For Teachers: Why I didn’t like the phonemic chart and the one student that changed my mind.

I was one of those teachers. I ‘learned’ the phonemic chart on my CELTA course and immediately disregarded it. I had many objections that kept me from integrating it into my teaching practice.

I’m sure there are many other reasons to be anti-phonemics but these are the ones I carried around with me for years:

Issue #1: The British are Coming! A Confession:

On my CELTA course, my trainers did not speak American English. I, being a proper Midwesterner from Detroit, had a bit of a chip on my shoulder when they presented the phonemic chart of British Received Pronunciation (RP) - the one that was collated by Adrian Underhill in his classic book Sound Foundations. I cringe to think of it now, but I was THAT candidate – I resisted. To be fair, the trainers DID mention that there was an American version and said I could use it, but the last thing I wanted to do was learn something different than what I was just taught. That is all to say - I wasn’t really engaged in the learning; therefore, besides what I had to do during the course, I didn’t take any of it away moving forward into my career.

Issue #2: I was afraid of pronunciation, so let’s just work on capital M – Meaning

I didn’t like drilling pronunciation in lessons. It’s so teacher controlled and made me uncomfortable. That along with not knowing the chart and, frankly, not really being able to hear word stress or intonation, really put a damper on my enthusiasm for pronunciation. Also, let’s face it, most course books don’t do much of a job with it. Sometimes you’ll see some work with the chart, or word stress, or maybe some mention of intonation, but there isn’t serious work being done and almost no work on other aspects of pronunciation. So, I’d just not do it - unless a student asked, and then I’d probably do a NOT great job of it and then I wouldn’t see results – that meant I had evidence that it didn’t work. I hid behind the ‘meaning first’ messaging of communicative language teaching and thought what a good girl am I!

Issue #3: The students don’t know it. I mean, I didn’t ask but…

So, I have this fear about my early teaching career. I fear that my assumption that the students didn’t know the phonemic chart was wrong and that they were wondering the whole time: why doesn’t this teacher ever address pronunciation. It doesn’t keep me up at night or anything, but I really hope my earliest students didn’t feel short shrifted. Let’s just call it: it was very much a convenient and self-serving assumption.

Issue #4: I didn’t know how to teach it to the students, so even if they didn’t know it...

I didn’t bother mentioning it or addressing it whatsoever. This because I didn’t know how, didn’t want to take the time to learn how, and didn’t know where to go to study how.

So, what happened, you might ask…

The moment that changed everything:

Well into my teaching career, but at a new school, I had a student ask me how to write a word in phonemic script to help with his pronunciation and, in front of eighteen eager and paying students, I froze. So, in essence, shame happened to me.

I promised to learn phonemic script for that student and for the class. And I did. And when I learned it and how to use it, my teaching was revolutionized. I could see students progressing. When pronunciation didn’t sound right during the drill, I could easily write corrections on the board that students would read and it sounded so much better, just like that! I also came to understand that they used the script to look words up in dictionaries and find out for themselves how words were pronounced. It became clear that this was a powerful tool.

This is how I went about it:

1. I went straight to the source.

Listen, there is no need for me to try to teach you how to teach the phonemic chart. The master himself teaches it free to all on YouTube. It’s not the highest quality video on the market, but it is one of the highest quality teaching videos I’ve seen. What he does is magic.

Note: This is the RP phonemic chart I so objected to, but it has become the one I prefer above the others. Now I object to the American Chart having 4 fewer vowel sounds than RP – I mean, everything is bigger in America, right? Just kidding. I use this chart because the books my school used when I was learning it used this system. It was convenient and everything I say can be approximated by these sounds - even my Midwestern vowel shift and centering diphthong can be transcribed!

2. I got a gift from a friend.

A fellow teacher - shout out to Liz Beer! – knew that I was struggling with learning the chart and for my birthday gave me a phonemic chart where all the sounds were exemplified by dirty words. If it weren’t objectionable in every.single.way. I would share it here with you now, but it is, so you’ll have to make your own. This made the chart memorable for me. The /ʊə/ sound was a bit of a challenge, she said, but with a bit of creativity and exploration *wink*, she persevered.

3. We passed notes.

By then I was certain that I not only wanted to know the chart to help my students, I wanted to take the Delta course (and become a CELTA trainer!) I knew that I’d have to learn the chart for the Delta exam so had additional motivation. Liz was going to take the course too, so she helped by passing me notes written in phonemic script. I diligently responded by getting out my trusty chart key (so, so vile) and transcribing all I had to say back to her. Your image is correct: we were among the biggest nerds around, but there are worse things to be. [i.e. a teacher who doesn’t know the chart and is shamed in front of her class.]

4. I attended all the workshops I could.

Knowing the chart and knowing how to use it effectively are different things. My early use of the chart was simply writing target words/phrases in script and having students sound them out. Eventually I began to attend workshops on pronunciation and was able to see how other teachers maximized the script as a tool with their learners. Observing other teachers helped too. Perhaps I’ll make a post or a video with some techniques I use in the future. Let me know if you’d like me to do that in the comments.

Anyway, that’s the long of it. The short of it is I changed my mind. If you too are coming from a place of phonemic chart disdain, I hope I’ve made you at least a little curious and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be intrigued enough to try to come up with a dirty word for /ʊə/.