English spelling and pronunciation can cause a lot of difficulties for English language learners! That’s because English spelling often doesn’t match the pronunciation. English has gone through many sound changes over time, and we’ve kept some of the older spellings that don’t reflect the current sounds. Did you know that while many languages only have 5 vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u), English has 26 vowel sounds? No wonder it’s tough to learn how to spell and pronounce English words correctly!
Two tricky sounds are those spelled with “ph” and “wh”. “Ph” is pronounced as an /f/ sound, and “wh” is pronounced as a /w/ sound, and neither include the /h/ sound! This week’s Spotlight lesson was on
“ph” & “wh” Words, so I decided to record the words from this lesson on the blog this week.
You can play the audio in class and have students listen and repeat as they do the lesson. You could also write the words below on the board and play the audio. Of course, you could simply model the words yourself, but I find it’s advantageous when students listen to more than one person speaking English in class. I speak with a North American accent (I’m from the west coast of Canada, and my accent is similar to other speakers’ accents in most parts of the US and Canada), which might be interesting if your accent is different. The more exposure to other speakers and accents in English, the better! You could also assign the audio for homework—tell students to listen and repeat the words several times, and have each student say one or two of the words at the beginning of class the next day.
1. “ph” words:
Words include: elephant, phone, alphabet, photo
2. “wh” words:
Words include: whisk, white, wheel, what, whistle, where, whale, when
Find this lesson in the Phonics Cafe – Book 4.
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