With a small vocabulary, not much English exposure, it is difficult to distinguish sounds that do not exist in Vietnamese, children cannot master foreign languages.
Teacher Quang Nguyen shares about the method of teaching English pronunciation "phonics", similar to spelling in Vietnamese.
Every night, before going to bed, I usually spend about an hour to read English books with my children. In the US, children often practice reading with "phonics" - a rhyme method based on words. For example, read the word "bat" by putting the / b / sound, the / æ / sound, and the / t / sound together. Heard, this seems to be an effective method. However, 60% of English words have a different reading than writing.
So why is an effective method for children in the US difficult to apply to Vietnamese children?
The first reason is that American and Vietnamese children have different backgrounds. American children, when entering "kindergarten", have the ability to communicate well. With a relatively rich vocabulary, the "spelling" process of American children has a step that Vietnamese children cannot do, which is verification.
When children try to "sound it out", which means reading out loud a word, they will hear for themselves if they read it correctly. For example, the word "goes", if children read aloud to "ɡəʊ.əz" as written, they will immediately detect that they read wrong. Because of the vocabulary that children have heard (sound), there is no word "ɡəʊ.əz" at all.
Artwork: Pixabay
Vietnamese children are different, most of them are not able to communicate when learning "phonics". Unlike American children, they do not know how a word "sound" is, but must rely entirely on words to guess. This combined with poor vocabulary will make children more easily disoriented and read indiscriminately based on word writing.
The second problem is related to pronunciation. American children don't need to learn pronunciation, because they are native speakers. Vietnamese children are different, English has sounds that do not exist in Vietnamese, and similar sounds (for example / t /) are not exactly the same.
Assuming Vietnamese children know how a word is read in their face (eg, "bit" and "beat"), it doesn't make sense when they say it will be correct. Without learning pronunciation, they will simply say "don't slip on the floor" and "don't sleep on the floor" in the same way.
Even more difficult, English is a multi-syllable language with stress. "Phonics" does not teach this, so children looking at the typeface are forced to guess where the word stress is. Words like "ignorant" or "temperature" make it difficult for children to guess how to read them. And because of the lack of "spoken English" funds for verification, they won't be "self-correct" like native kids.
When I teach my children to read, I have to fix a lot. For example, I wonder why the word "said" is the / e / sound, while "paid" is the / eɪ / sound. But basically, the "self-correct" is very good (about 70% of the words misread) and often recognizes the stress immediately after "sound it out". For example, you will read "pre-si-dent" and then read "PREsident" again, since you already know what the word "sound" is.
So what should parents do when the education system cannot adapt in time? In my opinion, children learning English in Vietnam (EFL) need to be familiar with pronunciation, to understand the nature of the problem. In addition, parents should spend time studying with their children, helping their children to contact English more often and more confidently.
Quang Nguyen
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