Developing Language Skills through Nursery Rhymes [2]
论文作者:LI Qing-feng论文属性:短文 essay登出时间:2009-03-31编辑:黄丽樱点击率:7538
论文字数:2221论文编号:org200903312235152445语种:中文 Chinese地区:中国价格:免费论文
关键词:nursery rhymeslanguage developmentlanguage skillslistening skillsArticulation Skills
he pitch or speed to add suspense; they emphasize part of a phrase to hold interest; they use tone and facial gesture to signal that learners should join in and repeat. They expect a purposeful listening practice so that learners can become aware of the different sounds and will be able to discriminate the speech sounds, and eventually can create some similar sounds with the help of their listening experience.
Except helping learners develop their listening skill, nursery rhymes can also help develop their articulation skill. Gordon and Browne study language skills in early childhood and claim that “articulation is one of the important components of childhood language skills”. (1993: 422) Articulation is how learners actually say the sounds and words. Learners’ ability to produce sound is a critical link in their connecting the sounds to form speech. In listening and reciting nursery rhymes, learners can hear and produce sounds that differ widely, and sounds that differ in small ways. As Machado notes, “it is a difficult task for children to make recognizable sounds with mouth, throat, and breath control working in unison”. (1995: 25) Then, there must be an approach which teachers can use to help their learners in improving their articulation.
Young learners learning a foreign language may repeat what is said to them. They repeat words and sometimes parts of sentences. In this process, their growing language skills make them become fluent speakers.
Teachers can create a repetition experience and promote an enjoyable mimicking for the learners to imitate the pronunciation of some sounds again and again till they can pronounce the words very well. Learners are shown not only how to articulate words, but also how to modulate their voices and pronounce clearly. They learn to pronounce words easily without effort and seem to catch on quick to the words while experiencing the rhyme of the language.
3. Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is referred to by Weaver as “an awareness of various units of sound, such as syllables, onsets and rimes, and phonemes” (1998: 27). Learners’ ability to pay attention to rhymes, alliterations, and other speech sound properties is part of what is called phonological awareness. This awareness of speech sound is an important bridge between speaking and reading and it will help learners become good readers and spellers later on.
The most effective way of developing learners’ phonological awareness necessary for future successful reading and writing is through teaching letters and letter clusters with an emphasis on their phonological equivalent. Weinberger studies the sounds within words, and claims that “there are three ways of separating the sounds within words. One is the syllable, another is the phoneme, and the third is the intra-syllabic unit” (1996: 33). Learners can be trained to separate the sounds within words and learn how to divide words into sequences of elementary sounds.
Phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word. For example, if we change the /b/ sound in the word “bill” to /p/ sound, the meaning will be changed. We can analyse a single-syllable word and say that the sound at the beginning is known as the “onset” and the sound at the end is known as the “rime”. If learners are asked to distinguish the onset and the rime, they can easily fulfill the task. Their sensitivity to the sound units can be enhanced because they can find words wh
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