Aspire Club last week was led by the French Department and focused on phonics and spelling patterns. Students practised vowel sounds and vowel combinations, and learned about diphthongs.
We talked about how different spelling patterns not only tell you how to pronounce a word in French, but can give you a clue about the meaning of the word. For example, the "ay" sound can be spelled 14 different ways in French, but each different spelling tells you something different. Regarder means 'to watch', but regardé which sounds exactly the same, means 'watched' and regardait, which sounds the same again, means 'was watching'.
Students looked at how working on our pronunciation and our spelling improves our accuracy in communication. After that, we put it all into context by working on pronouncing some French tongue twisters - 'si mon tonton tond ton tonton, ton tonton sera tondu'!
