Jassass and I previously went over minimal pairs of P and B, so to build on that we went over some new pronunciation materials. Jassass has has a good vocabulary base and cognitive reading skills, but he shows difficulty with pronunciation and speech articulation. So this lesson focused on the voiceless and voiced sounds when using “th”. I first wrote down the words “Think” and “This”, and asked Jassass to say each word. I then asked if he could recognize the difference in the two sounds, and repeated the words for him. I then asked him to place his fingers on his throat and repeat the words. I explained the concept of voiced and voiceless sounds, and gave him some examples to try out. We noticed the inconsistency in the sounds so I gave him a list of all the words that start in “th” whose sounds are voiced, and established that other than those words, most that start in “th” are voiceless. I explained that words ending in “th” have a voiced sound, and those that end in “the” are voiceless. Although the work that Yassass and I do is repetitive, I feel that in older language learners pronunciation is the most difficult part, and the most necessary when considering application.
No comments:
Post a Comment