Aggie's Phoneme ChatBot
There are 44 phonemes in the English language comprised of 26 letters. The different letter combinations are called graphemes. Here are the ones in my chatbot.
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Consonant graphemes
b, bb, c, cc ,ch, ci, ck, d, dd, di, ed, f, ff, g, gg, gh, gn, gu, h, j, k, kn, l, lf, lk, ll, lm, m, mb, mm, mn, n, ng, nn, p, ph, pn, pp, ps, qu, r, rh, rr, s, sc, st, t, tch, th, ti, tt, tu, v, w, wh, wr, x, y, z, zz
Type in a vowel to see some examples of long and short vowel sounds as well as the different combinations that make them
A,E,I,O,U
Test yourself:
Do you know the three different sounds ED can make? Can you think of examples for all three? Do you know what the rule is for ED?
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Do you know the 2 sounds X makes? Can you think of an example of each? Do you know the rule?
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Do you know when C makes a /s/ or /k/ sound? Can you think of a rule to define this?
Aggie's Intentions and Positionality
As a primary teacher, I was looking for a way to help emergent learners grasp some of the variations of letter sounds. I specifically geared my chat bot towards new English speakers in intermediate classes. While building the chatbot I struggled with how to input all the different variations of questions and answers into my chatbot. Originally I have thought of making a chatbot model problem solving in situations such as asking friends to play or standing up for yourself. However there were too many variants of inputs and I was not successful in building this bot. After thinking on it for a few days, I knew I needed some sort of question and answer bot, an easy input/output system. I decided on a phoneme exploration bot. A phoneme is a single sound in the English language that can be make up of a single letter or a combination of letters. There are 44 phonemes in the English language comprised of 26 letters. There are many cases where different combinations of letters make the same sound. As English is my second language, I remember being frustrated at school when I would try sounding things out and pronounced them wrong. Even in high school I remember saying that something was “chic” and pronouncing it phonetically, only to be laughed at and told I was wrong. I have always wanted a black and white guide for how letter sound, after creating this bot I realized there are many words that are oddities such as soldier. I intend my chatbot to be used in conjuction with teacher assistant. I have provided some sample questions for you to try. Studies show that ESL learners are more likely to block communication if they are uncomfortable with the language. (Duly & Burt, 1977) I set up this bot in a way for teachers to set up exploratory questions and have students be able to find examples, and discuss with the teacher if they didn’t understand or wanted more explanation. In this way the student is able to read on their own and ask questions if needed.
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References
Ahmadi H., F. E. (2016). Willingness to Communicate, Self Perceived Communication Competence and Communication Apprehension in L2 English:Effect of Iranian Junior High School Textbooks. Journal of Productivity and Development, 73-79.
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https://www.dyslexia-reading-well.com/44-phonemes-in-english.html