Again, everyone read a line. Again, the sheet was read several times around the table. Then Sam asked the students to read along on the lyrics sheet while listening to a tape of the song.

He told the students that the way singers phrase words to the music sometimes helps you to hear syllables in words. He asked the students to pay particular attention to what Whitney Houston did with “only” and “always”.

After playing the tape, Sam asked, "What did she do with ONLY?" One student said, "She made it into a compound word." Sam said, "No, close." Another student said, "She divided it into syllables." Sam said, "Yes. How many syllables?" The student said, "One." Sam said, "No." Another student said, "Two." Sam suggested to the students to beat the syllables out while listening to music, as this can help you to hear them.

At this point, the students broke up to get individual help from Sam and the tutors.

In this case study, facilitators use contrastive pairs to focus on individual speech sounds and their corresponding letters, in “lived” and “loved”, “weariness” and “dreariness”, “treasure” and “pleasure”.

This work with contrastive pairs in embedded in a language activity which they like, reading a poem which deals with a topic which they have been discussing. It is not highly repetitive. It was accompanied by other phonics work, including work with a rhyming word family.

The contrastive pairs are also presented in ways that allow student to study them in different modalities. First the students say the rhyming pairs in the poem. The do this as they look at the words on the page. Then they look at the words on the flip chart as they listen to a facilitator say the words.

This case study points to the importance of presenting phonics information in ways that allow for learning in different modalities. This is particularly important in drop-ins, where the students will be diverse and new students drop in unpredictably. In a drop-in, a facilitator never knows exactly who he will be working with, so, in working with phonics information, it is particularly important to five the students experience with the information in as many modalities as possible.

Working Idea

Annoying pairs of words

What is the most annoying pair of words that you know? When and went? Will and well? Who and how? Of and off?

Most people have at least one pair of words that drives them crazy, because thy just can’t remember which is which.

Have you tried to sort this out? Is there anything about the different meanings of the words that could be a clue to their different spellings? Perhaps you can remember that there are two Fs in off because it’s very important to turn the stove off. There are ways of remembering these differences. Why not brainstorm ideas with your tutor?