such as the pronunciation of the alphabets and basic words taught in most primary schools in Vietnam Besides, teaching Phonics for children will help them establish a solid groundwork so they can easily move into other areas of pronunciation that have more to do with words as they sound in combination to create sentences; for example, rhythm and intonation This will significantly decrease the number of students having to take extra classes to train their English pronunciation and communication skills in future Here due to the limitation of a small research, we only focus on the impact of the final letter ‘e’ on the three vowels ‘a, o, u’ in the cluster ‘vowel + consonant +e’ In reality, beginners of English are rarely taught about the role of the final ‘e’ in a word It usually takes them a long while to perceive its importance by themselves Hence,

so as to reduce their pains and time, we try to bring clarity into our method of teaching by including some rules on the impact of the final ‘e’, which are drawn out through a hard process of checking hundreds of words in the Oxford dictionary, calculating the percentage of each case and drawing the final

conclusion We have found out some major rules governing the pronunciation of

the three vowels a, o, u with or without the influence of the final e, proposing a

new method of teaching according to the rules which engages children more into interaction through games and listening activities rather than learning mere theory

as usual This is also the significance of this study which is our desire to contribute something new into the usual teaching method and improve the pronunciation of learners of English from a very young age

The effect of the final e on the vowel (a, o, u) in “vowel + consonant + e” forms reliable rules when learning the relationship between letters and their sounds By knowing more about these rules, children will be more confident in their pronunciation

2 THE PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH

The purpose of this research is to provide great help to those who are learning English as a second language, especially children from the age of seven to ten, and provide them vital pieces to read quickly that aid comprehension Students, for this reason, can then read by themselves a variety of texts and hence have access to a variety of opinions, views and perspectives In addition, this research also supplies useful teaching methods for teachers to teach English learners how to pronounce words correctly

3 RESEARCH HISTORY

Phonic rules have long been very important due to its application to teach native children to recognize and read English at a very young age According to

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, phonics is a method of reading instruction that breaks language down into its simplest components Children learn the sounds of individual letters first, then the sounds of letters in combination and in simple words Foreign countries, even native English ones have established a strong system of phonics teaching We see how important it is to Vietnamese students who have just started learning English Because they can not absorb English

“unconsciously” like those living in English speaking environment, they should grab all the rules in advance to build a sound knowledge background Unfortunately, apart from scattered rules synthesized on the internet, there are very few documents giving detailed research into this aspect One website we can count on to gain some basic understanding of phonics is Wikipedia, according to which, English spelling is based upon the alphabetic principle, the idea that letters represent sounds For example, the word “pat” is composed of three letters, p, a,

and t, each representing a phoneme, respectively, /p/, /æ/, and /t/ Some letters in

English regularly represent one sound, such as b, m, p, and t However, the alphabetic principle is not sufficient to represent all of the spellings in English Reading in English also requires understanding of additional patterns that do not follow the “one letter – one sound” principle For example, the word shirt is

composed of five letters which represent only three sounds, / /, / :/, and /t/ The

connections between spellings and sounds are called “sound-spelling correspondences” They often follow certain conventions, and these conventions are often called “phonics rules” or “phonics patterns.” English has many phonics patterns These vary considerably in the degree to which they follow the stated

patterns For example, the letters ee almost always represent /i:/ On the other

hand, the grapheme ough represents / f/ as in enough, /o / as in though, /u:/ as in

through, / f/ as in cough, and / / as in bought Therefore, teachers generally

teach that ee says /i:/ but rarely teach a pattern for ough Because a large body of

patterns that constantly conflict is antithetical to students remembering the patterns they are taught, elementary school children often learn a selection of these patterns

known to be most consistent A selection of these is given below, beginning with vowel phonics patterns:

 Short vowels are the five single letter vowels a, e, i, o, and u when they

produce the sounds /æ/ as in cat, / / as in bet, / / as in sit, / / as in hot, and / / as in cup

 Long vowels are the synonymous with the names of the single letter

vowels, such as /e / in baby, /i:/ in meter, / / in tiny, /o / in broken, and /ju:/ in humor

 Schwa is the third sound that most of the single vowel spellings can produce The schwa is an indistinct sound of a vowel in an unstressed syllable,

represented by the linguistic symbol ə Schwa is a vowel pattern that is not

always taught to elementary school students because it is difficult to understand However, some educators make the argument that schwa should be included in primary reading programs because of its importance in reading English words

 Closed syllables are syllables in which a single vowel letter is followed by

a consonant In the word button, both syllables are closed syllables because

they contain single vowels followed by consonants Therefore, the letter u represents the short sound / / (The o in the second syllable makes the /ə/

sound because it is an unstressed syllable.)

 Open syllables are syllables in which a vowel appears at the end of the

syllable The vowel will say its long sound In the word basin, ba is an open

syllable and therefore says /be /

 Diphthongs are linguistic elements that fuse two adjacent vowel sounds English has four common diphthongs The commonly recognized

diphthongs are /a / as in cow and / / as in boil Four of the long vowels

are also technically diphthongs, /e /, / /, /o /, and /ju:/, which partly

account for the reason they are considered "long."

 Vowel digraphs are those spelling patterns wherein two letters are used to

represent the vowel sound The ai in sail is a vowel digraph Because the

first letter in a vowel digraph sometimes says its long vowel sound, as in

sail, some phonics programs once taught that “when two vowels go

walking, the first one does the talking.” This convention has been almost

universally discarded, owing to the many non-examples The au spelling of

the / :/ sound and the oo spelling of the /u:/ and / / sounds do not follow

this pattern

 Vowel-consonant-e spellings are those wherein a single vowel letter, followed by a consonant and the letter e makes the long vowel sound

Examples of this include bake, theme, hike, cone, and cute (The ee

spelling, as in meet is sometimes considered part of this pattern.)

There are also consonant phonics patterns:

 Consonant digraphs are those spellings wherein two letters are used to represent a consonant phoneme The most common consonant digraphs are

ch for /t /, ng for /ŋ/, ph for /f/, th for /θ/ and / /, and wh for / / (often

pronounced /w/ in American English) Letter combinations like wr for /r/ and kn for /n/ are also consonant digraphs, although these are sometimes

considered patterns with “silent letters.”

 Short vowel + consonant patterns involve the spelling of the sounds /k/ as

in peek, /d / as in stage, and /t / as in speech These sounds each have two possible spellings at the end of a word, ck and k for /k/, dge and ge for /d /, and tch and ch for /t / The spelling is determined by the type of

vowel that precedes the sound If a short vowel precedes the sound, the

former spelling is used, as in pick, judge, and match If a short vowel does not precede the sound, the latter spelling is used, as in took, barge, and

launch

The final "short vowel + consonant pattern" is just one example of dozens that can be used to help learners unpack the challenging English alphabetic code This illustrates that, while complex, English spelling retains order and reason There is a body of words that do not follow these rules; they are called “sight words” Sight words must be memorized since the regular rules do not apply, e.g.,

were, who, you

Due to limitation of a small research, this paper has no ambition to bringing

to light all the aspects mentioned in the literature review With the hope of contributing something to the development of phonics teaching, this paper will proceed a detailed research on the vowel phonics patterns, specifically the

changing in spellings of cluster “(a, o, u) +consonant +e” under the influence of letter “e”

4 METHODOLOGY

In this research, we focus on a, o and u We randomly choose only three of

them due to time limitation By doing this, our project will be more clearly and

deeply studied The a, o and u are studied in the relation with 28 consonant letters

(b, c, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, z, ch, ck, ff, ll, mb, ng, ss, sh, th) and 24 initial consonant clusters (bl-, br-, cl-, cr-, ch-, dr-, dw, fl-, fr-, gl-, gr-, pl-,ph-, pr-,

sc-, sk-, sl-, sm-, sn-, sp-, squ-, st-, str-, sw-, tr-, wh-)

The study is conducted by checking the pronunciation of “vowel + consonant” and “vowel + consonant + e”, especially “(a, o, u) + consonant + e”, in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and some e-dictionaries All these words are only monosyllable

After finding hundreds of suitable words, we divide them into groups and sub-groups based on their pronunciations, forming detailed and clear tables of

those words Then, we can make a comparison between the “(a, o, u) + consonant” table and the “(a, o, u) + consonant + e” one, calculating the percentage and come

to the conclusion of the impact of vowel e in the cluster “(a, o, u) + consonant + e”

5 THE SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANT OF THE PROJECT

The authors of this research do hope that it can contribute something to the improvement of young learners or those who have just started to study English Although the research on these 3 vowels a, o, and u alone is not enough, they are crucial and worth reflecting on in order to have a good command of English spelling and pronunciation on the whole

6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

This rather new research makes clear the impact of the silent e on 3 vowels

a, o, u Then, it provides teachers with helpful teaching methods to Vietnamese

children at the age of 7 to 10 However, our research is just a small combination to

the large unresolved field of the silent e impact There are still remained issues of

the impact of e on vowel letters i and e as well as other matters This, therefore,

calls for further research

ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

We have six tables, which lead us to the conclusion that: “a+ consonant” will mainly be changed from /æ/ into /e / in “a + consonant + e”, “o+ consonant” will mainly be changed from / / into / / in “o + consonant + e” and “u+ consonant” will be changed from / / into either /ju:/ or /u:/ in “u+ consonant +e” due to the impact of the silent e

Chapter 1 : IMPACT OF E IN THE CLUSTER “A+ CONSONANT +E”

1.1 The pronunciation of the cluster “A+CONSONANT”

PRONUNCIATION A +

CONSONANT

EXAMPLE EXCEPTION

/æ/

ab cab, dab, fab, gab,

jab, lab, nab, tab

ac lac, mac, sac, vac

ad bad, cad, dag, fad,

gad, lad, pad, rad, sad, tad

wad /w d/

ag bag, dag, fag, gag,

lag, nag, rag, sag, tag, wag

al cal, gal, pal, sal

am bam, cam, dam,

gam, ham, jam, pam, ram

an ban, can, dan, fan,

gan, pan, ran, tan, van

wan /w n/

ap bap, cap, dap, gap,

hap, jap, map, nap, pap, rap, sap, tap, zap

at bat, cat, fat, gat, hat,

kat, mat, pat, rat, sat, tat, vat

/ :/

aw caw, daw, haw, jaw,

law, maw, paw, raw, saw, taw