2 Phonics Letters – y, i

2. Phonics: Letters – y, i The speech sounds / i /, / ɪ / or / aɪ / are associated with the letters “y, i”. This awareness helps children in their learning of languages which have both the written form and the speech sound form. The awareness of the regular spelling and the speech sounds enables them to guess the regular speech sounds of the new words they come upon. The speech sounds of the words help children to remember and retrieve them easily. Look, children all over the world learn their mother tongue by ear. They record all the speech sounds before they learn the written form of the language. A dialect is partially developed language and usually does not have the speech sound form and the written form to refer to. Foochow is my mother tongue and I learnt it by ear. I learnt the Chinese language in forms and speech when I went to a Chinese primary school. I learnt the English language as a single subject in Primary Three. The forms and speech sounds were so alien and hard for me to learn with no reference nor knowledge of phonics at all. Hence, I strongly believe that a good knowledge of phonics helps as much as a good knowledge of grammar in acquiring the English language.