Title: English sounds and their spellings
Description: This handbook introduces the important correspondences existing between English sounds and English spelling patterns. The lessons present the vowel sounds, one by one, along with systematically selected consonant sounds, and show how each sound or combination of sounds is usually spelled in English words.
Words with irregular spellings are introluced gradually. Their pronunciation is implicated by means of familiar-looking symbols hat eliminate the need for phonetic notation. The rationale underlying our system of symbols is set forth in the Epilogue for Teachers and Phoneticians, but students—and even many teachers—will wish simply to make use of the symbols when they turn up in the lessons without undertaking a special study of the rationale. The symbols themselves are merely extra aids; most of the material can prove helpful even if the teacher prefers to use no symbols at all other than the ABC's.
In addition to introducing, illustrating, and explaining sounds and spelling patterns, each lesson offers practice in hearing, saying, readng, and writing words that contain the sounds and letter combinations featured in that lesson or in earlier lessons.
The book can be used in different ways for different purposes in different kinds of classes or students of any age. For example, the sections presenting facts and explanations can serve as reference material in courses for teachers of English as a Second Language (or or teachers of Standard English as a Second Dialect). The same sections, and some of the elated exercise material, can be used for review by students with a fair working knowl-dge of English but with problems in pronunciation or spelling.
When the book is used for reference or review, the left-hand pages of the lessons will be the main focus of study since it is there hat information and explanations appear. The items on the right-hand pages will serve chiefly to illustrate the principles discussed. the Index to Sounds will show teachers and advanced students where to find explanations
that can help clear up confusion on specific sound-letter correspondences, and guide the production of difficult sounds when mimicry alone fails to achieve desired results.
Although, as we have pointed out, large portions of this book can aid advanced students and even experienced teachers of English, the text offers the greatest help to students who are just beginning to learn English. Obviously, beginners will not be able to read the English explanations and directions; their teacher or a bilingual helper will have to guide the class through the steps indicated on the left-hand page of each lesson, and convey by any available means those items of information the teacher feels the students need. In a beginners' class the students themselves will be mainly concerned with the right-hand page of each lesson, which presents the words to be heard, pronounced, read, and written by the class. Beginners should be led through the lessons in consecutive order so as to develop a systematic grasp of the sound-letter relationships.
In these lessons the student is introduced to the English sounds, and is shown how the sounds are most commonly represented by letters, before he is asked to learn the names for the letters in the alphabet. The first vowel sounds he meets are the ones which are often called the "short" vowels (the ones heard in not, nut, bit, bet, and bat). We have called these the basic sounds of the vowels, and have explained that a vowel letter is usually pronounced with its basic sound, when that letter comes between two consonants with no -e following.
Later the student learns the so-called long vowels (the ones heard in words like note, cute, bite, and so on). We have called such sounds the name sounds of the vowels because they are pronounced like the names of the letters which represent them. (For instance, in the word bite, the sound of i is the same as the name of the letter i.)
Subjects: English grammar, English language, English sounds, Handbooks, manuals, Orthography and spelling, Phonetics