Speech To Print By Dr. Louisa Cook Moats

Phonetics can best be described as “the study of the physical production and perception of speech sounds that occur in each language and in all languages” while phonology studies how these speech sounds (i.e., phonemes) are organized as part of the grammar within a specific language system (Moats, 2020, p. 72). Humans have used speaking as a mode of communication for approximately 100,000 years but have only started to read and write within the past 5,000 to 10,000 years due to Chinese and Mediterranean tribal signs and Egyptian hieroglyphics (Moats, 2020). Thus, reading and writing are not natural processes for the human brain. In her text, Speech to Print, Dr. Louisa Cook Moats, explores the benefits of teaching phonetics and phonology to

Throughout this instruction, Cuomo uses the “I do, you do, we do” method, a form of gradual release recommended by Moats for phonological instruction (Amplify, 2018; Moats, 2020, p. 163). Cuomo, representing this curriculum, teaches phonological awareness by sounding out /ie/ and showing how the mouth forms when making the sound. To encourage mouth awareness, she has students focus on the fact that their mouths smile when they sound out the /ie/ phoneme (Amplify 2018; Moats, 2020). To reach various learner profiles, she integrates multimodal learning via arm taps, visual diagraphs, reading activities, and dictation exercises (Moats, 2020). Cuomo effectively reinforces phoneme awareness by activating the students’ prior knowledge of other vowel-consonant-e words, such as /ae/ in the word snake. Hence, the students practice previously learned phonemes to reduce struggle while also allowing them to use said phonemes as an additional tool to learn the /ie/ phoneme. To effectively teach students the written language system (i.e., orthography) for the /ie/ phoneme, Cuomo tries to prioritize the letter order to learn the phoneme-grapheme sequence (Moats, 2020). For instance, to spell the word bike, she has her students write the letters i and e first with a blank space before the i and

Moats (2020) notes that “African American students, Hispanic students, students whose native language is not English, and those from impoverished fall behind in far greater proportion than their Caucasian, middle-class counterparts” (Moats, 2020, p. 42). Given that these students may not speak English as their native language, this curriculum alone and Cuomo’s small modifications would not adequately satisfy the needs of English language learners as it does not account for multiculturalism in the classroom. For example, Cuomo’s idea to color code partner words is beneficial for the short story exercise but will fail to help students who cannot picture what the words are during dictation. Just as Cuomo has a picture of a bike when students are learning the word bike, she should also have visuals for other focus words, a necessary addition to this curriculum. Additionally, some English language learners may not know that the English word for a dive is “dive” as they may have not heard the word prior to this specific lesson. Acting out some of the actions like “dive” in the story could be beneficial as well. Although the image Cuomo provides with this word in the story shows a child diving into a pool, there are other aspects within the image that may cause English