Alphabet Language?

Well it has finally arrived (however the seasons don't technically change until this Saturday)...SPRING! Woo hoo!! Living in Spain might sound exotic and tropical (sort of?) but it hasn't felt that way this winter! Although it was nothing like a Lethbridge winter, (aka no 6-foot high snow drifts) I still suffered from a lack of sunshine. I guess that is one great thing about southern Alberta, the sun. It's usually always shining. Well, I guess Miranda's a little more like Vancouver in that aspect. It's probably been overcast atleast 70% of the days I've been here so far. 

Anyhow, like the change of weather, I have also decided to change (more like tweak) my teaching strategy. I couple weeks ago I realized how tired and annoyed I was getting with hearing english words being constantly pronounced wrong. "eat" is pronounced "EH-AT", "cut" pronounced "COOT", and after an afternoon of asking myself why on earth they couldn't seem to get it, I finally decided that it's no problem of not being able to pronounce properly, but instead a question of not wanting to.

So I decided to try out the old method of giving them a taste of their own medicine (all in good humour of course!) I came into my 2nd period grade 7 class on Tuesday morning and started up a conversation about likes and dislikes. After asking them what types of foods, subjects, etc. they liked, I said "Oh, a mi me gusta mucho comer helados". Translation: Oh, I really like eating ice cream" but instead of saying it in my practiced spanish (in which they rarely ever hear me speak) I said it with an absolutely BRUTAL foreign accent. The reaction I got was slightly unexpected. I don't think they knew if I was joking or not, and some of them sort of looked at each other, and others started laughing. One of them even bravely said "Profe, you have a really big accent!" Haha, it was pretty good. 


After a good laugh over my pronunciation, I explained to them that just how they thought it was stupid and funny hearing me destroy their language, it sounds the exact same when they do it in English. 

I mentioned before that the problem is that the students are lazy. Well that's true, seeing as these grade 7's have already been studying English for seven years and shouldn't be making mistakes like "COOT", but the other side of the problem (in my opinion) is how they are taught to read and spell.


During my first semester of volunteer teaching hours for an Ed. class at Mount Royal, I worked 3 hours a week in a grade 2 class. For the first hour I helped them with their home reading books (the books they took home to read every night) practicing heavily on pronunciation by sounding out the letters. For example, to pronounce "catch" I would help by going "c-c-c-a-a-a-t-t-t-ch-ch-ch" Well here in Spain, children aren't taught to read like that in English or Spanish. They aren't taught that letters make sounds that are different from the letter (ex: B makes a "buh" sound). So, in all of my classes, grades 1-10, I started the class by going over the alphabet (which was a challenge in itself) and then by talking abut the different sounds. In the grade 10 classes I explained it with more of linguistic approach, and to the little ones by pretending that letters were people and their sounds are how they speak to each other. 

Surprisingly, they really loved making the sounds since this is all so new to them. After that we had spelling competitions with sounds instead of letters to practice the new skill. I guess the answer was pretty simple, just going back to the basics!