It takes very little time to say in a word — so little that we, on occasion, lazily skip right over it when saying a word e. Australians are renowned for making this replacement. Schwa usage varies greatly between dialects. Australian English speakers often put schwas in places where British and American speakers do not. I believe it is particularly important to explicitly teach EALD students, and students struggling with learning difficulties in reading and spelling, the schwa feature of the English language.
Introduce it once they are reading and writing two-syllable words. Have students say a sentence, tapping their leg as they say stressed words. Awareness of this will become very useful in poetry study in later years. Talk about the types of words that are stressed and the types of words that are not stressed. Courtney Bartlett swimmingintosecond.
This is my adaptation for young students:. Have students sing polysyllabic words, tapping syllable s on their leg. The stressed syllable s should be tapped with greater strength.
Have them write the schwa symbol above the vowel in the unstressed syllables. They should be made aware of words which have identical spelling but different stress such:. If this does not sound right, stress should be shifted to the next syllable. Activities to Promote Awareness of Representations of Schwa Word sorts of schwa words Word completion, with space for schwa representation Find the schwa — highlighting it in words Create a schwa wall with schwa words grouped by vowel representation.
Some of the following examples are taken from Part 3 of Phonics Hero these are in an Australian accent, so some may not apply in your dialect : a — comm a , atl a s, sal a d, alph a bet, a mount, thous a nd e — el e phant, carp e t, tak e n, tel e phone, it e m, e vent, proph e t, d e stroy i — cous i n, an i mal, penc i l, eas i ly, acc i dent, conf i dence, prom i se o — carr o t, astr o naut, bott o m, din o saur, o ffend, ribb o n, phant o m u — rhomb u s, u pon, s u pply, medi u m y — vin y l, s y ringe.
The chances are that, like me, you managed to learn to read and spell without being explicitly taught about schwa. Looking at the chart you can hear how the top-left of the chart is brightest and the bottom-right is darkest — with variants between. Perhaps in the realms of brightness to darkness there is a way of navigating through the quadrilateral? By now it should be clear that it is not accurate to give exact tongue positions for vowels.
So should we dispense with the vowel quadrilateral once and for all? I say no. The traditional way of classifying vowels works well in practice, and, indeed is the only basis for the successful acquisition of practical skill in producing, identifying, and classifying vowels… [it is] helpful to use a hand mirror…so that one can correlate the visible movements and positions of the tongue and lips, with the proprioceptive sensations, and also with the auditory sensations when they are whispered or voiced.
I agree. In fact, I have created my own vowel quadrilateral superimposed on a picture of the mouth. I use this when teaching vowels to English learners with really good results. Another benefit is that they can concentrate on the tongue rather than the jaw.
This is important because if, for example, you teach a student that [a] has an open jaw position, then that student may start to overextend the jaw every time they have to pronounce a word with [a] in. This can lead to jaw problems such as TMD temporomandibular disorder. As referenced earlier Havenhill, , p.
Some speakers may make a vowel with the tongue more back and the lips relaxed, others with the tongue more forward and the lips more rounded. However, I hardly ever see native speakers do this. Every phonetics book that talks about the vowel quadrilateral talks about the tongue arching towards the vowel dots. However, one book for actors Speaking with Skill by Dudley Knight describes the tongue arching upwards for high vowels and cupping downwards for low vowels.
Here are a couple of quotes from the book:. The vowel quadrilateral is an attempt to provide a schematic representation of the relative position of the articulators while engaging in the acoustic shaping of the vowels.
The total space within the vowel quadrilateral represents — in an imprecise, schematic way — the action of arching or cupping of the front, middle or back of the body or dorsum of the tongue. It does not involve the tip or the blade. However, perhaps the idea of cupping the tongue towards a point in the mouth will help some people create a particular vowel otherwise elusive to them.
If you are interested in seeing the tongue move for particular sounds via ultrasound and MRI then have a browse of the Seeing Speech page with the IPA chart , and the Dynamic Dialects page.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it on social media or tell your friends! If you have comments, please leave them at the bottom of this page. Introducing Phonetic Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Catford, J. A Practical Introduction to Phonetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Practical Phonetics and Phonology. New York: Routledge. Cruttenden, A. Abingdon: Routledge. Handbook of the International Phonetic Association.
Haverhill J. Glasgow, UK: the University of Glasgow. Paper number A Course in Phonetics. Canada: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Vowels And Consonants. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Ladefoged, P. An academic life. The sound pattern of Standard Italian, as compared with the varieties spoken in Florence, Milan and Rome.
Journal of the International Phonetic Association. Sturtevant, E. Oscar Russell. Luke, an excellent summary of the facts about vowel quality.
Thank you! This is really excellent, Luke. Incredibly clear, thoroughly researched. Love it. And of course I agree with your conclusion! This is called a diphthong. Examples include cl ou d and b oi l. Examples include car, bird, germ, form, and hurt.
Any vowel can make the schwa sound; it sounds like a weak uh or ih. Words like fr o m and fin a l have the schwa sound. Some words have more than one schwa sound, like a partm e nt and b a nan a. When the letter c is followed by the vowels e , i , or y , it usually makes its soft sound. Examples of that are ce nt, ci rcus, and cy clone. With other vowels, the letter c makes a hard sound, as in ca t and co t.
Likewise, when the letter g is followed by the vowels e , i , or y , it usually makes its soft sound. Examples of that are ge l, gi ant, and gy m. With other vowels, the letter g makes a hard sound, as in ga s, go rilla, and yo gu rt. The letters f , s , z , and l are usually doubled at the end of a one-syllable word immediately following a short vowel. Examples include st uff , gr ass , f uzz , and sh ell. Exceptions include qu iz and b us. The exceptions to this rule are s uch , m uch , r ich , and wh ich.
When words end with a silent e , drop the e before adding - ing. This rule also applies to other suffixes that start with vowels, like - ed , - er , - able , and - ous. In a one-syllable word like win where one short vowel is followed by one consonant, double the consonant before adding a suffix that starts with a vowel. Examples: wi nn er, wi nn ing, wi nn able. But when a singular word ends with s , sh , ch , x , or z , add es to make it plural, as in class es , brush es , and fox es.
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