TEFL Tales – Respelling - Blog # 8.

By Cillian Hayes | October 12, 2020 | #slspattaya, #slsthailand, #TEFL THAILAND

A few years back, I was teaching two Ukrainian students. Both would be considered around intermediate level. We were reading a text containing some quite difficult words, and in terms of pronunciation, they were having considerable difficulties.

In an attempt to overcome the pronunciation issues, I reverted to a little-used technique I had learned on my TEFL course.

I wrote the target word on the white board, in a form that looked more like the word sounded.

What happened next could only be described as a “light bulb” moment in my TEFL teaching career. One which I continually recount to all my students to this day.

After a long pause, which I initially took as an indication that I had further confounded my student, she turned to me and said…….” why didn’t somebody show me this before”.

It was at this point, I realised that the method of respelling English words whose letter combinations bear no resemblance to how they actually sound, was a technique that every foreign language teacher should consider using as part of their teaching repertoire.

Cillian Hayes