This addition to the Making Sense of.. series deals with spelling and pronunciation. It presents the basic patterns together with exceptions, and includes exercises. The book is organized in two parts: From Sounds to Spelling; and From Spelling to Sounds.
Presents a history of English spelling through chapters that cover such topics as the introduction of the Roman alphabet, each letter's origins, and the development of long and short vowels.
Written by an authority in the dyslexia field, this is the first accessible guide to the close interplay of spelling and dyslexia. Kelli Sandman-Hurley talks the teacher or parent through why kids with dyslexia find spelling so hard, and what we can learn from the spelling mistakes in their writing samples. Introducing key terminology around morphemes (smallest unit of meaning in words) and phonemes (smallest contrastive units in language) in an accessible and clear way, Sandman-Hurley goes on to explain how we can identify, and learn from, kids' spelling miscues, and use them to further inform our teaching and instruction. Shedding much-needed light on an under-explored tool for classroom or home learning, Dyslexia and Spelling is essential reading for teachers and parents alike.
In Making Sense, David Crystal confronts the foe of many: grammar. Once taught relentlessly to all students in the English-speaking world, grammar disappeared from most school curricula, so that terms such as "preposition" and "conjunction" now often confound children and adults alike. Explaining the nuts and bolts of grammar presents a special challenge, because - far more than is the case with spelling and punctuation - the subject is burdened with a centuries-old history of educational practice that many will recall as anything but glamorous. One of the world's foremost authorities on the English language, Crystal sets out to rid grammar of its undeserved reputation as a dry and intimidating subject, pointing out how essential grammar is to clear and effective speech and writing. He moves briskly through the stages by which children acquire grammar, along the way demystifying grammar's rules and irregularities and showing us how to navigate its snares and pitfalls. He offers the fascinating history of grammar, explaining how it has evolved from the first grammarians in ancient Greece to our 21st century digital environment of blogging, emailing, and texting. Many find grammar to be a daunting subject, but in this breezy, entertaining book, Crystal proves that grammar doesn't need to make us uneasy-we can all make sense of how we make sense.
Have you ever been confused by the fact that the words 'though' and 'bough' are pronounced differently, or frustrated by the realisation that 'hint' and 'pint' don't rhyme? It is well known that the spelling system of English is notoriously unhelpful as an indicator of how to pronounce English words. Spoken and written representations of English are mutually inconsistent, making it difficult to interpret the 'logic' of the language. Learning to transcribe English phonetically, however, provides an accurate visual interpretation of pronunciation: it helps you to realise what you actually say, rather than what you think you say. English Transcription Course is the ideal workbook for anyone wishing to practice their transcription skills. It provides a series of eight lessons, each dealing with a particular aspect of pronunciation, and introduces and explains the most important features of connected speech in modern British English - such as assimilation, elision and weak forms, concentrating on achieving a relaxed, informal style of speech. Each lesson is followed by a set of exercises which allow for extensive practise of the skills learnt in both current and previous chapters. Students can check their progress with the 'model' answers provided in the appendix.
Americans and Britons are exposed to unedited texts, scripts, and speech from one another's dialects at an unprecedented and accelerating rate. Most people have no trouble understanding the general meaning of language in the other dialect, but readers and listeners very often fail to understand or misunderstand critical words, references, and allusions for lack of familiarity of the social and cultural contexts that underlie various usages. This book remedies this gap in understanding by cataloguing the differences that language users on either side of the Atlantic are likely to encounter in their dealings with the other dialect. By taking a culturally neutral stance it addresses the needs of both British and American readers and listeners. The thematic organization of the book allows the user to access language differences in various subject areas, where words likely to be needed at the same time can all be found together. Chapters include; Politics, Law, and Government; Business and Money; Medicine and Healthcare; Education; Food, Clothing, and Shelter; Transportation; Sports; and Profanity and Obscenity, in addition to basic information on orthography, weights and measures, etc. The appendices and extensive index provide a ready point of entry for quick look-ups, and there will be an extra chapter on Canadian, Australian, and Asian English.
Why is there an 'h' in ghost? William Caxton, inventor of the printing press and his Flemish employees are to blame: without a dictionary or style guide to hand in fifteenth century Bruges, the typesetters simply spelled it the way it sounded to their foreign ears, and it stuck. Seventy-five per cent of English spelling is regular but twenty-five per cent is complicated, and in Spell It Out our foremost linguistics expert David Crystal extends a helping hand to the confused and curious alike. He unearths the stories behind the rogue words that confound us, and explains why these peculiarities entered the mainstream, in an epic journey taking in sixth century monks, French and Latin upstarts, the Industrial Revolution and the internet. By learning the history and the principles, Crystal shows how the spellings that break all the rules become easier to get right.
Can ghoti really be pronounced fish? Why is "o" short in glove and love, but long in rove and cove? Why do English words carry such extra baggage as the silent "b" in doubt, the silent "k" in knee, and the silent "n" in autumn? And why do names like Phabulous Phoods and Hi-Ener-G stand out? Addressing these and many other questions about letters and the sounds they make, this engaging volume provides a comprehensive analysis of American English spelling and pronunciation. Venezky illuminates the fully functional system underlying what can at times be a bewildering array of exceptions, focusing on the basic units that serve to signal word form or pronunciation, where these units can occur within words, and how they relate to sound. Also examined are how our current spelling system has developed, efforts to reform it, and ways that spelling rules or patterns are violated in commercial usage. From one of the world's foremost orthographic authorities, the book affords new insight into the teaching of reading and the acquisition and processing of spelling sound relationships.
This book will tell all you need to know about British English spelling. It's a reference work intended for anyone interested in the English language, especially those who teach it, whatever the age or mother tongue of their students. It will be particularly useful to those wishing to produce well-designed materials for teaching initial literacy via phonics, for teaching English as a foreign or second language, and for teacher training. English spelling is notoriously complicated and difficult to learn; it is correctly described as much less regular and predictable than any other alphabetic orthography. However, there is more regularity in the English spelling system than is generally appreciated. This book provides, for the first time, a thorough account of the whole complex system. It does so by describing how phonemes relate to graphemes and vice versa. It enables searches for particular words, so that one can easily find, not the meanings or pronunciations of words, but the other words with which those with unusual phoneme-grapheme/grapheme-phoneme correspondences keep company. Other unique features of this book include teacher-friendly lists of correspondences and various regularities not described by previous authorities, for example the strong tendency for the letter-name vowel phonemes (the names of the letters ) to be spelt with those single letters in non-final syllables.
Translating research about child neuroscience into practice in education is a daunting prospect for most practitioners. In fact, many see it as fraught with difficulties and risky. However, the importance of this research has never been more important. The context of the early years in the UK, has seen considerable changes within recent years, with a raft of government regulation and guidance, and a national move to free childcare entitlement at increasingly earlier ages. Combined with a mounting pressure for accountability in 'Closing the Gap' between disadvantaged children and those more fortunate, these pressures make it fundamental that those working with young children understand what neuroscience is telling us, and more important, what it is not. Practitioners, teachers managers, and governors in settings and schools will not only be called to account for the attainment of their children, as measured in tests, but in the way children are prepared for lifelong earning, which will support them for the rest of their school lives and beyond. This book is a comprehensive position statement for practitioners that highlights: where we are now; what we know; what we don't know; what research developments mean for practitioners and setting, and how this fits in with the government expectations within the EYFS framework. Sally Featherstone covers the current thinking in educational research and neuroscience, how some of this has been misinterpreted by 'early adopters' or 'over-enthusiastic promoters', and how new information can help practitioners to be more effective in their work with young children.