Does it help readers to include pronunciations?

Do any of you know if there has been any evidence to show the effectiveness of writing out the pronunciations of difficult words when using them in a text? Does this help with comprehension or any other aspect of reading?

Thanks in advance!

Julie

Comments

I have used the Payne Education Pronunciation System with both low level English learners and with disability learners and had very good success. The Payne Education company is located in Oklahoma. Although the program I use is several years old it still has good results. 

Hi, Julie and all:

The following two references talk about the importance of sound/symbol correspondence for English learners (EL)s. Even those who are literate in the Roman alphabet, such as Spanish and French speakers, will have difficulty with sound/symbol correspondence in English.Don't be fooled because the articles are about vocabulary! They do talk about the importance of connecting oral sounds with English graphemes in speaking and reading!

Nation, I. M. P. (2005). Teaching and learning vocabulary. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 581–595). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Qian, D. D. (1999). Assessing the roles of depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension. The Canadian Modern Language Journal, 56, 262–305.

There might be more recent articles. I'm going to check out the one Daryl mentioned. Does anyone else know of more recent?

Miriam

SME Adult ELL CoP

Learning to read English is more difficult than other alphabetically written languages, because 69 of the 205  graphemes (single letters or combinations like igh) which are used for the 43 English sounds have more than one sound (e.g. an – any, apron;  through – tough, cough, though).

See http://englishspellingproblems.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/english-spelling-system.html

This means that students have to learn their main sound, as used in common words

http://readingandwritingenglish.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/regular-sounds-in-english-words.html

but also a different pronunciation for some graphemes in others:

http://englishspellingproblems.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-problems.html

Learning the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) can be helpful, but is really too much of additional learning burden for many students. I did not begin to learn English until the age of 14 and found it more helpful to annotate words which kept giving me trouble with simpler spellings, e.g. you [yoo], through [throo], apron [aperon].

With slow young readers, as a voluntary assistant, I found it helpful to repeatedly practice reading some of the common words with clearly tricky spellings (e.g. could, would) a few at a time. -  In other words, teaching them as sight words.

Because i was giving one to one help, i could also easily collect words which were giving them trouble, when i listened to them read a few pages. I then provided simpler spellings next to them, e.g. trouble [trubl], so that they could take them home for practice, with the respellings covered up, but available for checking, or as help when stuck.

The only words which are difficult to respell more sensibly are the 35 with a short /oo/ sound, because all the graphemes for it (good, put, would, woman)  are more common for other sounds (food, cut, mould). So they just have to be learned as sight words.

Fortunately only 36 English words have a short /oo/ sound:

Good, hood, stood, wood. Book, brook, cook, hook, look, rook, shook, took.

Wool. Whoosh. Foot.

Bull, bullet, bullion, bush, butcher, cuckoo, cushion, full, pull, put, pudding, pussy, push, sugar, shush.

Could, should, would. Courier.

Wolf, woman.

Surprisingly, 'this thing' does not seem to cause many problems, but 'think, thin' etc could have the 'th' underlined (think) for anyone who finds it th tricky.

Short /oo/ and sharp and soft th are the only English sounds which have no dominant spelling of their own.

Julie,

Writing out the phonetic spelling to help adults learn pronunciation is very helpful. I have been using this as part of my

method of teaching for over 25 years. Pronunciation should be considered an important part of early lessons, in my view. 

 

Julie,

I don't have a definitive answer but am suggesting a recently published article from the Journal of Research in Reading. That's the best I have to offer so far. Looks like you are getting some other comments as well though.

Daryl

  Evidence for a simplicity principle: teaching common complex grapheme-to-phonemes improves reading and motivation in at-risk readers (pages 196–214)
Victoria Chen and Robert S. Savage
Article first published online: 13 JAN 2014 | DOI: 10.1111/1467-9817.12022

Julie,

I have a couple of favorite books related to your question, one for you as a teacher and one a textbook with practical exercises for students. 

This first is English L2 Reading: Getting to the bottom by Barbara Birch.  While it's theoretical, it's very easy to read and understand. Lots of potential ah ha! moments therein. 

The other is the Reading Power series by Jeffries and Mikulecky.  There are some great exercises in these texts, which offer 4 levels. 

Happy teaching!

DeAnna