[IAEP] [Sugar-devel] sounds in Speak

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:54 PM, K. K. Subramaniam <subbukk at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Monday 14 December 2009 09:00:23 pm Aleksey Lim wrote:
> > > Hello everybody,
> > >
> > > This afternoon, I had an interesting conversation with a Montessori
> > > teacher, about Speak. She asked me why Speak says "a" when "a" is
> pressed
> > > and not the sound of the letter "a". Montessori teachers teach the
> shape
> > > and sound of letters first, and then the name of the alphabet. I did
> not
> > > have an answer for her, but I wondered if it would be possible to have
> an
> > > option in Speak to do so.
> >
> > not sure it could be done in existed Speak(it just passes string to
> > speak engine). But it could separate activity or mode in Speak which
> > teaches alphabet.
> Isn't Speak an overkill for such basic lessons?
>
> Montessori teachers would find Scratch or EToys useful for such exercises.
> They
> can prepare a list of words and record their associated 'a' sounds. Script
> word objects to respond with the appropriate sound when letter 'a' is
> dropped
> on them (or the 'a' key is pressed with the mouse hovering over a word) .
> This
> puts more control on the quality of pronunciation in the hands of teachers.
>
> Subbu
>

The concern was more along the lines of "It will confuse our students
because we teach them phonetically" as opposed to anything else.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Information Systems
Director, Center for Business Solutions
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
http://is.sfsu.edu/
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