<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:54 PM, K. K. Subramaniam <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:subbukk@gmail.com">subbukk@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On Monday 14 December 2009 09:00:23 pm Aleksey Lim wrote:<br>
> > Hello everybody,<br>
> ><br>
> > This afternoon, I had an interesting conversation with a Montessori<br>
> > teacher, about Speak. She asked me why Speak says "a" when "a" is pressed<br>
> > and not the sound of the letter "a". Montessori teachers teach the shape<br>
> > and sound of letters first, and then the name of the alphabet. I did not<br>
> > have an answer for her, but I wondered if it would be possible to have an<br>
> > option in Speak to do so.<br>
><br>
> not sure it could be done in existed Speak(it just passes string to<br>
> speak engine). But it could separate activity or mode in Speak which<br>
> teaches alphabet.<br>
</div>Isn't Speak an overkill for such basic lessons?<br>
<br>
Montessori teachers would find Scratch or EToys useful for such exercises. They<br>
can prepare a list of words and record their associated 'a' sounds. Script<br>
word objects to respond with the appropriate sound when letter 'a' is dropped<br>
on them (or the 'a' key is pressed with the mouse hovering over a word) . This<br>
puts more control on the quality of pronunciation in the hands of teachers.<br>
<br>
Subbu<br>
</blockquote></div><br>The concern was more along the lines of "It will confuse our students because we teach them phonetically" as opposed to anything else.<br clear="all"><br>cheers,<br>Sameer<br>-- <br>Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.<br>
Associate Professor, Information Systems<br>Director, Center for Business Solutions<br>San Francisco State University<br><a href="http://verma.sfsu.edu/">http://verma.sfsu.edu/</a> <br><a href="http://cbs.sfsu.edu/">http://cbs.sfsu.edu/</a> <br>
<a href="http://is.sfsu.edu/">http://is.sfsu.edu/</a> <br>