
Originally Posted by
rewboss
Well, most German schoolchildren learn the IPA and have little trouble with it. I don't know how English is actually taught in China, but if they're having trouble reading and speaking, my suspicion is that they're being taught grammar rather than reading and speaking skills. (That's the case in, for example, Korea, according to some of my Korean friends.) I just think it's a little hasty to blame the IPA. It may not be so much the fact that IPA is being taught, but the way it is being taught.
I've actually found IPA useful to make students aware of certain phonemes in English, particularly where the spelling is unhelpful. But then I've never tried to teach the entire IPA; rather, I've picked out certain symbols and said, "OK, this represents the sound in 'bed', and this represents the sound in 'bad'. Now listen very carefully to these words and put them in the right column." It doesn't sound like a useful exercise, but Germans commonly confuse the two sounds and often make spelling or even grammar mistakes because of it (e.g. confusing "than" and "then").
Bookmarks