MISUNDERSTOOD CONCEPT

A response to the Misunderstood Activity
created by Norah Atambo (@Bonareri)

Number of views: 178

1. I teach language and linguistics and one of the courses I teach is phonetics and phonology. There is always a misconception that the letters in a word are similar to or equal to the sounds in a word.

2. If this concept is not understood, it can lead to the mispronunciation of words and failure to capture the syllables in words correctly.

3. To make this concept make sense to students, I will use a comparison table and the predict-observe-explain [POE] strategies. The comparison table will have  three columns. The first column will have selected words, the next will have the misconceptions, that is the ‘sounds’ based on the letters in the words, and the last will have the correct sounds. I will also use the POE, where  I will present words and ask the learners to identify the sounds in the words. I will then present the correct sounds in each word.

4. There may be no good analogy to illustrate this concept.