CRESS offers simple and entertaining facts of speech science: how humans manage to talk every day. They are interesting elements of humanity. They also serve as the first building blocks for reading and writing, to invite children into the full spectrum of human culture. Compared to standard spelling, they can make everything later easier, faster and more fun. The bedrock of education can be founded on digestable fact and common sense. This contrasts both with the absurd messes of standard English spelling, and the futile attemptsthat are made to impose clear thinking where there is only confusion. Children can be launched with an elevated expectation for their education, rather than be thrown in the deep end of a pool of foul expectations
What makes it fun and fast is Articulation Awareness that anyone can learn in a few minutes. This is the much vaunted Phonetic or Phomenic Awareness that standard spelling makes so elusive by inundating children with contradictions and exception for each principle that is presented. So much time can be saved learning to read, and spirits can be lifted from the recesses of unnecesary confusion.
Basic science sneaks into reading, in a fun and fundamental way. We discuss these in our CRESS quick starts. Beyond those isn’t there exciting educational value in having every human know how they make the sounds of their language?
Beyond the phonetic awareness that is built into CRESS, there are additional fun pieces of phonetic pronunciation that teachers and children can enjoy in a fun curriculum. These can be learned in a quick enjoyable way. We illustrate below with fun items that are optional and not strictly necessary for CRESS. It isn’t necessary to teach the scientific vocabulary of phonetics so we omit it here.
- Put a piece of paper close to your lips and say the word POP. The paper pops! So we now know that pronunciation depends on air flowing from the lungs out of the mouth.
- Touch your lips lightly (or use a mirror) and say POP again. You then see that the P sound is made with the lips. You see that speech is made out of flowing air and gets molded by the tongue and lips as it goes. These are the human tools for making speech, something like pots, pans, and a stove to make a cake. The speech tools shape our speech sounds.
- Look in a mirror while you say the word FIFE. You see for the F sounds the lower teeth are used with the upper lip. The P sound uses the upper and lower lips, while the F sound brings the lower teech to the upper lip.
- Alternate saying the words tea and key several times. Do it again as you ask yourself if they are using the same part of the tongue? You will feel a difference. ‘Tea’ uses the tongue tip, while ‘key’ uses the back. Use a mirror to look inside your mouth. Lift your tongute a bit. You will see a tongue tip in front but the tongue goes all the way back toward the throat. There is a front and back. Say tea and key several times again and you will be aware that tea uses the tongue tip and key uses the tongue back. The tongue is important. Both the tip and back are used.
- So far we have tried consonants. These sounds can have a quick closing of the air flow, or bring the lower moving part up so close to the uppper one that air hissing or friction is produced. Alternate saying the words patting and passing a few times until you can feel the air closed off in patting, but forced through a small hole in passing to produce friction.
- Two other types of consonants redirect the airflow . Say Anna a few times while pinching your nose. You can feel that for nasal sounds the mouth is closed off with the air redirected through the nose. Yes, there is a gate far back on the roof of your mouth to do this. These are the nasal consonantts.
- Put a finger on your cheek and whisper the word light very loud and hard with a lot of air. You will feel the cheek bulge a little bit because the air is closed off in the center of the mouth and redirected out the sides. This is the the way the L sound is made.
- We use our speech tools to make consonants: stops, fricatives, nasals and laterals. But we also make sounds with the air passage open. These are the vowels. Say hee hee and hah hah a few times and you will feel that no articulators are touching. Free flow of air make you wonder why the vowels sound so different.
- Try this. Touch the bottom of your jaw lightly while you say the words see and saw altnernately a few times. You feel the jaw go up and down. You just learned that some vowels are more open than the more closed ones. For see the tongh is high in the mouth leaving the passage smaller. The tongue is lowered for saw. It is quite scientific to speak of high and low vowels, more closed and more open.
- Alternate the words feed and food back and forth a few times. Do it slowly. You will discover that for see the tongue is in the front of the mouth, while saw has the tongue pulled to the back. This shows that there are front and back vowels.
- If you wonder why all this should make for sound differences in speech, you are raising a question of physics. We won’t go into it here except to think of a trombone. Imagine trombone’s different notes as the slide changes position. The law of physics is that a sound is changed or shaped by the shape of the passage it travel through. This is a resonating chamber.
You now know much of the basics of phonetic science and have learned the connection to physics as well.
Here are some interesting facts that teachers and learners can enjoy. These are unnecessary for CRESS but may be interesting to some.
- Stops
p pin b bin ( lips close at front, no tongue)
k kin g get (back of tongue touchescloses against roof of mouth)
t tin d din (tongue tip touches/closes at ridge behind upper teeth) - Fricatives
f fin v van s sin z zen s> shin z> beige h hat (very small opening creates hiss or buzz-frication)
s sin z zen (tongue tip leaves narrow opening at ridge behind upper teeth)
h him (narrowing all the way back down in the voice box) - Glides
y yet (tongue center raised to center of roof of mouth, close but not closed)
w wet ( lips narrow at front, don’t touch, no tongue) - Sonorants
l lit (tongue top on ridge behind upper teeth, air flow open to sides)
r rip (tongue tip curled back toward middle of roof of mouth [or option further back])