Abstract
This paper expounds the common problems existing in English learning of English students, such as: fear of English word spelling, long-term Chinese thinking about English problems, compares the similarities and differences between international phonetic symbols and natural spelling, and analyzes the causes of these problems. This paper also discusses how to improve students’ English spelling ability in the compulsory education stage. Teachers use natural spelling method in the teaching of phonetic words, so that students can master the English spelling ability of “seeing words and listening to sounds”. So that they will no longer fear of English learning, become active learners, stimulate their interest in learning English.
Key words: English teaching; spelling skills; teaching strategy
摘要
本文分别阐述了目前英语学生英语学习中存在的常见的问题，如：对英语单词拼写感到畏惧；长期中文思维思考英语问题；比较了国际音标和自然拼读法的异同，并分析这些问题出现的原因。本文还论述了如何在义务教育阶段提升学生的英语拼写能力，教师在语音单词教学中使用自然拼读法进行教学，使学生掌握“见词能拼、听音能写”的英语拼读能力。从而让他们对英语学习不再恐惧，成为主动学习者，激发他们学习英语的兴趣。
关键词：英语教学；拼写能力；教学策略
1 Introduction
1.1 Research Aim
The new curriculum standard of compulsory education requires English teachers to pay attention to the cultivation of students ‘spelling ability, deepen students’ understanding of English vocabulary, and improve the efficiency of English classroom teaching. However, some students’ basic knowledge is relatively weak, and it is difficult to grasp the pronunciation rules efficiently when actually learning English vocabulary and spelling. Therefore, teachers need to comprehensively analyze the problems existing in the cultivation of students’ spelling ability, reasonably adjust the teaching mode, and ensure that the spelling teaching efficiency is effectively improved.
1.2 Research Questions
Under the background of the deepening of the new curriculum reform, English curriculum has become an important teaching content of the student stage. Some students will have some problems due to their relatively weak English foundation. Therefore, English teachers must pay attention to the cultivation of students ‘spelling ability, according to the comprehensive requirements of English course teaching, to develop high-quality learning programs for students, improve students’ English spelling ability. Based on this, this paper mainly analyzes the importance of spelling teaching, and puts forward the corresponding countermeasures for its reference.
1.3 Significance of the Study
Although students’ cognitive ability is in the development stage, because the overall cognitive level of students is still low, it is difficult to improve the learning efficiency when learning English. However, students are more curious and relatively enthusiastic about new things. If teachers want to improve the efficiency of students’ English word teaching, they should carefully analyze the shortcomings of the current word teaching, master the learning state of students, and make targeted teaching plans to ensure that students can understand the words and reasonably apply them to their future learning. In addition, students ‘ability level in all aspects is relatively weak, and English is a foreign language, English grammar and language expression are very different from their mother tongue, therefore, students will have certain learning difficulties, while students’ self-control is poor, and they are easy to give up when encountering problems that are difficult to solve.Therefore, teachers should cultivate students’ spelling ability in English teaching, help students master reading and writing skills and effective reading and writing methods, and gradually achieve the ideal learning effect, so that students can complete the learning task with ease in learning. English teachers need to pay attention to the cultivation of students ‘spelling ability, properly split the words appropriately, let students understand the vocabulary according to pronunciation and spelling, and cultivate students’ spelling ability.
2 Theoretical Basis of Spelling Ability
2.1 Definition of Spelling
Spelling, born in the United States and Canada in the mid-20th century, was originally used to teach children literacy, spelling and reading in English (Guo Hongyan, Ma Xiaoyan, 2014). Lau (2006) noted that spelling is a systematic way to teach readers how to read, pinyin, and spell words by learning letter pronunciation and letter combinations. Guo Hongyan and Ma Xiaoyan (2014) pointed out that although scholars have different definitions of spelling, they all emphasize “the correspondence between phonetic shapes”, that is, establishing the correspondence between English letters or letter combinations and pronunciation, so that students can achieve the learning effect of “reading at the words and writing at the sound”. The author believes that English spelling is a system of phonetic notation and phonetic notation method, which is highly targeted and suitable for students to learn English pronunciation and cultivate their reading ability. The use of spelling for teaching is to guide students to learn the sound map and effectively master the “sound and shape correspondence relationship”, so as to promote the development of students in standard pronunciation, word decoding, spelling ability and spelling ability, so as to improve students’ vocabulary acquisition ability and English reading ability.
After the 1990s, English spelling has been widely used in pronunciation teaching and reading teaching in native English-speaking countries, such as in Britain and Australia, spelling is widely used in reading teaching (Gao Min, 20 05). The purpose of English spelling is to make English beginners mastered the phonetic corresponding relationship, the basic law of English spelling and spelling, unify the pronunciation and spelling of English words, make learners acquire standard pronunciation, can spell words, improve the effect of word memory, improve the reading ability and spelling ability, to improve the vocabulary acquisition ability and English reading comprehension ability to lay the foundation.
2.2 The Factors Influencing the Spelling
2.2.1 Name sound and pronunciation of the letters
The 26 letters in English have their name sounds and sounds, and all of the letters have different name notes and sounds. The basic requirement of spelling is to be able to master the correspondence between the name sound and pronunciation of the letters and their writing forms. According to the author’s observation, students can generally master the name and sound of the letter very well, but they do not necessarily grasp the pronunciation of the letter very well. Therefore, spelling teaching requires students to learn the pronunciation of letters on the basis of mastering the sound of the letter name.
2.2.2 phoneme
Femes are very abstract linguistic units. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English-Chinese Interpretation, phonemes are the smallest units in the phonetic system of a certain language and have the ability to represent the word-meaning difference between the two words (Hornby, 1997). For example, the difference between the English map (map) and the cap (soft cap) is the difference between the opening consonant / m / and / k /. The binding of a phoneme to a phoneme constitutes the word. The international phonetic symbol has 48 phonemes, while the English spelling system has 44 phonemes, including 25 consonants and 19 vowels.
2.2.3 Phonograph
Phongrams are the core concept of English spelling. A phonogram refers to a letter or a combination of letters in a word, which is fundamentally different from a phonetic symbol. A phonogram of one letter is called monogram, and a phongram of two or more letters is called polygram (He Hua, 2006). For example, the word cap is composed of three monotones of C, A, and P, and the bat is composed of two monotones of B, T, and a polymonogram of OA. Although the phonogram (C, A, P, OA) is still a letter in the word, it never reads the name sound of the letter, but instead reads its pronunciation in the word. For example, the name sounds of the three letters C, A, and P in the word cap are [si:], [ei], [pi:], but their pronunciation in the word cap is [k], [æ], [p]. Therefore, the word cap is pronounced as [k æ p], not [si: ei: pi:]. The phonogram can be composed of either one letter, or two vowels or two consonants, or a mixture of both vowels and consonants. Because English is pinyin characters, and words are composed of letters or letter combinations (phonograms), so, phonograms has become a language tool for students to learn English. As long as students master the phonematics and their pronunciation rules, they can effectively improve the efficiency of English learning.
2.2.4 Voice awareness
Phonological awareness is a kind of awareness of the phoneme of English words (i. e. phonemreading in words) (He Hua, 2006). In the author’s opinion, phonetic awareness is the ability to confirm the pronunciation structure of a word, including which phonemes are included in the overall pronunciation of a word and what letters or combinations each phoneme comes from. English spelling attaches great importance to the cultivation of students’ phonetic awareness, so that students can establish the connection between pronunciation and glyph, so as to achieve the purpose of reading the word and listening to the sound. Therefore, the quality of phonological consciousness is the key factor that affects students to form the skill of “reading words, and listening to sounds to write”.
2.2.5 Spelling ability
Spelling ability is the learner’s ability to pronounce and compose a word, and to feel the phoneme and letter correspondence between the letter combinations of the word. It includes phonological awareness and writing systems. Developing students ‘spelling ability has the following two aspects: (1) helps the cohesion for students to learn English teaching, adapt to greater English vocabulary and more complex spelling learning as soon as possible; (2) helps students to understand the spelling rules of English words, deepen their memory of English words, encourage students to memorize words according to the law, change their mechanical and unconsciousness of memorizing English words, improve their cognitive and independent learning ability; (3) helps students to deepen their sense of language, improve their listening and enrich their vocabulary, so as to facilitate the cultivation of students’ comprehensive ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing.
3 The Current Problems and Reasons for Poor Spelling
Nowadays, students have many problems in English learning, especially in word spelling learning. Many of them have not yet found the right way to learn from it. Some people use traditional methods but are inefficient and do not even use how to use speech to spell words. If they spell the words badly, they cannot have any improvement in reading, writing and listening.
3.1 The Current Situation about Spelling
3.1.1 Students do not know enough about the spelling of words
In the process of spelling teaching, some English teachers usually adopt the spelling and phonetic symbols teaching method, as a result, students have not enough understanding of the spelling of words in the process of learning, and it is difficult for students to complete the spelling task independently. If teachers do not take effective teaching methods to intervene in time, students will be resistant to learning English, and will be unable to actively integrate into the learning activities. Some teachers in order to let the students in a short time to understand vocabulary, take the teaching, requires the students according to the teacher’s vocabulary knowledge, repeated spelling, writing, in order to improve students’ vocabulary ability, but it easily reverse teaching effect, difficult to improve students’ learning enthusiasm, enough to improve the effect of English spelling teaching.
3.1.2 Students’ spelling errors are not corrected in time
When students learn English in class, due to their limited ability, they often make mistakes when spelling words. However, some teachers, in turn, fail to correct students ‘pronunciation in time in order not to hit students’ confidence in learning English vocabulary, which leads to students’ inability to correct their own mistakes in time when spelling. If this phenomenon is not stopped in time, it will cause students ‘wrong pronunciation habits, which will bring difficulties to students to learn English vocabulary in the future, limit the improvement of students’ comprehensive ability, and cannot improve the efficiency of English classroom teaching.
3.1.3 Incorrect teaching methods
First, many teachers now often use phonetic spelling in class to teach students. They have not yet worked out a complete teaching system. Even if they don’t know how to teach them to students, so students naturally have problems spelling words. Secondly, the cultivation of students ‘comprehensive ability is ignored. With the deepening and development of the new curriculum reform of modern teaching and the comprehensive development of quality education, students are required not only to cultivate students’ ability of basic vocabulary spelling in the teaching process, but also to cultivate students’ comprehensive training ability.
3.2 The Analysis of the Reasons for Students’ Poor Spelling Ability
3.2.1 Teacher factors
English is just a tool that can facilitate great communication. It’s not mysterious or complicated, and everyone wants to relax. The simplest way to understand it is to follow its trajectory in a natural state, and now, most teachers are using traditional teaching methods to teach them how to spell words. Some people usually use phonetic methods. However, the methods used by teachers are too rigid to motivate students. In addition, the traditional method is the phonological method, which is a common method for teachers to spell words. However, some teachers use phonetic teaching, and they further complicate the students’ thinking.
Based on the current education system and the current situation of the college entrance examination, English education is essentially a kind of examination education. Although the pronunciation of spelling words was popular in high school, they did not notice it. First, they do not know how to use speech, so it is a common problem that teachers cannot use teaching methods correctly. On the other hand, a survey of a junior high school (Pan29) showed that about 5% of teachers say that word spelling teaching is not important, and even 2% of teachers think that it is not important at all and that spelling teaching is not valued.
3.2.2 Student Factors
Because to the long time of learning traditional or other wrong methods of spelling words, students cannot encourage the confidence, they do believe that they cannot spell words correctly, however, students have long been influenced by their native thinking habits, and many students have not even found the international phonetic alphabet in primary school. When they use English or spell words, they are influenced by the Chinese meaning. This pattern creates obstacles for them because they doubt their expressive skills. Nearly half of the students think that the biggest difficulty in learning English is that they dare not say, they are afraid to say wrong, especially for some students with poor basic skills, they are always afraid to speak English, and they often lack of practice, not a good grasp of the teacher taught in class, they are afraid to speak English, not to mention how to spell. This is also one of the very difficult manifestations of teachers in the teaching process.
4 The Strategies to Improve Students’ Spelling Ability
4.1 Listen and Imitate
Let the students read while write and even draw, hand and brain combination, let the abstract English words visualization, let the memory words become lively, such as the first grade professor number 1-7, teachers can give some within 7 addition and subtraction, let the students spell the answer and copy again, plus the group competition, the memory effect must be twice the result with half the effort. When teaching Inthepark, students can first draw flowers, write flower beside the flowers, then draw a tree, write tree beside it, draw a group of ants under the tree, and write ants next to it, which can not only create a vivid park scene, but also exercise their spelling ability.
4.2 Using games
Word spelling is an effective means for teachers to examine students’ mastery of words. Spelling words can test the students’ mastery of the letters and alphabetical order of the words, and also examines their ability to understand the relationship between the sound, shape and meaning of the words. Conventional word spelling focuses on students’ memory of the forms of learned words. Is there a better way to penetrate the phonetic knowledge into the students’ spelling process? Following the recommendation of Scott & Siamon, After the students have initially mastered the basic vocabulary and spelling rules, Teachers can take the following games: first of all dictation some words have not learned, Let the students try to write the word according to the spelling rules they have mastered, Then, to present the answer, Let the students compare their own answer from the correct answer; After learning the words, take the dictation again, Focus on the dictation of those words with a relatively high error rate in the first dictation activity; Finally, after these two dictation activities, Which words the students have mastered very well, Most of the words will make repeated mistakes.
4.3 Alphabet teaching
Highlight the pronunciation of vowels in simple monosyllabic words. In order to facilitate students to better master the pronunciation of words, we can follow the principle of from simple to complex, step by step, and teach the pronunciation of monosyllabic words first. In this process, the emphasis is placed on teaching the pronunciation of vowels in monosyllables. Vowel letters often have a variety of pronunciation. In the process of teaching, students can be encouraged to summarize the pronunciation of vowel letters by themselves with the words they have learned before, and then initially spell them with consonant letters. Summarize the pronunciation rules of letters and letter combinations in common words. After the students master the pronunciation of English letters, the teacher can further guide the students to explore the pronunciation of letter combinations in words. For example, letter combination ear, in words, sometimes [eə], such as ear, bear, ear, and sometimes [ɪə] sound, such as ear, year, ear.
5 Conclusion
To sum up, English word teaching is a long-term and systematic project, which requires teachers to pay attention to it, and invest more energy to explore scientific and reasonable teaching methods to improve students’ spelling ability of English words. Teachers should also keep pace with The Times, pioneering and innovate, so that teaching activities are helpful to meet students’ word learning, so as to lay a foundation for students to have excellent comprehensive quality of English learning. To sum up, in the process of English teaching, due to the younger age of students, learning English will encounter various problems, teachers should timely change teaching idea, pay attention to the cultivation of students ‘spelling ability, gradually will patterns into the word spelling teaching, help students master word spelling skills and methods, to ensure that the students’ spelling ability and English level can be effectively promoted.
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