This time, I'd like to talk about learning English.
Can you speak English?
I used to sing in English as a vocalist, so I can speak English enough to ask for directions, but I'm not confident about my pronunciation.
However, I am not confident about my pronunciation, and I have been told that I don't know what I am saying.I would like to share with you a study that I found to be a good way to learn pronunciation.
The study
This study is a review of 14 studies involving 923 participants.
The studies were conducted in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Six of the 14 included studies were funded by government agencies and one was funded by a university grant.
The rest were funded by charities and trusts.
In each study
Phonics training alone
or combined with one other reading-related skill
No training (i.e., the usual method)
Alternative training (e.g., mathematics)
The interventions were a comparison of one of the following.
Participants were English-speaking children or adolescents whose socioeconomic status was small or medium, or one standard deviation below the expected level for their age or grade without a standard reason.
Phonics training varied across studies in intensity (up to 4 hours per week), duration (up to 7 months), training group size (individual vs. small group), and delivery (human vs. computer) and has been evaluated.
We measured the effects of phonics training on seven main outcomes (mixed/regular word reading accuracy, irregular word reading accuracy, mixed/regular word reading fluency, non-word reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling).
We determined that all studies had a low risk of bias for most risk criteria, and then assessed the quality of the evidence using the GRADE approach.
Conclusions.
There was low-quality evidence that phonics training may reduce readers' accuracy in reading real and fictional words that follow text and speech conventions.
And thus also their accuracy in reading words that did not follow these rules. (SMD 0.67, 95% CI 0.26 to 1.07; 10 studies, 682 participants)
Phonics training improved the readability of words according to the letter reading conventions of poor English-speaking readers. (SMD 0.45, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.72; 4 studies, 224 participants)
There was evidence of moderate quality of words other than words readability thus.
(SMD 0.39, 95% CI 0.10 to 0.68, 3 studies, 188 participants)
Thus the reading accuracy of words that did not follow these rules.
(SMD 0.84, 95% CI 0.30 to 1.39, 4 studies, 294 participants)
Results.
Phonics training was associated with
Literacy-related skills
Reading fluency, especially word and non-word fluency
Accuracy in reading irregular words.
Phonics training appears to be effective in improving these skills.
Accuracy in reading words and non-words
Reading comprehension
Spelling
Correct knowledge of letters
Phonological output
and more research is needed to improve the accuracy of these results.
More data are needed to determine whether phonics training of poor English-speaking readers is moderated by factors such as type of training, intensity, duration, group size, or administrators.
McArthur G, Sheehan Y, Badcock NA, Francis DA, Wang HC, Kohnen S, Banales E, Anandakumar T, Marinus E, Castles A. Phonics training for poor English-speaking readers. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2018, No. 11. Number: CD009115. doi: 10.1002 / 14651858.CD009115.pub3.
Summary
In phonics training, the spelling of the alphabet is changed one by one from the existing pronunciation
e.g. a (a) → (a)
It seems to be a step-by-step process of learning one by one, and as a result, the pronunciation becomes more communicative.
This training was suggested to be useful in different ways than pronunciation, such as English writing, reading comprehension, and fluency.
This method alone is not sufficient in some areas, but it is not something that can be denied as a learning method.However, if you don't understand the shape of the mouth, you may not be able to arrive at the correct pronunciation with your own knowledge.
However, if you don't understand the shape of the mouth, you may not be able to get the right pronunciation with only your own knowledge. Although I feel the difficulty of pronunciation, I also wonder if it is really necessary to pronounce perfectly. There is also the question, "Is it really necessary to pronounce it perfectly?
Even Japanese people are not able to pronounce Japanese correctly...
