MORESBY NORTH EAST TEACHER TRAINING INSTITUTE

TEACHING IN PRIMARY SCHOOL

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT STRAND.
EDEN 102: Oral Language Development

Description
This unit will enable students-teachers to teach ‘Oral Language Development’ at Elementary, Junior
and Senior Primary Levels. This will include Speaking and Listening, phonological awareness and
phonics. As well as learning the relevant subject knowledge, students-teachers will learn how to
plan, teach, and assess the content in an interactive and stimulating environment at each level.
Whenever possible, learning should be practical and take place outside the classroom in the real
world. Where appropriate, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will be used to support
the teaching and learning in this unit in English Syllabus was written by the Curriculum Development
Division of the Department of Education.

Strand: Phonics
Sub-strand: Reading in Phonics
Content Standard Apply a variety of strategies to decode unknown words.
Performance Standard a). Apply knowledge of phonetics analysis to read unknown words using
common letter-sound relationship, consonant, vowels, blends, digraph
and diphthongs.
b). Apply knowledge of structural analysis to read unknown using
syllabification rules, affixes. Roots words, compound words, spelling
patterns.
c). Use dictionaries to use the correct pronunciation of grade- level
words.
d). Read grade-level words
e). Discuss meaning of words
f). Hear, recognise and use common English Sounds to read unknown
words). Read aloud fluently with speed, accuracy and expression.

Lesson Topic: Phonics in early childhood learning

Lesson Objective: The objective is to systematically teach kids the relationship between sounds and
the written pattern which represent them.

What is Phonics?
Phonics is a language instruction method. It is used to teach children the relationship between
letters and the sounds that they make. When a child understands forms of letters and their sounds,
the child can recognise those letters and sounds within other words.
Developing learning strategies
Strategies can be learned Students must be taught to apply learning strategies of basic path is
this:
1. The child learns sounds
2. The child learns that letters represent sounds
3. The child learns that letters and sounds make up words
4. The child can recognise those letters and sounds in other words

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 Eg. In phonics, we would teach a child that the letter ‘m’ makes the /m/ sound. When the
child encounters the word ‘mother’ which includes the ‘m’ they will recognise the ‘m’ and
sound it out at the beginning of word.
The phonics method enables children to sound out words independently.
Teaching the Parts of Phonics
To understand what phonics is, teacher can break down its elements into two categories.
1. Phonemes
2. Graphemes.
Then, clearly explain and demonstrate these terms with appropriate examples so that the
students will understand the contexts.
Phonemes is the smallest sound in a word. Each word contains multiple sound which teacher can
break down into its phonemes.
Eg. ‘Sound’ contains:
/s/ - as in speak
/ou/- as in pronounce
/n/ - as in neat
/d/- as in daily
A phoneme will be the same in different contexts. It’s applicable in many situations so it’s great to
get students/kids to understand their phonemes.
There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet. But there are many phonemes that can be made
of the same letters.

Graphemes are smallest kind of written language. They represent phonemes. A phoneme can
consist of single letter (like ‘I’ or several letters (like ‘sh’)
A single grapheme can represent several phonemes. Let look at the English example of ‘a’. That
grapheme can be pronounced as the /a/ in ‘hat’. But it can also be sounded out as the /lay/ in
‘famous’.
Graphemes can be confusing to a child. That’s why it’s so important that they learn phonics from a
skilled teacher.
Teaching phonics education for child’s reading.
Phonics has proven itself to be one of the best teaching methods in English Language unlike others
languages. It is generally understood that a child is ready to start learning phonics once they
already known several key language learning concepts.
1. The letters of the alphabet,
2. Something called ‘phonological awareness’. Phonological awareness is the child’s ability to
separate sounds within a word and pronounce them.
These two concepts work in tandem with graphemes and phonemes. Once children can grasp the
alphabet and separating syllables within words, they are ready to learn phonics.

Teaching aids and skills to be used both in and out of classroom.

Teaching mode and medium.

 Mode. Spoken or Written
 Medium The medium of the text is spoken face to face, individual or individual to a group – if the
text is written, the medium is a school task, letter, text book or phonetics chart, visual
aid of vide of sounds and letters.
Teacher teaching aids to phonics
Teaching aids.  Reading and Writing Kit- Early sounds and blending
This comprehensive kit is packed full of resources to help the child learn to read
and write. It is a perfect way to prepare the child for school and support them as

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 they begin to learn phonics in Nursery and reception. Including flash cards, a
handwriting book, wipe clean sheet and pen, and parent handbook.
 Reading and Writing Kit- More Sounds and Blending
This kit will improve the ability of your developing reader by introducing first
blending skills. It also provides handwriting practice to ensure your child can
progress as a writer as they gain confidence in reading. Includes two blending
sounds books, five storybook, writing words on board or blackboard and tell the
class to spell and pronounce the words clear with its sound.

Blending Sounds is the ability to build words from individual sounds by blending sounds
together in sequence.
For example; the learner blends sounds m, o, m, to form the word ‘mom’
 Online platform
This can help the kids to hear and see the visual teaching online. They can be able
to imitate the sounds being produced by online teacher. This is the pathway to
develop strong phonics skills. Including watching online education segment of
news, download short videos of letters and sounds, the pictures with letters and
spelling and more.
The strategies to implement the development of phonics
 Skills to be taught in kindergarten, elementary or junior primary school
Phonics approaches aim to quickly develop child’s word recognition and spelling through developing kids
ability to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes (the smallest unit of spoken language), and to teach them
the relationship between phonemes and the graphemes ( written letters or combination of letters) that
represent them.
Successfully implementing a phonics might involve;
 Using a systematic approach that explicitly teaches child a comprehensive of letter-sound
relationship through an organised sequence
 Carefully monitoring progress to ensure that phonics programmes are responsive and provide extra
support where necessary
 Carefully consider any adoptions to systematics programmes that might reduce impact

Good implementation of phonics programmes will also consider child wider reading skills and will identify
where they are struggling with aspect of reading other than decoding that might be targeted through other
approaches such as the explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies.

The concept of Phonetics.

What is Phonetics?

Phonetics is the study of speech sound. It aims are to describe and explain these phonetics description is based
on observable fact about sound:

Main learning area of phonetics where a teacher will more emphasis on:

 how they are produced,

 what they sound like,
 what measurable physical properties they have.

Basically phonetics deals with speech sounds as physical events with measurable properties such as duration
and spaces. So phonetics is the study of speech sound in their approach here helps students to describe
speech sounds.

Most important note to be taught in reading or writing is;

One of the most useful aspects of phonetics is the ability to transcribe sounds as symbols. Phonetics
symbols are written between phonetics brackets ‘’ [ ]’’. Example a word such as cat is transcribed

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[kᴂt] and a phrase such as ‘Don’t lose me now’ might be transcribed as [dəʊnt luz mi nau]. These
symbols come from the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA.

The skills and strategies apply to teach in classroom

 provide reading books to read several times for better pronunciation of words
 put students in pairs or a group to say a word by listening carefully how the sound is
produced
 provide an audio or phone voice on speech sound
 state the movement of mouth especially the lips, tongue, teeth or throat when they produce
the sound of a word
 encourage the students to spell and pronounce a word to get the sound clearly ete

Basically phonetics is all about speech sound of human languages. But in English Language,
phonetics build the foundation for early child learning of English.

Tutorial exercises.
1. Briefly explain the similarities and differences between phonics and phonetics.
2. Explain the importance of phonics in early child learning.
3. As an English teacher, how will you implement the phonics lesson to your class?

Phonics is the last unit for this semester 2 of academic year 2024. I provide all notes on phonics and
phonetics in a summary form for us to go through in class. So make it your business to go through
the notes, read and understand, make your own notes, do extra research to absorb more information
for the unit and digest the content.
With that, I’m wishing you all the best in your final examination. Study and prepare well to sit for
exam.
Wishing you all an early Happy Merry Christmas and a Happy Prosperous New Year 2025.
Yours in English.

…………………………………….
Complied by Mr KAU (English Lecturer)

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