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How to Explain It to Someone
(A Teacher Training Manual)
Process and Milestones
Basic Literacy Milestones are:- 1) they understand the charts' general idea of phonetic features: for every sound, a *combination* of drawings picks out that particular sound uniquely.
- 2) they understand the details of each feature, especially the more difficult "manner of articulation" drawings (row labels in the consonant chart).
- 3) they have practiced writing every letter many times while saying it aloud,
- 4) they can write their own name
- 5) they can write simple words, then arbitrary words, finally sentences
- 6) they can read others' writings.
Be sure to review the lesson at the end of the lesson or within the hour, since repetition creates actual useful memory.
After teaching new information, review it again, the appointed teacher/leader can call people together to do this but it should be done for success, 5 times after increasing gaps of time, so:
- after 30 minutes meaning during the same teaching hour as the first presentation,
- then also after 12 hours (give a little practice as homework)
- the next day,
- the second day,
- then a week later.
With your brief intervention they should hopefully be able to manage most of it themselves, if they are motivated, but it requires diligent practice for some time, and then actual use.
Explaining The Charts
Below are the steps of effectively explaining how to use the Share Basic Literacy instrument to someone whose language you speak.
If you don't speak their language, you can still do it by pantomime, pointing, and making the sounds. Sets of sounds sharing one phonetic feature are those under a column labels or in a labelled row. Use the hand as a tongue or lip movement or shape indicator. Once they get each feature you could teach the Latin words for each column and row: labial, dental, etc. down to fricative and lateral.Here we go. Key:You can't be too dignified while making funny sounds, so laugh but don'd avoid communicating what your tongue and mouth are doing for the different sounds by pointing, touching the inside of your teeth with your finger to show where the tongue makes a [t], closing your nose to stop the nasal sounds, laying your finger alongside the larynx to feel its vibrations, etc.
- "Quotes mark what you say"
- [Brackets mark what you do - pointing at the paper they are holding]
| "This is your head, right?" |
[Finger on first head (with [-/] box). See that they understand.]
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| "Nothing is happening here, right?" |
[Finger still on first head. See that they agree.].
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| "Here, make a noise." (try to learn the word for "voice" in their language) |
[Finger on the second head (with the [/+] box), make aaaaa mmmm əəəə sounds. Thumb and forefinger on your glottis to demonstrate where the Voice comes from. Go back and forth between Nothing and Voice. ]
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| "Here, blow air" (or "make an [h]") |
[Finger on third head with [h], produce [h h h] , say the name: "aitch, we call this an aitch", [h h h].]
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| "Now, see the arrow? What does it say? Open your mouth WIDE open" |
[Finger point to the arrow moving down the jaw/tongue on the head in the [a,a:] row].
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| "See the [/+]? What does it mean? Make your Voice" |
[watch them, model it with a maximum-open-wide mouth, wait until they actually open their mouth.] [If they don't make a voiced sound, say again "Make sound", and actually make an [a], wait and repeat and really make sure they repeat the sound.]
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"See that squiggle? It means [a]". | [point at [a], say [a]] |
Now they have the basic idea: the paper gives symbols for sounds they already know how to make, and it picks them out with graphics that identify a particular sound for each symbol using its particular qualities such as voiced, open, etc.
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Close the deal on the basic idea. "Did I teach you, or did it show you by itself and you learned it yourself? It told you, not me! Do you need a teacher? No. You can do it yourself."
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What to take away.
"That's the idea. The rest is the same kind of puzzle, you can figure it out. Emphasize empowerment. Say "You can do it too." Provide reasons.
"Then you can read signs, write your name, write messages to others
elsewhere, in the future, or to yourself, so you can remember.
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Bonus Content #1. If there is time, do [u], do long-and-short vowels, do [m].
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Bonus Content #2: sequences for both sound and symbols. Indicate sequence of sounds with sequence of letters. If there is time, do [u], do long-and-short vowels, do [m].
| [Say [m a m a] first one sound at a time while pointing to each symbol, then very slowly [m::a::m::a::] and faster [mama] so they get the idea that a sound sequence relates to a symbol sequence. Then do nonsense sequences [ho mi mo hi a u i o e o i]. Ask their name and then spell it by pointing, pointing out the symbols one at a time, saying them separately once through then slowlyonce through then faster, so they get the idea. |
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Bonus Content #3: Tones for Tone Languages. If there is any hint that it might be a tone language like Punjabi or Chinese (any Sino-Tibetan language, for example), do the four tones, high low fall, rise, with a finger on the glyphs. They may have a lot more than four tones but this gives the beginnings of an idea about tone diacritics and then they can figure something out themselves. Skip the tones section if it's not a tone language. Ask me for a version without tones. | |
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Bonus Content #4. If there is more time, do some stop contrast, such as [b], [p]:
| [Stops: Finger on the [stop] glyph, one hand in front of your lips, fingers up, Close the mouth, open the mouth while at the same time you moving the hand from up-and-close to down-and-away, so they get the idea of closure followed by opening. Do it with voice [b] and without voice but air-pressure-release [p] or [ph]. |
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If there is even more time, teach all the manner-of-articulation
glyphs, by doing multiple examples of each and showing how the mouth
constricts and air or vibrations travel.
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[Nasals: vibration travels through the air through the nose and out: [m n ng]] [Fricatives: noise is created by turbulence after a constriction somewhere along the vocal tract: [f v s z sh zh x gamma.]] [Flaps: ballistic bouncing of the tongue on the roof of the mouth makes a common type of sound. In English it's the /t/ in "writer" and the /d/ in "rider"; in Spanish it's the /r/ in "pero"; in Hindi the /r/ in "guru". Write doubled [rr] for repeated flapping a.k.a. trill sounds] [Approximants: voiced sounds with a constriction, no turbulence but the vibration resonates through the constriction and out. [w,er,y]] [Laterals: the constriction is complete on the tongue tip, but there is an opening around the side of the tongue for a special lateral so |
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A Little Extra Help If there is more time, show them how to hold a pencil, and watch them write each letter five times while they watch and copy you, and then give them homework to write one or a few each day, 100x for practice. Make sure they can say each one correctly. Try to get multiple students together to work on it together. It's not cheating to help each other figure out something that benefits one's whole community. Whoever figures something out gets to teach the others; honor their achievement!
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What to Ignore If there are sounds in the charts that they don't make in their language, such as retroflexes, etc., tell them they can ignore them. If the chart has multiple symbols which can be used in different pronunciations of the same word with the same meaning in this language, then pick the most common or easiest one as the primary symbol for this whole category of multiple different sounds. (And send me a note or put it into the description of that language that the primary symbol can be pronounced in those different ways.)
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What to Add If there are sounds they need for keeping meaningful differences separate, which are not given in these charts, please contact me and we will add them to a modified version of the instrument just for that language or language family. If convenient select additional symbols from the full IPA list (see wikipedia or the IPA website) and provide written and translated minimal pairs to justify the contrast. A minimal pair is a pair of words which are pronounced the same except for one sound which keeps them different, as in "big" and "pig".
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What to spend If there is money, print out booklets -- with all the supporting materials you can afford to include -- for all the recipients you can afford to give it to. If there is even more money, give everyone two pencils and a notebook to practice.
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But at least print the two-sided one-page
Share Basic Literacy instrument (please log in
so we can try to track where this is being used for widest coverage).
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