Teaching how to read English Mauritius is probably the only country where English is taught with the wrong technique of reading. In order to read English (and talk as well) properly, we must first teach the sounds of vowels, how vowels interact with consonants and other vowels to make the 25 or so vowel sounds using the 5/6 vowels of the language. This gives the English SOUND. Next, we need to teach that English, unlike French is a syllabic language, and thus we need to learn the stress patterns. These patterns are of two types; the first is syllabic stress and the second is word stress. Syllabic stress gives the English ACCENT; Word stress gives the English INTONATION. For the latter, we need to compartmentalise the Parts of speech into Content and Function words. Theres more but the above form the crux of the others. Most Mauritians, along with the Ministry of Education, ignore all this. People who have not learned this, speak randomly and some get it right without knowing the rules, by imitating the native speakers. This also is a good method but then we have to learn to speak first and then learn the STRUCTURE and GRAMMAR of the language. We are doing the opposite.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 06:55:23 +0000