Language in Use 87
This unit is concerned with the complex relationship between the sounds of
English and the symbols used to represent them in the orthography. The
aim is to show that the orthography is as systematically patterned as any other
aspect of the language.
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[1] The aim of this session is to begin to explore patterns in the orthography by means of Shannon's Game (see D2). Working in pairs, small groups, or with the class as a whole, ask members of the class to think of words that then have to be guessed, letter by letter. By starting -1 r with short words and working up to longer words, the class can come to see that one function of the orthography is to preserve the distinctiveness of individual words when written down, and that this lies at the root of many apparent oddities in the spelling of English.
[2] The aim of this session is to discover the differences between two and three-letter words in the English writing system. Ask the class for examples of two- and three-letter words, to be written up in two columns. Establish that, broadly speaking, two-letter words are 'grammatical' words, while three-letter words are vocabulary items. Find examples of ways in which the spelling ensures that there shall be three letters in vocabulary words. The next stage is to show that when common words are used as surnames, they are differentiated in the spelling. This may be done by asking for pairs like car/Carr; pen/Penn; boil/Boyle; low/Lowe to be written up so that the various ways of signalling the differences may be explored.
[3] The aim of this session is to find examples of those words which sound alike in spoken English but are distinguished in writing by their spelling. Ask the class to supply examples of pairs or larger groups of words where similarity of sound is made unambiguous by spelling when they are written down.
For further suggestions, reference may be made to the Teacher's Manual to Breakthrough to Literacy by D. Mackay, B, Thompson and P. Schaub (Longman for Schools Council, 1970) Part 11, chapters 1-7, and The English Writing System by K. H. Albrow in Papers in Linguistics and English Teaching, Series 11 (Longman, 1971).