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Today
we are going to do chapter 3 , We are gonna look at chapter 3
in Solving the Mystery of Reading, secrets of decoding the sounds of English.
Anyway OK we are starting on page 31
The Sounds of English.
English has a very complicated history becasue
borrowed words
from all kinds of other languages
and
one thing that makes english very difficult is we can't really depend on
spelling
to help us pronounce words.
Here are some examples of that, This word we pronounce it 'təf'
it sounds just like 'cuff'
but as you can see they are spelled
totally different
so we cant depend
on spelling for that.
The next word
'Bough'
sounds like 'Cow'
but do they look alike ? Not at all .
The last word 'dough' sounds like 'no'
and you can see they don't look alike either.
That's why
English is a tricky language.
You can see that English really is a tricky language but certainly not impossible.
OK so where do we began ? or how do we know all those spelling rules ?
The fact is
we
will never know all of those spelling rules so
we will just began with
what we know and its very easy .
One-Syllable rhyming words like in,
bin, fin,
gin and so on..
Those are really easy
and just to trick you out a little bit
Does 'war' rhyme with
bar?
But they look exactly the
same so
again
there are not
specific rules that will always help you
know how to pronounce thing that that's why
you're going to need a dictionary
and the way we get better at learning
this rules
is by reading.
The more we read
the more
see these words
with looking up in the dictionary and
the faster we learn them .
Ok so when we use our dictionary to find the
pronunciation of a new word,
we need to first
look up that word.So in your book the example is the word 'quiche'
this is how it really spelled.
In your dictionary
it may look different but you will see something
that looks like this . KESH with a sign over the E
that lets us know it's a long E.
So
and if you didn't know what Quiche is ,
the dictionary says its a rich, unsweetened , custard bake and a pastry shop.
okay so
in your dictionary when you look up a word the pronunciation will always be imminently
following
the word that you looked up and it's usually in Prentice.
The second step is understanding the dictionary pronunciation key
and that is on page 33 .
I don't expect you to be able to see it but its in a box here .
Just so you know its on the top of your page on
page 33 .This is a sample
pronunciation key .
Now , every dictionary has its
own pronunciation key because
dictionaries vary .
They will mostly the same
but
they do vary a little bit .
so i want to look at the sample key just so you can understand
what you looking at when you
looking in your dictionary .
All right so
moving on over to
page 35 .
Consonants
and Vowel Sounds.
Ok so i am sure that you know already that vowels are A,E,I,O,U
and sometimes 'Y'.
All right
so those are only 5/6 letters but
there are many vowel sounds and here's an example
An E if its a long E can sounds like
equal
or if its a short vowel sounds
and this sign lets us know its a short vowel can sounds like A.
So even though there are only 5/6 vowels in our alphabet ,
there are many many
vowel sounds.
To make it even more tricky
when you put two vowels together , there are even more
sounds.
Such as , in the word 'Out'. When you put that O and U together you have that
Aww sound.
If you put O and I together you have an
Oi sound
like Oil.
Ok so the thing to keep in mind
is just that
you probably know many of these sounds and you can read many of these sounds
already but
just understand that
there are many vowel sounds,
they are not specific rules
unfortunately
to knowing all those sounds. So again
the best way to learn that
is to keep reading, keep listening
keep studying, keep looking in you dictionary.
We are gonna move on to Consonant
Sound.
I actually think i flipped that . In your book it taslk about consonant first
and vowel second but that's OK.
They are all here
in same couple of pages.
So Consonants
are all of the letters
or everything that's not a vowel.
Ok there are
21
consonants including the letter Y
but again
as with the vowels
there are many consonants sounds
because when you put 2 consonants
together , you get a whole new sound.
So for S and H, they have their individual sounds. S sounds like S.
H sounds like H
but when you put them together you get that 'Shh' sounds
like shot .
For C , C has 2 sounds .
(Sounds are not writable).
When you put C and H together it makes a whole new sound
like as a Chat.
Here's a tricky thing , i think it says in your FYI box
T,H has two kinds of sounds
there's T,H with air and when it says with air it means that when you say it
you are letting out some air
through your mouth .
With air goes with the word 'Thick'
and
without air is like who you say the word 'Then'
so you are not letting out a lot of air.
i know
you know these basic thing , you may not ever talked about them but
T,H do have a couple of different sounds..
Moving onto page 38
Syllables.
you may know that
a syllable
is a part of a word
and each syllable can contain
one vowel sound.
For example, the word "Cap"
How many syllables does it have ?
There's one vowel sound.
It has one syllable .
What i look to do , Sometimes i do this in my head
or something i
kinda tap my fingers for syllables , it sounds silly.
For the word 'party',
how many syllables are there? Just two !
These examples i am reading is from page 38 in your book.
The word 'Slippery'.
some of us say 'Slippery'
but if you look up the
pronunciation
its actually sleep-ar-ee ?
So that would have three syllables .
And i am not kidding . I really do use my finger a lot of times to figure this out .
The last examples that your book gives you is the word 'Photographer'.
so
we can see this word has
four syllables.
OK that's all i am gonna talk about syllables.
I think that you probably already know about them .
So i am gonna move on to 'Accents'
on page 39 .
Ok, Accents
are these
mark
and it tells us how to pronounce a word.
It tells you where to put the punch
or the emphasis of a word.
In the word 'Carrot '
if i look it up in the dictionary
its gonna look something like this
and this accent tells me that
the emphasis is going to be on he first
syllable because the accent amrk
always comes
after
the part of the word that is
suppose to have emphasis.
Actually
i just said always but in some dictionary it doesn't.
So you are gonna have to
look in your dictionary . We can talk about this in class , we can look at it in class
but in most cases the accent
mark come
after
the syllable that gets the accent .
So in other word
'Carrot'
I would say it with emphasis on wherever it needs to be emphasized.
'Kar' gets more emphasis than 'et'
And i always use this example
'My dad who
is from Michigan but i don't know why he talks like this
he says
'Turn on the TV'
I don't know about you but i say TV so i put
emphasis in a different place than he does and it makes a difference .
For those people listening its hard to understand sometime although we all know what a TV is no matter how you say it .
So it does change how the word sounds.
Another example
is the word 'Record'.
So in this example if we are talking about Frank Sinatra record,
The pronunciation look like this.
Here's the accent
so the emphasis is gonna be on this
first syllable.
You put more emphasis on the first syllable.
Ok if someone says to you
'Lets record a video '.
See they spell the same way but they sound very different.
So if you look in the dictionary this
is how
for pronunciation is this type of record
would look in your dictionary
and its opposite .
First of all ,
you say it differently. Even the
'RE" sounds different and this one is 'rek erd' and this one is 'ri kord'.
So the emphasis
or the accent is after this
syllable so this
is the one
So when you say it you can feel that the
emphasis is on the 'CORD' part.
When there are two accent marks,
the first one is call the primary
and its the stronger of the 2.
the second one is call the secondary is the lighter of the 2 .
So in the word dogfight
if we look it up
you can see there's two so which one would get the stronger punch ?
The first one, because the first one is the primary and the stronger of the 2.
So we would say this word Dogfight.
Dog gets more emphasis .
Ok the last thing
i wanna tell you about is something call
a Schwa.
Its a really funny word
but defiantly worth mentioning because it is the most common
sound
in the English alphabet .
i don't know why they didn't make it a letter.
But anyway it looks like an upside down
and backward e.
So that's a Schwa
and
the way
you pronounce a Schwa
is sort of like a short U actually its exactly like a short U .
An example
is the word about.
If i looked up the word about
in a dictionary
the pronunciation would look something like this .
A bout.
You can see the accent is on the second
syllable
about .
So that's a Schwa
you will need to remember this because its gonna be on one of your quizzes.
Alright and i think that
is the end
of
Chapter 3 .