Read & Read

Had a question about this, For a person starting to read (Or a kindergartener/Year 1 student)

What would be a good way to teach them the difference. I thought of it like this.


Read As in, "Have you read the book"? Putting more emphasis on the e and d, so it sounds more like "Red"

And

Read As in, "Can you read the book"? and Putting more emphasis on the e and a.


Is this good? Or is there a more simple/better way to do it?

Cheers

How are they to know when to do this?

Well thats a part of the lesson......The difference needs to be taught at the same time as getting them to know when to pronounce it....

Isn't there a case for teaching this grammatically as there is no difference in spelling? (I must say that I have never taught children)

Correct, there is no difference in spelling, but the child must learn when to use the different pronunciations.

numerous children see it as "Can you Read the book" So the child needs to long to put the correct emphasis on the correct letters. There are actually quite a few instances like this in english. And its a pain to teach it to the child.

HanibalII said:

Read As in, "Have you read the book"? Putting more emphasis on the e and d, so it sounds more like "Red"
And
Read As in, "Can you read the book"? and Putting more emphasis on the e and a.

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Unless they know the difference in the meaning/grammar of 'have you read' and 'can you read', they cannot know which letters to look at, can they?

they can. During Kindergarten and year 1, they do quite abit of work on the pronunciation and what letters to emphasise. Basically, you have to teach one to teach the other. They need to know the grammar regarding the sentence and they need to know the use of the word to know the grammar...If that makes any sense

If they know about tenses, then the pronunciation can just be learnt as far as the present perfect is concerned. They simply need to know that "I have read ..." or "Have you read ...?" will always be pronounced as "red".

The problem I always found (with adults and children) was how they could tell the difference between the "I read (pronounced reed) a book" (present) and "I read (pronounced red) a book" (past simple). That is much more difficult.

emsr2d2 said:

The problem I always found (with adults and children) was how they could tell the difference between the "I read (pronounced reed) a book" (present) and "I read (pronounced red) a book" (past simple). That is much more difficult.

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Yes, Thats what i need a bit of help with. Basically how to teach children to realise the difference....

HanibalII said:

Yes, Thats what i need a bit of help with. Basically how to teach children to realise the difference....

Click to expand...

As ems said, that is more difficult. You'll need to try to get them to be aware of the context:

I don't go out much in the evenings. I stay at home and read.
I led a pretty dull life when I was in Turkey. Most evenings, I just stayed at home and read.

Ok, thats a great way Thanks.

HanibalII said:

If that makes any sense

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Sort of. ;-)

As long as there is something else to go on, then they should be able to work out the overriding tense of the piece or at least the sentence that "read" appears in. 99% of the time, that will probably lead them to the correct pronunciation. I can't imagine a situation where it would happen, but the only time it would be impossible, both for learners and native speakers alike, to work out which pronunciation to use would be if "I/you/he/she/we/they read [+ noun] or [preposition + pronoun] etc" appeared as an absolutely standalone sentence with no surrounding clues.