DO NATIVE CHILDREN LEARN IPA ?

Question

Hi everybody.

For people whose official language are not English, to start to learn English, we often learn 44 sounds in IPA. I wonder whether children in American or English learn IPA or not. Or they just learn to say a word by look at the letters ?

Clive · Accepted Answer

I've never heard of IPA sounds being taught to native-English children.

Clive

Anonymous · Answer

If it happens, it's not common.

CalifJim · Answer

khanh hoang
Hi everybody.
For people whose official language are not English, to start to learn English, we often learn 44 sounds in IPA. I wonder whether children in American or English learn IPA or not. Or they just learn to say a word by look at the letters ?

They do not. They don't have to. They know practically from birth how words are pronounced in their own language. What they need to learn is the connection between those sounds and the written forms of those sounds; in other words, they need to learn to read. The link below shows you three methods for teaching reading. This is what children in the U.S. usually learn.

I myself learned by the phonics method. A friend of mine learned by the whole-word approach. I am told that the whole-word approach is much inferior to the phonics method. It is probably the reason why my friend has a lot of difficulty distinguishing between certain words, like conversation and conservation or marital and martial. They look too closely alike.

However, there are enough words in English that are not phonetically spelled, especially very common ones, that the whole-word approach is usually incorporated to a small extent even when the phonics method is the principal method used in the classroom.

https://www.readandspell.com/us/methods-for-teaching-reading

CJ

DO NATIVE CHILDREN LEARN IPA ?

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions