Schwa

The phonics project has been moving along nicely. The more I get into it the more I see how really difficult this stuff is to teach. There are just too many ways to make the same sounds in English. I also see that I'm going to have to keep reminding the teacher to let me do it. She's got a lot of things to do and a lot to get across to the kids. However there was one ray of sunshine. One of the kids in 1kumi was able to read the word ham without a trace of and accent. At least not to my ears. When I do it again I'll have more teachable words prepared going in so there's no fumbling around thinking about what to do next. ...Actually next would be a fun word to have the kids read.

And schwa. I want to do schwa. I'm not going to explain schwa and I'm not going to point out it's appearance in the unaccented syllables of multisyllabic words. I do want them to hear it as it's pronounced in the consonant prior indefinite article. I want them to be able to make the distinct vowel sounds in a ham.

Of course I'm pretty sure that it's something that they would pick up naturally without my help but I like teaching the proper pronunciation of English sounds and hearing them improve.

So, anyway. I'll start calling atention to that sound when I have a chance.