Our New Word Mapping With an Accent Blog Coming Soon!

English is an official language in 58 countries, and when you include territories the total rises to between 75 and 86 places worldwide, so think of all the accents. When we read we read in our own accents. Phonics, however, teaches children to map letters and sounds as if everyone speaks in the same way.
 

A difference between the accent of instruction and the accent of a student can cause some children real difficulty when learning to read or write if this is not addressed. Our word mapping technology is the only system that maps all words to show the full code and can also be adapted to show different accents. It can even change the grapheme markers. Changing the sounds can change the graphemes.

When phonics instruction includes discussions about accents, teachers can respectfully acknowledge differences and reduce the difficulties that may arise from them. Add Word Mapping with an Accent training and technology to your phonics teaching toolkit. Book in-service support. You don't need to change your whole class teaching. You can simply add a session once or twice a week, or pause during phonics teaching to talk about accents as the issue arises.
 

We are broadening phonics instruction to acknowledge differences.
 

There is no such thing as a "good" or "correct" English accent. Class, ethnic and regional differences, as well as the influence of other languages, all contribute to accent variation. Accent is an important part of a person or region’s social, cultural and historical identity.
 

We use a Speech Sound King puppet and the story of the Magic Ant. This story helps you introduce your Word Mapping with an Accent session. The Speech Sound King needed to send a message to the Prince who lived far away. He wanted a simple way to explain that there is a magic ant in the pan. He thought about the sounds he used when he said "Ant in pan!" and created pictures for those sounds. These are the letters a n t i p n. He became fascinated with pictures of speech sounds and created more than 350, which can be seen in the Speech Sound (Spelling) Clouds. Teachers can’t teach them all, so he told teachers to teach the most commonly used ones, starting with s a t p i n, which appear in the first of four code levels in the Monster Spelling Piano app.
 

Children can learn these commonly used graphemes with the app, or their teacher uses a programme to teach them. The Speech Sound King knew that children needed help to understand his way of speaking - his 'speech to print' code - so he introduced the Speech Sound Monsters, the Phonemies. The Phonemies are inspired by the phonetic symbols used in the IPA and each one says one of the sounds.
 

The Phonemies show which sounds the Speech Sound King uses for the pictures of sounds, and these underlie phonics programmes. He also wanted children and adults with different accents to show the sounds they use, because there is no single right way to speak. His code can be used universally so everyone knows the target word, but each person can then translate that word into their own accent.

For example, Avery says the Speech Sound King’s sounds, then translates them into his own accent. So æ n t becomes eə n t (like air n t). Accents are something many teachers talk about when teaching phonics in England, where phonics has been mandated since 2013. Programmes show GPCs in one accent, known as Received Pronunciation.
 

A small-scale study by Manchester University found that many teachers with regional accents were encouraged to modify accents that were considered inappropriate for education. One participant said, "It makes no sense that teachers have to sound the same, but teach the children to be who they are."  11 trainee teachers from two northern universities, and 12 trainee teachers from two universities in the south were interviewed.

One trainee teacher from Leicester who described her accent as “Midlands”, was told that if she wanted to teach phonics it would be best “to go back to where she came from”. If she didn’t, she was advised to use a teaching assistant to teach children certain sounds that differed from her own accent. “I was quite affronted by the comment to ‘go back to where I came from’, as it was made in front of the whole seminar group, and I felt it was a little unnecessary,” she told researchers.
 

The goal of pronunciation is to be understood, not to make everyone sound the same. For educational purposes, the English phonics system has been standardised and is known as Received Pronunciation in the UK. This is used in English dictionaries and translation dictionaries. The American English equivalent is General American and Australia uses Standard Australian English.

When we attempt to standardise phonics and accents we miss opportunities to embrace differences.
 

Children usually acquire their accent by copying the pronunciation of adults and other children around them. The more a person is exposed to an accent, the easier it is to understand it. Phonemies and code mapped words help children learning to read and spell, and should be used while valuing the diversity of accents in classrooms and beyond. Children can work out the word, then become aware of how they speak that word.
 

This matters because children need to spell words, and in phonics they are asked to give the sounds. If they don't know the standardised phonics mapping, and it's not stored in the orthographic lexicon, how do they know which sounds are used? Children who happen to speak with the same accent as the instructional materials will find spelling easier. Children whose accents differ will naturally think of their own sounds and try to map them. This makes learning particularly challenging for high-risk children, including those highlighted on DyslexiaParadox.com, who may already struggle to hear sounds or blend them. It becomes even harder for a high-risk child who also speaks with a different accent.
 

You can help students develop a positive interest in accent differences. For example, "The Speech Sound King says the word this way but how would the word be mapped if people said the word another way?." Or look at how it changes in connected text. When a child is being taught the grapheme-to-phoneme or phoneme-to-grapheme mapping of the word 'can' they expect the mapping to be k æ n however if saying the word in a sentence eg "I can run really quickly!" the mapping is likely k ə n 
 

Value all accents and seek to learn more about the person and why they have this accent. There's a story there! If we seek to embrace differences, we need to be more curious about others!
 

Help students analyse differences in how words are pronounced and use the word mapping technology. 
 

Be comfortable using your own accent but be aware of how your pronunciation differs from that of students and instructional materials. Talk about it. Embrace it!
 

This is an important part of teaching children to map words in both directions. It is integrated into our programmes and tools, that centre around visual and linguistic phonics, including Speedie Readies: Show the Code and the 10 Day Speech Sound Play Plan used before phonics instruction to build phonemic awareness in high-risk children. It is used within our own whole class phonics approach called the Speech Sound Pics Approach - teachers don't teach the constrained skills, our tech does. This frees them up to wander around finding out how children are learning - they all work through the four Code Levels at their pace. It is vital for supporting at-risk children, autistic children and ADHD learners, and not expecting that every child will learn in the same way and at the same pace. Our GPCs are not mapped out according to term or week! We also take a dual-route approach to word mapping mastery, whether in the classroom or on a 1:1 basis with teaching assistants!

We offer training and support to explore this crucial part of learning to speak English and to read and spell in an opaque orthography spoken with many accents.
 

Bookmark Phonicswithanaccent.com