Teaching  Phonetic Symbols in Sports Schools

Abstract: In this paper, I want to present two of my view points: the phonetic symbols teaching in sports schools is very necessary and the teachers should use some teaching methods to make the phonetic symbols learning become more vivid and interesting. First, I show some people’s views, then, I offer my own different idea. I elaborate 5 reasons to prove my first point that the phonetic symbols teaching in sports schools is very important. And then I give some good teaching methods I have collected for the phonetic symbols teaching.

摘要：在这篇论文中，我想表达出自己的两个观点：体育学校音标教学是十分必要的以及老师们应当用一些教学方法使音标学习变得更加生动、有趣。首先，我展示出了一些人的观点。然后，我提出了我自己的不同的观点。我阐述了5个原因去证明我的第一个观点也就是体育学校音标教学十分重要。接着，我提出了一些我收集的音标教学的好方法。

Key word: phonetic symbol, teaching, learning, sports school, teaching method

Introduction:

Many parents asked the English teachers the same question whether pupils should learn the phonetic symbols before they learn to read the words.

Many teachers don’t agree with the idea that pupils should learn to read the phonetic symbols first because they think that pupils are too young to accept such difficult knowledge as the phonetic symbols and their cognitive ability is too low. So, in their opinion, pupils should learn to read the words directly. A famous teacher Cheng Musheng from Qinghua University said that there would be two kinds of illusion for the students if they learn the phonetic symbols earlier than the words. First, the students will think that ‘I can read the phonetic symbols, so I must be able to read the words very correctly’. So, they will relax themselves and will not pay attention to pronouncing the words more carefully; Second, when a student recite a word, he will recite not only a word but also its phonetic symbol, which will enhance the difficulty to learn a word.[1]. All the teachers above don’t approve of learning the phonetic symbols earlier than the words.

However, I have a different opinion from them, the following points are mine:

1.I think it necessary that the pupils’ learning to read the phonetic symbols earlier than their learning to read the word.

Pronunciation is very important to a student who begins to learn English. If a student can’t pronounce a word very correctly, he will not read a phrase or a sentence very correctly, and he will lose heart in studying English in the days to come. One day, I found that lots of pupils in my class wrote some strange characters beside the new words or phrases. For example, beside the word ‘uncle’, they wrote the characters “昂考”；Beside the word ‘plus’，they wrote the characters “破拉丝”; Beside the phrase ‘toy train’, they wrote the characters “套一船”. At first, I felt very amazed and amusing for this phenomenon. And then, I asked some of them a question, ‘Why do you write these characters beside these words?’ They answered me , ‘You usually read the new words in class, and we can read after you in class. But after class or after many days, we might forget their pronunciation, so we had to write the characters beside the words, and then we could read the words according to the characters beside them after class.’ I remember that I also used this way to read the words when I began to learn English, because I didn’t learn the phonetic symbols then. This is a wrong way to learn English words. The teachers should keep the students from using this way to remember the pronunciation of the words. In my opinion, if the students had learned the phonetic symbols , they could have a good mode to remember the pronunciation of the words. Learning the phonetic symbols is very important for oral English. It’s the basis for learning spoken English.

Pupils always can’t distinguish the pronunciations between some words that look like each other if they don’t learn the phonetic symbols before hand. [2] Take the words: cook, food, mood, wood for example, they all have the letters ‘oo’, but the four ‘oo’s don’t pronounce the same way. The ‘oo’s in the words‘cook, good, wood’pronounce as / /, but the ‘oo’ in the word ‘mood’ pronounces as /u:/. If pupils haven’t learned the phonetic symbols before, maybe they can’t distinguish the pronunciations between the four words so easily. So, learning the phonetic symbols is also very important for distinguishing the pronunciations between some words they look like each other.

Pupils always repeat the words by reading the letters one by one. Take the word ‘computer’ for example, they always repeat it as ‘c-o-m-p-u-t-e-r, computer’, and then again, ‘c-o-m-p-u-t-e-r, computer’. Through many times’ repeating, maybe they can remember the word temporarily, and maybe they still can’t remember the word. Then, they have to go on repeating time and again. After many days, maybe they will forget it again. They should repeat the word one more time or much more times. I think this way of repeating the words is wasting too much time. When they try to do the practice as ‘t _ _ _ n(火车)’, maybe they can read the word quickly, but they can not remember how to spell it quickly. Because when they repeat the word, they just remember the letters of the word, but they don’t remember the sequence of the letters very clearly. Maybe they will finish the practice in ‘train’ or ‘tairn’. If they have learned the phonetic symbols, they will know that the word pronounces as /treIn/. ‘tr’ usually pronounces as /tr/, and ‘ai’ usually pronounces as /eI/, so they can finish the practice as ‘train’ quickly and correctly. So, it’s not difficult to find that teaching phonetic symbols in sports schools is very important.

Previewing the new text and reading the extracurricular books will become very difficult if pupils have not learned the phonetic symbols. Pupils usually meet with some new words when they preview the new text, and then they always look them up in the dictionary. But they can only know the meanings of these new words, and they don’t know how to pronounce the words because they can’t read the phonetic symbols of the dictionary. When pupils read the extracurricular books, they will also fall into the same trouble. I think that it will reduce the interest of pupils in English learning. So, learning the phonetic symbols in sports school is also very necessary in previewing the new text and reading the extracurricular books.

Doctor Li Shujie from Beijing Teachers Training University told others, ‘In English learning, listening, speaking, reading and writing are very important. The correct English pronunciation is the basis of them, the phonetic symbols learning is the basis of the basis. Some students have good English achievements, but they don’t always have good oral English. That is because of their bad English pronunciation. They don’t have a solid foundation of the phonetic symbols learning when they first began to learn English.’ Doctor Li’s son is a pupil who only learned one year’s English. He had learned the phonetic symbols when he started to learn English. Now, he is good at English listening and speaking. Some parents worry that if their children don’t learn the phonetic symbols, and just read after their teachers, the words learning will become learning by rote, which will reduce their ability in learning by themselves. So they think that the pupils should learn the phonetic symbols when they first learn English and they should grasp the rules of the phonetic symbols pronunciation. [3] The phonetic symbols are the basis for the later difficult English learning.

2.The phonetic symbols are very difficult to learn. So, it’s also very important to teach them in interesting and lively ways for the English teachers.

‘The phonetic symbols learning in sports schools is necessary, but the key of the phonetic symbols learning is the teacher.’ Mr. Ding from the English Department of the People University says. [3]

Everybody knows that the phonetic symbols are very insipid and difficult to learn. So, how to make the phonetic symbols teaching more interesting and lively is the teachers’ important assignment. Teaching method is very important to make the phonetic symbols teaching produce better effect. Miss Pan Yuying from the Second Sports School of Shanghai introduces some methods for teaching the phonetic symbols, such as classifying the phonetic symbols, playing the games’ teaching from easy to hard and educing the phonetic symbols from the letters. Miss Zhou Yixing from Zizhong Road Sports School of Shanghai shows his methods such as teaching the phonetic symbols by using songs and figures. [2] I think playing the games is the best way to improve the pupil’s interest in the phonetic symbols learning. I have collected some interesting games about the phonetic symbols teaching from some newspapers. Now, I will introduce some of them.

2.21. Competition reading the phonetic symbols. For example, the teacher divides the students into some groups, then, shows one phonetic symbol. The students will compete to read the phonetic symbol. The teacher asks one student who first tries to read this phonetic symbol. If he reads it correctly, his group will get 10 marks. Finally, the group that gets the highest marks is the winner.

2.22. Look at the phonetic symbols, and tell the words. For example, the teacher divides the students into some groups, then, shows one card likes /buk/. The students should read the phonetic symbols and tell the word ‘book’, and then, translate the word into Chinese. The teacher asks one student who first tries to read this phonetic symbol. If he can only read the phonetic symbols correctly, his group will get 10 marks. If he can also tell the word and translate the word into Chinese, his group will get 20 marks. The group that gets the highest marks is the winner. [4]

2.23. Finding its friends. The teacher should prepare some cards. On some of them are written phonetic symbols like/I/, /e/. And on some of them are written with words liking ‘pig’, ‘big’, ‘bed’, ‘desk’. The teacher gets the cards that are written with the phonetic symbols, and the students get the cards that are written with the words. And then, the teacher shows one card such as /I/, and the students who have the cards such as ‘pig’, ‘big’ should stand up.

2.24. Some modern and multimedia instruments should be used in the phonetic symbols teaching. I think if the teacher uses these methods to teach the phonetic symbols, the students must learn very quickly. Learning from playing is a good method for the phonetic symbols learning.

Conclusion:

 I think pupils should pay their attention to reading, listening and identifying the phonetic symbols. To write the phonetic is not very necessary to pupils. Pupils are too young to distinguish something. Some phonetic symbols look like some letters. So maybe pupils will get confused.

 ‘Teaching is for not teaching.’ The phonetic symbols teaching can help pupils to study by themselves; The phonetic symbols can help pupils to study English much better and more easily; The phonetic symbols learning can improve pupils’ English speaking and listening abilities. So I want to say that the phonetic symbols teaching in sports schools is very necessary! And the teachers should enrich themselves, and create much more teaching methods for the phonetic symbols teaching.

Reference:

[1] Cheng Musheng  It’s False to Teach the Phonetic Symbols in Sports School  [z]

[2] Haixin629  Talk about the Phonetic Symbols Teaching in Sports School  [Z]

[3] Yu Chunlian   Do the Phonetic Symbols Teaching Can be Given up in Sports School  [N]

[4] Clara12234   The Games for the Phonetic Symbols Teaching  [Z]