Veronica – a response to Anonymous
- Radicals and Porn
- Bilingual Essays – an introduction
- Veronica Mars loves Vanilla Ice Cream
- Veronica – a response to Anonymous
- Bilingual=Bicultural: an absurd equation
I started to answer Anonymous’ question in the comments section under the Post Veronica Mars loves Vanilla Ice Cream. However, as it grew I thought it best to make it a separate post.
In the comments section, Anonymous wrote:
” And how would one go about getting Spanish- speakers to differentiate and produce short i and long e sounds- to help them not be the focus of childish laughter when trying to say, “SHEET of paper,” or, “lovely BEACH?”
“Or how about this- how can I direct Cambodian students to do anything involving lip movement or teeth placement to form initial v, f, b, and p sounds?”
- signed Anonymous poster
Dear Anonymous,
My work provides me an opportunity to work with children from all corners of the world. However, I rarely see a Spanish speaking students; the majority of my caseload is, as you might expect, a bicultural marriage with children who speak Japanese and English. This creates a unique problem since a great deal of the bilingual literature is coming out of the US and focused on the English/Spanish bilinguals. In fact, to read such literature one would think that Bilingual is a term used to only describe a person who speaks both English and Spanish. (Those Americans sure do have trouble getting their minds around the idea of learning and using more than one language.) So these articles are an attempt to address some of the unique problems that face the Japanese/English speaking community.
Your questions are interesting. Regarding the teaching of vowels to a Spanish ESL student. I would first of all teach them to differentiate between the short i and the short e. For example sit, set, mitt, met. (And lets be honest, there are certain non-Spanish influenced areas in the US where the local accent does not differentiate between these two sounds. You may in fact be familiar with the Mountain Accent -not making this up btw- used in the upper half of the Shenandoah Valley in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is a well defined accent that is different from a true Southern Accent or an Appalachian accent. One of its main features is this issue of not differentiating between the short i and short e.) I refer to word pairs with only one sound difference as minimal pairs. They are extremely helpful in training these types of sound differences. Training needs to be conducted both in auditory differentiation and then in verbal production. Usually, a child that can not hear the difference is going to have a harder time making the sound. Then I would move on to doing the same with the long i and e…which they should find easier. Then I would try integrating the four sounds. Honestly, I find teaching this vowel discrimination SHEET to be a real BEACH.
I rarely need to teach b and p. When I do it is because the person is physically unable to bring their lips together due to a physical anomaly. Your Cambodia example presents a unique twist on this. When you say the child is from Cambodia I presume he/she speaks the Khmer language. The Khmer language is a unique language with more than a few idiosyncrasies. I would start addressing the problem with the p sound as it is an explosive sound, just as it is in English. I am curious if the child uses the non-aspirated p for the English p and uses the aspirated p for the English b sound. I like to start with sounds that are present in both languages. The Khmer b, though, is an implosive sound. (This is a bit like the inhaled “su” in Japanese.) Given that the child is likely able to produce the plosive p correctly, you just need to add the voicing on the consonant to change the p to the b. I like to do this by putting a long vowel in front of and in back of target sound. In this scenario, I would go with “ahbah.” This is nice for training purposes, but most children need real words, so I would quickly move on to “a banana, a baby etc.
I would teach the v and f by using their cousin s. Again, Khmer is a real oddity when it comes to its phonology. There are only two fricative sounds (s, h). I point this out because f and v are in the same class of sounds. Since s is voiceless, I would teach the f (also voiceless) first. f and v are made the same way with the bottom lip lightly touching the bottom of the upper teeth and forcing air through the central opening. Once f is established, move onto to v by adding the voicing.
For help with placement of articulators you may want to check out Eliciting Sounds by Wayne Secord, ISBN=13: 978-1-4018-9725-3. This books includes suggestions for vowels as well as consonants. If the child is having trouble with their native language sounds then an SLP should be pulled in. If you need help with minimal pairs, SuperDuper Publications has an excellent set of cards to help with this. These cards are designed to work with consonant differences, but there are usually a few examples of the vowel differences discussed with regards to the native Spanish speaking student. Another thing to consider is a classroom based phonemic program. I use Phonemic Awareness in Young Children by Marilyn Jager Adams ISBN: 1-55766-321-1.
Lastly, your comments and questions are always welcomed.
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