Interesting, but please never incorrectly make letter sounds like this guy is doing.  His first sound is flat out wrong!

/b/ pronounced as “BUH”

If you teach kids this, they start saying words wrong.  Something like this… the word “bat” would sound like BUH-aa-t.  Say it fast: Buh-at.

When they say the word fast (that is as the word should be said) they would be following your directions perfectly; (/b/ says “BUH”) and it is perfectly wrong. 

  Direct Instruction lays the smack down on this type of imprecise phonics.

Interesting that this should come up as my 5 year old and I are working through some early reading stuff using sound/letter correspondence.

Question: How do you say a consonant without adding a vowel sound to it? Is it possible?

I have been sitting on my hands here wanting to jump in-nothing is more important in teaching reading than sound knowledge & articulation.
Malkin said I could post it-so..

There are three videos on u tube-the total instruction of the 44 speech sounds is 84 minutes long.It shows us the 44 speech sounds that make 90 pictures,also known as graphemes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zD-nuTcEt0

I will do my best to explain.  There are voiced and unvoiced consonants.  The term ‘voiced’ means that the larynx and vocal folds are engaged to make the sound of the letter.  If you put your hand on your larynx when you say these consonants, there is a vibration.  Here are the voiced consonants:
l, m, n, r, v,  z

Another way to tell if they are voiced is if you can sustain a note (like sing a note) and hold the pure consonant sound on that pitch like this:

Mmmmmmmmmm

Unvoiced consonants are very easy to sound without a vowel attachment because they are just that… unvoiced. 

These are p,t,ck,k,s,f,h,x

The sound production in these consonants is mostly aspiration, or from the hard pallette and lips. ck and x are the exception with their production being primarily aspirate uvular, but still unvoiced (no laryngal engagement).

Now the tricky ones are these:

b, d, g, j, q, w

The tendency is to make them voiced, as in the video..  /b/ sounds like BUH.  But this is not how we say the sound at all.  Try singing /b/.  You can’t unless you sing BUH or something like “b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-”  The trick to make these sound *closer* to the unvoiced quality that they have when speaking them in connection with other letters is to make the laryngal engagement so small it is negligible.

  Practice these sounds with your fingers on your larynx and compare them to the true voiced consonants like:  m, n, etc.  Now try a true unvoiced consonant like: t, k etc.  You will feel absolutely no vibration.  Try to make b,d,g, j, q and w as close to vibrationless as possible.  This means quickly shutting off the natural tendency to add the “UH” sound after the consonant. 

Does this make sense?  If not, take the plunge and buy Siegfreid Engelmann’s programs and you will be blown away.  It is truly leagues ahead of any other type of instruction that I have seen or read about.  So well thought out and thorough.

Thanks very much Joanne…for the video resource and for the explanation.

Some of this resonates with my own vocal training, and my work in vocal music; musically, however, unvoiced consonants are never “sung”...they are used primarly to give words definition.

In my original post here, I was thinking mainly of the voiced consonants.

I’m looking forward to watching the video.

Actually Stephen, I wrote the explanation.  I have been able to grasp a lot about sound/letter production because of my vocal training too.  My first degree was in Opera.

While I am thinking about how best to instruct something complex, I constantly refer to the principles of technical singing. Full mastery over one’s laryngal and facial muscles is a very subtle thing, and learning how to keep a low larynx while singing has given me insight on how to lead learners toward accessing sensations/concepts that they have never experienced before.

I have never encountered a pronunciation or a speech impediment in a student that I couldn’t break by using only the principles that I learned in Opera school!

Sorry about that madteacher. I defer to your expertise. (I used to be in love with an opera singer and she introduced to a whole new world)

In my role as arts consultant, I’m working next week with elementary teachers on bringing the world of vocal music to their students. My specialty is instrumental music, but I have come to learn that there is some hidden power in all students having good quality vocal instruction.

Interesting that my own choir teachers always made a point of telling us to pronounce our consonants and, in many cases, the crisper the better. (They were always given to hyperbole).

I would love to hear more about the connections between learning to speak, learning to read, and learning to sing!

Thanks for clarifying the post!

That’s fine.  As to the music connection, I also think that the principles of learning a discipline like music sheds a lot of light on how all learning is done.

I am a shop/art/music teacher at my school, but I also teach learning assistance.  Not many teachers get such a wide range of classes to teach.  I think many long-winded debates about *learning* would wither away if more teachers and policy-makers were able to personally work in such disparate disciplines as say welding and woodwind instruments.

  “There is no shortcut” is a maxim used by L.A. teacher, Rafe Esquith, and he got it from a world-class cellist.  It means that one must practice and submit themselves to the discipline of the thing in order to find mastery.  There is no other way.  Not experiential learning, or group learning or constructivism or any other thing than long, hard practice.  The good news is that in achieving mastery of an external process,  like say playing a woodwind instrument or playing the Mig welder, or even being able to analyze the grammatical structure of a sentence, one finds peace and evenness within. 

If you actually teach them to do what they are supposed to be doing, their being able to perform the process is only part of the reward.  It doesn’t work if the work is meaningless or simplistic work… kids are too savvy for that.  They know it is not important because it doesn’t feel like they had to work to achieve it.

There is so much in your response…each of your ideas could be another conversation.

I think that your comment about mastery and peace is powerful. Many of us go through lives “faking” it, even in areas that we are assigned to teach.

In the school context, do our schools offer the conditions where mastery is promoted, supported, appreciated? I’m not talking about “mastery” as a specific approach, but as a goal.

The question of what should be mastered or, better, what could be mastered at different levels of education is also an interesting one.

One idea that strikes me from your comments is that we give teachers a bunch of curriculum documents filled with expectations, but there is not a big picture sense of where everything is headed.

On the other hand, when you give yourself over to a particular “discipline”, you are often inspired by what others have done, examples of artistic excellence and teachers who have also immersed themselves in the discipline and the form, itself.

OK…this is me just going off on what you have inspired me to think about today. Would love to talk more about this because I think its a perspective that may could move thinking in a totally different way.

I’ll stop there…for now

I agree wholeheartedly.
Mastery in any subject is at the core of making that human being we are teaching have a better life,they will use it as a launching pad in their careers.

Teachers are trained as generalists through no fault of their own,teaching a subject they`ve mastered and feel passionate about is what causes inspiration in others.

For example,my passion is developing Reading Expert Teachers:),the analogy to learning music is one I use all the time,like the scales where we play more and more complex songs as we grow in our knowledge,so do we read more and more complex text in our learning to read and spell systematically.

Mr.Hurley, I am really puzzled about your comments because to me they seem contradictory.

Several times before in your previous posts you have argued about how phonics program don’t make a difference, however you are starting to teach your own kids phonetically; to quote:
“are working through some early reading stuff using sound/letter correspondence.”

First of all, why are you teaching them?
How can you be sure it is developmentally appropriate? Teaching them rules like sound-letter correspondence isn’t forced, isn’t rot learning, isn’t going to take away the pleasure of reading?
Secondly, why not just make sure that you read to them and have a lot of books around?

Where I’m coming from is: I’ve heard several stories where elementary teachers scolded parents for doing at home with their kids what you are doing with your kids.

I appreciate the challenge to my thinking fromEurope. I can’t defend myself against apparent contradictions…not since I got married anyways!

To your point, however, it has been pointed out here on more than one occasion that my teacher education likely leaned more towards a whole language approach, and the more I read about the “reading wars”, those that have pointed this out are absolutely right.

In terms of phonics, I’m learning from Jo-Anne that the statement that you quote above really fits it into the realm of phonemic awareness. I don’t sit down with my kids at the kitchen table and pull out a bunch of print material in order to teach them this stuff. As a parent, our conversations have taken place while reading stories, while driving in the car, during mealtimes and bathtime.

Never while watching the Leafs!

Luke, my oldest son, shares my passion for language. He wants to know how words are put together. He senses that we’re cracking a code, and he loves it. He is pretty good at blending sounds together to figure out words, and while he’s never heard of a rime, he gets that words are put together by letters that make specific sounds.

I’ve already said elsewhere that I’m not a big fan of the levelled books that are starting to make their way into our house. We’ve always read to our kids, and it’s the story that has been the draw. The levelled books that don’t engage in the same way, but we go through them anyways.

In terms of phonics working or not working, I’ve never really had a strong opinion on this. What I am wanting more conversation on is whether or not explicit teaching of phonics is necessary for all students. The research to which I’ve been pointed indicates that a narrow majority of children learn to read, regardless of (and sometimes in spite of) the method used. But the 40% that don’t need early and effective intervention. This is a new understanding for me, and one that needs to be formed more. I continue to read the research and opinion papers!

Reading instruction is not my speciality but I have taken a new interest in it over the past several months as my own children become avid “readers”. I think that word study is an important part of their development and I have no problem going deep into the “code” with my kids. The school they attend seems to begin with a list of “popcorn” sight words. For the ones that Luke has had trouble “remembering”, he has learned to analyze a little more closely.

One question that I do have has to do with what is going on in his mind when he encounters new words. That’s why we talk about it; I want to know what he’s thinking.

He turned to me last night at the dinner table and said, “Daddy, did you go to ‘word school’ or something?” I replied, “or something…”

I apologize for any jumping around in my response…trying to write during my break!