Moi Hung Ling
Fun with Phonics is a kind of book that will help children or beginners learning English as a second language know how the spelling of the words connected to the specific sounds. For example, the words with vowel and consonant letter cluster 'ow' may have either / ǝʊ / or / aʊ / as follows: / ǝʊ / / aʊ / Low brown glow down window town grow clown This knowledge, no doubt, helps learners know there are fixed patterns of spelling and the related speech sounds associated with them. In this way, learners can pronounce the words in sight without difficulty. Besides, being able to pronounce the words helps them remember the spelling of the words they have learnt or come across. Do you agree that learning is only considered to take place when you can remember the words and use them in both oral and written communication when required? That means this audio-visual process of learning can transfer the learning of the words into the long-term memory easily. From my personal experience, I find that knowing how to pronounce the words helps me to retrieve the words easily from memory, even though I have not used them for ages. Hence, I believe the knowledge of phonics enables learners to pronounce the words in sight and facilitate the learning and remembering. This book has also presented all the twenty vowel phonemes and twenty-four consonant phonemes. So a learner who knows all the English words is bound in these English speech sounds / phonemes. With this insight, a learner will not use the Chinese phonetics or the Malay phonetics to pronounce English words. I believe this book will prove to be useful and meaningful to those who cares to pronounce English words correctly and will help them remember the words.
