and Wearing Masks During COVID.
One of the most unexpected outcomes of COVID for me has been seeing and hearing the mispronunciation of words and sounds from students. At the start of the pandemic I had no idea that two years later I would be working with students who have learned new sounds and words but are not pronouncing them correctly as they couldn’t see our mouths, and they couldn’t hear us clearly due to the masks we were wearing. The other problem is we couldn’t see their mouths or hear them clearly as they had masks on too. It was like teaching in a thick mud that masked the shape of our mouths and the sounds we made.
When students learn new sounds and words they look at our whole face. They look at the shapes we make with our mouths, and they see how the shape of our mouths affect the sounds we are making.
Two years later I am now witnessing in classrooms and in my tutoring many young students confused about certain sounds or words. Some of the problems we’ve noticed are saying ‘v’ or ‘f’ instead of ‘the, or saying ‘w’ instead of ‘f’. There are many other examples, but these are the two I’ve noticed most.
When I looked into this further I have discovered this is a problem for many children in the early grades. We’ve taken our masks off now, and it would be wonderful to start correcting these mistakes as quickly as possible.
Moving forward you can reintroduce any sounds or words you’re noticing your students are mispronouncing or confused about. You can work in small groups to show the sound or word card as you make the sound or word, helping your students to associate the shapes of the letters with the shapes of their mouths and the sounds they make. Emphasize by pointing to your mouth when you form different shapes to make different sounds. Our students haven’t been looking at our mouths for two years, it’s important to reintroduce the habit.
You can over emphasize the shapes of your mouth when you teach certain sounds.
“Look where my tongue goes when I make the sound th.”
“Look how my lips push out when I make the sound sh.”
“Listen to the softness of the sound f as I rest my teeth on my bottom lip.”
“Feel the air on the back of your hand when you make the sound h.”
You can do the same when you are introducing words.
“Look where my tongue goes when I say the word the.”
“Look how I push my lips out when I say the word shout.”
The goal is to correct any challenges the mask wearing has created with hearing clear pronunciation of sounds and words and associating them with the shapes our mouths make. Here’s hoping our students make the corrections quickly and easily and this problem can be resolved.
