Many students view pronunciation as the biggest obstacle to overcome when learning another language. I often remind my students that the goal is not to get rid of their accent completely, but rather to speak clearly and comprehensibly. Accents are beautiful! But it frustrating when others can’t understand what you’re trying to communicate. Phonics lessons can help language learners improve their pronunciation so that they will be understood by everyone.

One tricky area of pronunciation is plural endings. Our three-page Plurals lesson helps students learn when to pronounce the endings /s/, /z/, and /ez/. This lesson shows which endings follow which consonants, and includes fun drawings that engage students while they practice. It is also great for practicing numbers and counting! (more…)

Love is in the air! Valentine’s Day will be celebrated in many countries this Friday, February 14. Some schools participate in Valentine’s Day activities such as doing lessons about love/dating/marriage, wearing pink or red, or giving out valentine cards, roses, or chocolate. If you will be discussing Valentine’s Day with your young learners this week, make it educational and teach them the capitalization, punctuation, and spelling rules of this popular holiday!

Capitalization

In English, holidays always use capital letters for the holiday name and the word “Day”.

• I’m looking forward to Valentine’s Day.

When it’s clear we’re referring to the holiday, we can drop the word “Day” if we want.

• I got a ring for Valentine’s Day.
• I got a ring for Valentine’s.

But be careful! We don’t use capital letters when referring to a card, gift, or person.

• He gave me a valentine card yesterday.
• I bought a valentine present for my girlfriend.
• You will always be my valentine. (more…)

Often spelling and capitalization rules for holidays don’t get taught, and both teachers and students simply use what they’ve seen the most—not necessarily the correct form! Is it New Year, New Year’s, or New Years? When do we capitalize New Year and when do we use lowercase letters?

If you have classes today, it will be useful for your students to learn the correct spelling of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. If you and your students don’t go back to school until next week, this would still be an educational way to begin or wrap up talking about the holidays! (more…)

Sprout English’s lesson of the week is Three-Letter Words Review in Book 3 of the Phonics Cafe.

There are 18 pages in this comprehensive phonics and spelling lesson. With so many pages to choose from, teachers have the option doing them all in one lesson or dividing them up over a few days. If you choose to divide up the lesson, try doing a fun activity such as the Word Search Puzzle on page 3 as a warm-up, and assign a writing exercise such as page 17 for homework. You can also use page 18 as a quiz. (more…)

How many words are there in the English language? Global Language Monitor estimated that number was 1,013,913 on January 1, 2012. Most dictionaries list the number of current words at around 150,000. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary has entries for 171,476 words in current use.

English spelling: The number of words notwithstanding, spelling in English is a lot more difficult than in other languages. Many languages have a limited number of sounds; for instance, a, e, i, o, and u only have one pronunciation each in many languages. English, however, has 26 vowel sounds alone! Outside of vowel sounds, many English words have spelling that doesn’t match the pronunciation, with words such as knight, cough, phone, etc. Also, there aren’t many rules for English spelling, and the few rules we do have are often broken (consider the i before e, except after c rule: chief, but their).

American vs. British spelling: To top it all off, there are also spelling variations that differ by region of the world. The most prevalent difference is American spelling vs. the spelling of other English-speaking countries, which primarily follow British spelling practices. These differences can be frustrating for teachers and students (not to mention business owners, government workers, and many others.). At my old school in Canada, we used textbooks from both the US and the UK, so students were exposed to both American and British spelling on a regular basis. Figuring out how to present these spelling differences to students was a challenge. (more…)

It’s almost Halloween! This scary, fun holiday takes place on October 31^st in many countries. Many teachers will be doing Halloween activities with their classes, and this means that Halloween vocabulary will be featured a lot. Now is a good time to review some of the trickier words that scare English learners and native speakers alike!

1. COSTUME / CUSTOM

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen students get these two words mixed up. They’re tricky! Point out to your students that they have different pronunciations and different meanings. A costume, pronounced /ˈkɑs tjum/, is an outfit that people wear on Halloween in order to appear as someone/something else.

• I bought a cat costume for Halloween this year. My friend is dressing up in a zombie costume.

A custom, pronounced /ˈkʌs təm/, is a tradition or habitual action that people do.

• Taking off your shoes when you enter someone’s house is a well-known Japanese custom. (more…)