Back to Basics

While we are arming our ESL literacy class for adults with oral language and phonics skills, we also use other strategies to get them reading.

One strategy is using early-grade high-frequency word lists. Together the items on these lists make up a high percentage of the words found in early readers and words children use when they write. Being able to recognize them by sight gives a big boost to literacy learning.

Usually, the most basic list contains words whose pronunciation could be difficult to explain. For example, while the list contains go, no and so, it also includes to and do and you—three words where the sound of o is very different. Because all six words are so common, it helps just to teach them all as sight words.

You would think that this strategy would be a cinch in Sierra Leone; that learning to read by rote, or by sight, would not be a problem because it is the way reading has always been taught in Sierra Leone. However, sometimes even teaching sight words can get tough.

Here's an example: one of the words on the most basic list is the. The pronunciation of the in standard English is [ðə] before consonants and [ði] before vowels. However, by far the most prevalent pronunciation of the word in Sierra Leone English is [di]. The consonant is different from standard English, and most people do not alter the vowel according to the beginning sound of the following word. Evidence for this prevalence is the widespread use of the spelling di for the word the in texting language in Sierra Leone.

Therefore, as we alternate drilling twenty-five basic sight words with guided reading activities in our class, the word the continues to be a bone in our throats. Neither [ðə] nor [ði] sounds like a word to our learners. We have the option, of course, of saying that Sierra Leone English is our students' target language, so why not teach the word as [di], and continue substituting the [d] sound for [ð] and [t] for its voiceless counterpart, wherever th occurs?

Uh, I don't think so. It’s time to move back to oral language activities. Those early exercises with indefinite articles (“Is this a book? No, it's not a book. It's a chair.”) need to be made definite, even if we have to introduce adjective clauses in the process (“Is this the pen you gave him? No, that's the orange I gave him.”).