Spelfabet

Crisp consonants 2

A couple of days ago I put up a blog post called Crisp Consonants, about how to say individual consonants when working with literacy-learners.

However, a few consonant sounds (which are more prone than vowels to being distorted by adults) were missing from the video embedded in the post.

I've just been told about a bunch of videos of some student teachers on the internet which tell us all, precisely and correctly, how to say 24 of the 44 sounds – one for each individual letter of the alphabet, except Q and X.

Q usually represents the same sound as C and K, because we typically write QU, not CW or KW, at word and syllable beginnings.

At word and syllable endings, X usually represents the same sounds as the spelling combination CK + S, as in tacks and tax. At word beginnings, X typically represents the same sound as the letter Z, as in Xavier, xerox and xylophone.

The student teachers in the videos of how to say 24 sounds include some of the sounds that were missing from the earlier post.

The other thing I like about thess videos is that you don't have to listen to a whole video just to hear the pronuncation of one sound, as they're all separate videos. So it's possible to use one of these videos as the starting point of a lesson about a particular sound.

Also, the student teachers are exceptionally cute and funny.

Have a look here.