Preface

                                        Preface            

          It is my belief that small children learn faster through listening than reading the text.  We all learn our mother tongue mostly through speech sounds.  Children with normal hearing faculty learn the language (s) through hearing the speech sounds and connect them to the objects around them and concepts they relate to for meaning.  Before they could express themselves to fulfil their needs, they code their language through listening and understanding the meaning.

            Thus I see the value of songs, poems, limericks or any texts that provide the source for them to get familiar with the speech sounds.  It does not matter if they do not quite understand the meaning for the songs they sing, the poems or limericks they hear.  Let them enjoy the songs, poems or limericks for fun of the speech sounds they make and hear. 

          For older children, you may create the awareness of the letter clusters or the spelling for the specific speech sounds when reading texts are introduced to them.   I see great value to teach phonics with some meaningful situations created to learn the regular spelling patterns with the specific speech sounds.  This exposure will certainly help our children remember English words easily.   When they know the basic letter clusters of the words, for example, 

                    

                     ‘ear’,  in  ‘bear, dear, hear, fear, gear, beard,

                     pear, pearl, smear, near, spear, ….. ;

                     ‘air in  chair, fair, flair, pair, stair, ……’; 

  ‘are’ in ‘care, dare, fare, glare, hare, spare, declare,  

  prepare…….’

 they will find English spelling so easy to master.

          Hence phonics help children or adults to see word(s) in a word.  However, the same letter clusters may have different speech sounds, for example,

                     / Iǝ /  ear, hear, fear, gear, beard, smear, near, spear

                     / eǝ / bear, pear, wear

                     / з: /  earl,  early, earth  

Besides, reading aloud not only helps children  become familiar with the speech sounds but also intonation patterns.

          Well, I hope this book will prove to be useful to those who are eager to learn English basic speech sounds, intonation patterns and the spelling at ease.