Phonics International

Hi Debbie,

Hope all is well!

A quick question: Are your materials (teaching materials, controlled reading materials etc.) available in the Canadian dialect? There are some major differences between the Canadian and British dialect. Differences between Canadian and American too…

A lecturer in a Canadian university reviewed the full Phonics International programme.

She pointed out some differences in accent but also some words which might have slightly different meanings or would be used differently, but in the main, the vast majority of the material would be fine and teachers could make adaptations.

I make some alternative posters and Sounds Book Activity Sheets to allow for different accents and provide some alternative Alphabetic Code Charts to support the PI programme at the bottom of this page here:

http://alphabeticcodecharts.com/free_charts.html

With the use of ‘easy-to-use’ sounds notation in the slash marks, in place of the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols, this means that teachers can link their own accents to the graphemes (letters and letter groups), so there is some flexibility there too.

Even in England, there are major differences in accent, but it is simple enough for teachers to just talk about this with their pupils, ‘In our county, we tend to pronounce that grapheme like this, as in ….. [word]’ - this is, in fact, a neccesary state of affairs in most regions because of the variety of accent.

Teachers can also modify the paper Alphabetic Code Charts as required.

Accent should not be an impediment to the need for such adaptations – and the same is true of different spellings in Canada or America – just point them out as required.

I would argue that it is part of children’s intellectual development to know and understand about the differences.

All the best,