How do I teach the sounds of English when the actual pronunciation is so far removed from what I see in writing?

Of all the major languages that use the Roman letters, spoken English is the most distantly removed from its writing system, and unlike French, for example, there is no reliable method to predict the pronunciation of English words from the writing of it.

For other languages speaking and writing are close to each other (for example, Spanish or Turkish). However, in the case of English, the writing of the language actually belongs to Middle English, not to Modern English. As a result, the writing of words such as caught or fought tells us more about the evolution of those verb forms across centuries than it does about the actual pronunciation today.

Because we are so heavily influenced by the writing system, we are not fully aware of just what we are saying when we pronounce caught or fought. We have faithfully followed the teachings of “English experts” from centuries past as well as the teachings of modern teachers of English grammar.  They have convinced us that English has “five, possibly six vowels – a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.”

This is simply not true. When we look at the words caught and fought we may find ourselves saying that the “vowel” is –augh- or –ough-. How should we treat this? Do we say that –gh- is silent? If so, what about –gh in laugh or rough? And, is –au- or –ou- the real vowel in this case?

William Caxton was the first person to put English into print (1475). In his time caught and fought would have been pronounced in a way that was close to the writing system and would probably have been pronounced very differently from each other.

Although spoken English has changed during the subsequent centuries, we still write it essentially in his way. As a result, there is a massive gap separating the Listening (L), Understanding (U) and Speaking (S) of English from the Reading (R) and Writing (W) of it. More than 500 years separate spoken from written English. So, what are we to do?

The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) offers us a more reliable way of symbolizing the sounds of a language. In the IPA the real pronunciation for caught and fought is represented by [kɔt] and [fɔt].

The IPA was originally developed in France in 1886 for the purpose of helping language teachers and students to be able to symbolize the distinctive sounds of a language in a way that was not overburdened by its own writing system. English needed this assistance more than any other European language since the writing and the spoken language (the real language) are so far removed from one another.

All of us, native speakers as well as non-native speakers of English, are overly influenced by the writing system in such a way that we simply do not hear ourselves or others accurately. It is far too easy and tempting for us to be unrealistic about what actually comes out of our mouths when we speak.

The IPA and its phonetic symbols provide the only way to see an accurate written representation of pronunciation. Any other written method (especially the alphabet of English as well as most of the so-called pronunciation guides for word entries in dictionaries) takes us off track and prevents us from actually helping students to pronounce English correctly.

The actual vowel of the two words, caught and fought, is called an “Open O” in the IPA. It is a distinctive vowel in English which is also seen in words such as law, call, autumn, awful, log, etc. One can see clearly that the spelling of these words gives the reader no clue about the actual pronunciation of this vowel. By using the IPA we can show a single spelling for this distinctive vowel in English: [lɔ, kɔl, ɔtǝm, ɔfǝl, lɔg].

There are, in fact, 15 vowels and 25 consonants in General American English (GAE), not 5 vowels and 21 consonants as we are led to believe from the alphabet. We natives of English generally know this only on a subconscious level. Despite our intuitive knowledge of these 40 distinctive sounds in English, unless we make a determined effort to bring this childhood “sound mind” to the surface, we can easily deceive ourselves as well as our ELs.

The next posts will explore in more detail such issues and questions as:

• The 15 actual vowels of General American English
• The 25 actual consonants of General American English
• How can I teach the difference between [r] and [l] when in reality, I have a hard time hearing the difference myself?
• What are the real sounds of the digraph th? How can I learn to pronounce [θ] and [ð]?

Please send me your comments and questions about the content I am posting here. I would like for this blog to be a real-world interactive environment in which you can feel free to ask questions that concern you as an ESL teacher.

Introduction and FAQs

If you are an ESL teacher
and your mother tongue is not English,
you have come to the right place!

More than 4,000 ESL teachers-in-training have taken my courses in linguistics and grammar at the
University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Santa Cruz Extensions during the past 10 years (please see my profile for details about my education and qualifications).

Many who have graduated from these ESL Certificate Programs are non-native speakers of English. What I have found is that even though they have completed the program, they still continue to struggle with a number of linguistic challenges.

In this blog I will address all of these challenges which you might also be facing in trying to understand English and to teach it effectively.

The questions listed below which I will address in this and future blog posts, represent the types of obstacles that prevent teachers from fully understanding and teaching English to their students:

1. How do I teach the sounds of English which I do not have in my native tongue?

2. How can I teach the difference between /r/ and /l/ when in reality, I have a hard time hearing the difference myself?

3. How do I teach the two real sounds written by the digraph th? I know that there is a difference, but it is not clear to me since they are written the same way.

4. Is there an effective visual graph that I can use to show the grammatical structure of English sentences?

5. How do I provide effective teaching of the articles of English (a, an and the)? We don’t have them in my own language, and I have never really understood their proper use.

6. What about those pesky phrasal verbs in English? We don’t have them in my language, or, even if we do have a few, they are nothing like they are in English. They seem to be multiplying every day in English, and I just don’t understand them.

7. How can I understand the use of auxiliary verbs in English? They are essentially non-existent in my language, and they don’t seem necessary.

8. Can somebody please clarify for me the use of “modal auxiliary verbs?”

9. I understand that there is a massive gap between written and spoken English. I have learned that there only 5 vowels in English (a, e, i, o, u and “sometimes” y). Recently I have been told that, in reality, English has 15 vowels. Can someone please explain this to me?

10. I have also been told that there are 25 consonants. In other words, with the 15 vowels we would need 40 symbols to represent the actual sounds of English, when, in fact, there are only 26 in the English alphabet. How can I learn the true sounds of English, and how can I reconcile the difference between 26 and 40 symbols for this language?

11. Is it possible that, if I really understood the actual sounds of English, I could begin to bridge the gap between the speaking and the writing of English?

The quick answer to the last question is “Yes,” and this will be one of many topics that we will explore in detail in future blog posts. Please feel free to add your own questions so that we can discover precisely where you feel “stuck” in your quest to help your students gain mastery of English.