Hello and welcome to Little Learners. In today's video I am going to be talking
about something that I have mentioned in many phonics videos before - the 'schwa'.
Now I know what you're thinking - did she just sneeze or was that a real word? Yes, schwa
is a real term that we use when we're talking about the way you speak.
Especially when you are learning phonics. Now I have spoken about this in previous
videos but I thought it was really important to dedicate an entire video to
this, because it's a problem and one that we can fix really easily. A 'schwa' is when
you use 'uh' at the end of a sound that doesn't require it like 'm-uh' or 'n-uh' or 'l-uh'
which should be 'mmm', 'nnn' and 'lll'. What you're doing in this instance is voicing a
sound that is unvoiced so if you're saying 'mmm' you're not voicing that like
you are when you say 'ah'. mmm. ah. Can you hear the difference? mmm. ah. So
when you're voicing the sounds that don't need to be voiced they end up
sounding like this: muh, nuh, luh, tuh, suh, ruh. When really you don't need to be
adding that on the end. Now why have schwas become a problem?
Well I think there are a few different reasons for this but one of the biggest
ones is that when I was at school certainly and I'm sure when a lot of you
as parents and teachers were at school we learned phonics with the schwa. Yes, we
learnt 'suh' and 'muh' and 'nuh' and 'luh' and 'tuh'. It was just the way we learnt it and of course
now research has shown us that this isn't the best, most effective way to
teach children phonics. Why is it not an effective way to learn phonics? Let me
show you an example. So if we have the word mat - if we are sounding it out with
phonics the way we should be sounding it out, it sounds like this: mmm-ah-t. Mat. But if we
sound it out using schwas for 'm' and 't', it sounds like this: muh-ah-tuh. Muhater.
So you're actually adding in some extra sounds in there which should not be
there. So the problem with schwas is that if children are using them it
becomes much harder for them to read whole words because when they're
sounding them out - muh-ah-tuh- it's hard for them to then blend all those sounds
together and make a real word: muhater, instead of m-a-t - mat. Another reason I
think that schwas have become a big issue is because they're very natural
and I don't know if that's because we just want to voice sounds or because
some are voiced in some aren't that makes it a bit more complicated or going back
to my previous point it's because many people have learnt it that way so then
they start teaching it to others or others hear it in their surroundings but
it does get quite confusing for people who do use schwas
to understand why it's important not to use them and it's difficult to stop
doing it. I do have a video on all of the 26 letters sounds of the English
alphabet, I will link it in the description box below and probably in a
card somewhere, I don't know where it is, showing you how to pronounce each sound correctly, no
schwas included! So what can you do if you notice that your child is using
schwas? Well first of all you need to correct them straight away, so if you
hear your child using 'muh', you need to say, no no no we, we don't say 'muh' do we? We
say mmm. mmm. And practice that with them. Don't scold them for it, it's not their
fault, they obviously learnt it from somewhere, but just correct them and make
sure that they then go on thinking about the sound in the correct way. It's also
important for you as parents and of course as teachers to be modeling this
correctly so make sure that when you are doing phonics with your child or you're
sounding out words with them that you are using the correct phonics. Now this
can be difficult if you are very used to using schwas, which is why I recommend
you look at some of my other videos to help you. These are the usual culprits. So
I hope that video was informative for you. Give it a thumbs up if you found it
helpful, it really helps out my channel. Let me know in the comments below what
your feelings about schwas are and if you find it difficult when learning with
your child and if you haven't already please do hit that subscribe button if
you want to be notified when I post a new video, be sure to ring the bell as
well. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time.
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