Teaching Phonics Workshop - Adam Park

Workshop by Adam Park

Do your students say “Bath” and “Bus” the same way? Are “l” and “r” the same sound as far as they’re concerned? Do you wish you had an easy-to-use system that could help you to teach the real sounds of English? Look no further! This workshop will provide an easy-to-use, classroom-tested system for both verbal and written English pronunciation that can be used as little or as much as you want! This workshop will be useful for Elementary, Junior High and High School ALTs and JTEs alike.

All handouts, prints, and files that Adam talks about in his presentation are available on google drive or by clicking the images on this page. Please follow the link and copy the folder to your personal drive to edit.   Adams contact information and the Q&A section from his live workshop are at the bottom of the page. 

 

♦ Teaching Phonics Google Drive ♦

 
Starting advice: Even if your students are smart 3rd grade high schoolers, this may be their first time doing pronunciation, phonics, etc. It is important to practice regularly and to be strict about the quality of pronunciation (at first you should correct the worst mistakes, but then slowly you start addressing the smaller ones, which is part of the idea of doing a consistent drill, just like is done in sports, martial arts, writing kanji, etc.) Consistency is key, and it is better to do things slowly and thoroughly, but correctly, than it is to get done quickly, but have many imperfections.
 

Reminder: I recommend consistently using red for pronunciation letters and black or white (on chalkboards) for regular letters. Also ask students to do the same to show which they’re using. (Pencil and red pen are what I ask them to use). This mostly deals with any problems you have with students getting confused about which is which.

 

Phonics Symbols (PDF) is the bare essential symbols that represent each sound in the English language. These should be used first purely in an auditory way, then the sound should be said while looking at the symbols, then students should learn to say the sounds from reading without prompting, and lastly you can do quizzes where you say the sound and they write the symbol associated with it. (This covers reading, writing, listening and speaking in order of difficulty). This is the most important warmup to do as regularly as possible. The first time or two you do it will take more time (maybe 10-15 minutes) but eventually it can be about a 1-2 minute fast warmup that you can just do to get students warmed up. (It also helps them to get their minds into “English mode” and it’s something that feels consistent and familiar that even the students who struggle the most will learn after a while).

Alphabet most common sounds. I do not have a worksheet for this, but the next step I use (or the first step for grade 3/4 sometimes) is to use “a-a-(letter name a), (b-b-letter name b).” If you don’t understand what I just wrote there, it means that you make the sound twice and then say the letter name. This can be done by writing letters on a chalkboard, using the letters in the 3rd, 4th grade textbook, etc. This only covers about half of the English sounds, but it’s quick and practical for working on small easy words faster. (3 letter words in particular. You only get the odd “letter combination sound” like “car” which is two sounds, “k” and “ar” or “cow” which is also two sounds, “k” and “ow”. Most 3 letter words are 3 sounds and are always the same as the most common pronunciation of each letter, the “k” sound is usually “c” for instance).
 
 

Phonics Examples (PDF) can be used once students are comfortable with the basic sounds, but should not be used first. The intent of this system is to break down pronunciation into its simplest, smallest parts, perfect those, and then move on to using them in words. Going too fast will mean students relapse into bad habits (katakana pronunciation, etc.) Make sure that students are pronouncing the individual sounds very well before going onto this. The benefit of using the phonics examples is that students will be able to associate the letter sounds with real words. I’ve chosen words that are all objects, animals, etc. because I think they’re easier to understand. Where possible, I tried to start with the letters being used, but I had to vary things a little for a few examples. Please note that the red of the “pronunciation letter” corresponds to the “letters in the word” that are highlighted, and are sometimes different. For instance, “cat” has the “k” sound. Both the “k” and “c” are red to show that they relate to each other. It’s good to briefly mention to students that because we only have 26 letters in English that sometimes letters and pronunciation sounds aren’t exactly the same. With practice you become familiar with what relates to what.

Three letter words listening practice is highly recommended for all levels starting to spell / read by sound. Three letter words are the most consistent and closest to each letter always having the same sounds. They help to teach the simplest basic sounds and since they only cover about half of the sounds in English it’s less difficult for students to start with these. I recommend not reading the words or getting the students to guess the letters just from the word. Instead, start by isolating each individual sound and having students fully understand what sound relates to what letter, slowly and clearly. So for cat, I first go “c c c”, “c c c” (the sound not the letter) I let students write it, or do it again if some look confused. Then I ask what it is, they say it, I give them hints if they’re having trouble, etc. Then we do the second letter, “a a a”, “a a a” and do the same thing. Last, we do “t t t”, “t t t” with the same process. I check in asking who got it and who didn’t. I like to encourage them by saying common sounds like “t” and “a” are easy so that the students who are having a hard time know they’re at least getting some right and try harder starting from there. After we’ve done the word, I point at each letter and then together everyone says “c c c” “a a a” “t t t” and then “cat” “cat” as I underline the whole word with my finger. And so on. You can change the pace of this to make it faster or slower depending on the level of the students, but it’s better to be a little too slow than a little too fast so that even the students who struggle the most can start to understand the sounds.
 
Example Worksheets (click picture to download)
 

Three letter words listening practice answers

 
 
Simple verbs.pdf are the “next level” of learning, where we bring in some 4 and 5 letter words. There is a big difficulty jump from 3 to 4 and 5 letter words because we start seeing more combination letters used in various ways. For instance, “al” will often be the “o” sound, “ee” will be the “ē” sound, etc. Because it is way too much to expect them to memorize all of these patterns (and the exceptions to them) what I do here is I erase the letters that they can do from the 3 letter words, and then I ask them to listen to me pronounce the combination-letters, for instance, I say “ē” where it says “ee” and ask them if they know the pronunciation letter that means, and then they underline the combination letters with red and write the pronunciation letter under or over it. Other than this we follow the same process as we did with three letter words exactly, but at this point they’ll be faster. So, for instance, for “sleep” I will say “s s s” “s s s” and they will say what they think it is, then “l l l” “l l l”, next for the “ee” letters, which are already printed, I say “ē ē ē” “ē ē ē” and ask them if they know what red letter (pronunciation letter) it is. (I’ll remind them “The ones from the warmup.”). It’s okay if they don’t know this one, I’ll just write it as ē and pronounce it for them. Then we finish with “p p p” “p p p” and then from the start we say, together “s s s, l l l, ē ē ē, p p p, sleep, sleep”. I think it is good to point out things like “Oh this is talk. Do you remember what sound the “al” made in walk?” Then they can start to understand that the “al” pattern is going to make the “o” sound, but they understand it naturally through experience. I don’t suggest making them memorize a bunch of patterns, but just to get used to it over time by doing it. I also suggest mentioning that many patterns won’t always make the same sound, but there are usually only 2 possibilities. (For instance ch usually makes the “ch” sound, but there are a few exceptions where it’s just a regular “k” sound, like “school.” But, those are the only two sounds it can make, and it’s usually the “ch” sound if they have to guess, and they learn that from just doing it a lot, and they’ll just remember the few exceptions. Similarly, with “moon” and “book” we can see that “oo” is usually either “oo” or “ōō”. Once we’ve done a few examples, we begin to learn that it’s gotta be one of those two eventually, and it helps us to guses and remember, because we can check both and one will “sound right” in our memory).
 
Work sheets (Click to Download)
Simple Verbs 1
 
Answer Keys (Click to Download)
 
 
From 4 and 5 letter words on, the strategy remains the same. Slowly, you can start blanking out more letters, for instance, the most common patterns like “oo” making the “oo” or “ōō” sound, but I recommend doing this very, very slowly and a little bit at a time. I am not yet at this point with my students, but I will make more specific recommendations when I get there and share any worksheets I have.
 
Please don’t hesitate to ask me any questions about the system, and I’m more than happy to help with any suggestions I can give if you’re having trouble or don’t know where to start.
 

Contact Adam

Q&A Section 

*** All questions were submitted anonymously through the feedback forms. If you have further questions, please direct them to Adam via the contact box above. ***


How do you incorporate your sound cards into the “normal” classes where they’re covering a ton of vocabulary in a short amount of time? (Especially in the new ES 5th6th grade textbooks)

  • The key with this is “Choose your battles.” I think it would be a little too heavy to apply the system to every word, but you can start with really simple things like sounding out the first letter of each word you read, for instance “b-b-banana.” This at least gets students to be able to “sort through” or “take a guess” at words they can see the letters for but may have forgotten. It’s also wise to highlight when words start with “combination” sounds, like “sh” or “ch” by underlining the two letters with your fingers and saying “combine” to emphasize that this is a special sound where they don’t just look at the first letter. Other than this, on the time-management end of things, I usually just use the cards as a quick warmup which takes only 1-2 minutes, and then the bulk of the more “intense” sounding out words work I do is with the three letter word worksheets I showed during my presentation. (Note that I don’t insist they memorize those words because the purpose is that they learn to read and write words they don’t know at all). While it depends on your individual HRT, I am typically able to make room for this by trimming down on time spent on some of the “English light” content like Over the Horizon and sometimes some of the more time-intensive crafty stuff. I still cover all of the curriculum, but I try to see where the amount of time spent on certain activities may not be time well spent and could be trimmed down to the benefit of learning outcomes. Of course this is very much an “every situation is different,” kind of point, but at minimum I think even the most by-the-book teachers can find time for the pronunciation warmup, and seamless integration like the sounding out the first letter of each new word before you say it. Hopefully that helps a little!


How would you go about helping an ALT that absolutely sucks at recalling phonics sounds in being able to more easily recall them so they can teach the kids? Just wondering if you have any specific techniques to help. Thanks!  

  • Feel free to use the start of this video from Omura cable TV as a warm-up. It’s designed for the “audience at home” to repeat the sounds and can be used that way in class. You can basically just do the repeat-after-me sounds with the class until you yourself feel that you can do them without issue at which point you can take over, doing it as a live warmup. If you’re wanting to give tips to the kids or work on certain sounds, you can opt to pause the video right where you want to work on a sound, or you can pick a few to review/work on at the end of the video. I think about 2/3 of the sounds are pretty intuitive too, so you’ll probably find that after actually doing it a few times you’ll find those come to mind very intuitively based on the letters associated with them. Optionally, if you’re a real keener, you can listen to the video a few times on your own and do the repeat after me sounds yourself, eventually moving to saying them at the same time as I do. (Since I use the letter cards in my video warmup you’ll be able to follow those). Since you’re a native speaker, it’s only a matter of time before you figure out which letters associate with the sounds you already know. Worst case scenario you can always stick with the warmup video! Hopefully that’s helpful! Feel free to use the start of this video!


How do you train students to recognize which pronunciation to use for words spelt the same but pronounced differently?

  • For this one I recommend writing the pronunciation letters out in red below the spelling for each of the two words. For instance:

Present tense read

                      rēd

Past tense read

                 red

The red follows the pronunciation cards that represent the English sounds and are always “read as written,” so they can be used universally to clarify pronunciation. In this case, the pronunciation difference is accounted for by long e (ē) with present tense read vs short e (e) with past tense read. The easy way to remember this is that the line above the letter makes it longer and, even easier yet, just makes the letter’s pronunciation the same as its name! students are able to pick up remembering this pretty quickly with the “line means longer sound / name of the letter,” hints, and, in general with enough reminding and consistent reinforcement they become familiar with all of the sounds that the pronunciation symbols are used for. Consistency is key here.


You gave us a good game for showing phonics. Any good games for differentiating between sounds?

  • I actually stick with a couple of really simple versions of this:
    1. With two problem sounds I write them on the board to the left and right (also a good chance to teach them “left” and “right” if they don’t know them yet) and after I’ve coached them on the sounds, I get them to point / say left or right every time I make a sound. Then to play with a little, I might make three sounds in a row, so they would need to say, “left left right” and so on. Sometimes I play with rhythm a little to make it fun / add a little variety. This one seems to be the easiest “entry level” activity since you can do it with just two sounds.
    2. I do a quick quiz after running through the warmup sounds. When you’re first starting, one thing you can do is say “Okay, the sounds on the quiz are going to come from these sounds only, and you can write them on the board. I find that sticking with the “easiest” sounds first is also helpful, for instance, “t” and “b” and so on. The other thing I do is, if I think they’re having trouble, I’ll give them hints, like “The answer is one of these,” or “The answer is two letters!” or “The answer is NOT ” Basically you want to adjust the difficulty so that it’s not too obviously easy, but tends toward being something they can do. As long as they’re even just a little bit filling in the blanks for themselves, they’re learning and will progressively be able to do better as time goes on. To clarify how I do it, it’s really simple: I tell them to open their notebooks and get their pencils (any scrap piece of paper works too) and I tell them to remember the pronunciation letters and get them to write down the sounds I make. I’m generous with repeating the sounds as many times as needed and I exaggerate the mouth shapes to help them. I only recommend doing this once they’ve had a few goes at the pronunciation cards / they’ve repeated them back to you. I also do a survey to see how many kids got 5, 4 and 3 points to help figure out if I’m making it too easy or too hard. I also take volunteers (or people who have the right answers get voluntold) to write the answers on the board. After each answer I ask the students “Same?” and then if a lot got it wrong I’ll ask what mistakes they made were so that I can review the sounds they got it mixed up with and go over the mouth shape / sound difference.

These are the most basic exercises but I find they’re pretty solid. If you’re more creative you can probably make this into something even more fun – I’ll be honest in that I’m more focused on the “structural” stuff sometimes at the expense of fun, so I’m 100% sure there are better ideas others can come up with to make this more fun to integrate! (/use existing fun methods) Hopefully this helps!


One of my JTEs pronounced ‘towel’ like ‘to well’ in class. It took me a long time to figure out what she was saying. What should I do in that kind of situation?

  • On the “soft skills” side of advice, rather than the “technical” side, I always advise to approach JTEs about it either during class downtime (when nobody will see that you’re correcting them) and they’ll have the option to tell or to not tell the students they made a mistake. The idea here is that you don’t want to openly challenge their authority and standing as a teacher but you also want to give them the opportunity to correct things either immediately, or at least in their own mind for future reference. Optionally you can also choose to speak to them after class to clarify the difference if you think it’s a little too involved to get into in the middle of class. I would break it down in writing like this:

towel

towul (t ow u l) -> 4 sounds, using the unique “ow” sound, as in “cow”

to well

tōōwel (t ōō w e l) -> 5 sounds, using the unique “ōō” sound, as in “moon” 

Some people, including native English speakers, don’t really process the “ow” sound as a single sound, so just having it written down like that helps to clarify that it’s completely distinct from the “o” and “w” sounds separately. Keep in mind that my system does require at least some minimal JTE buy-in, however, this sort of situation can be used as an opportunity to illustrate the merits of the system in being able to clearly show exactly how any word should be said. I also encourage everyone to keep in mind that the struggles JTEs may have particularly with pronunciation are largely through no fault of their own – it’s likely they were taught English in a system that put little to no emphasis on phonics, phonology, pronunciation and so on. Having talked to a few JTEs about this, many of them very briefly cover the IPA (which uses a bunch of unfamiliar symbols) but most of them seemed to find it a little too heavy / didn’t like how it was presented and mostly disregarded it. 

Occasionally I’ve met JTEs who have exceptionally good pronunciation and they’ll tell me that they had a foreign teacher who really drilled them on it, but at best it seems to be totally random whether or not a JTE has had any support or training in this before. What I’m saying here is try to approach the situation from this point of view – JTEs can be anywhere between having no idea such a thing exists, to thinking it’s cumbersome and unnecessarily complicated, to being self-conscious, knowing that their pronunciation or understanding is off, but having no idea how to start improving it. A little empathy and patience can go a long way here, and keep in mind there’s never a guarantee that they’ll be receptive, you just have to do your best and choose which JTEs you think will be most open to this sort of thing. 

I got a little into the more people side of things than the technical phonetic side of things there, I hope that side of my advice is also helpful!