Developing Speech and Language Skills - Noel's ESL eBook Library

Phoneme FactoryActivities to increase awareness of ‘l’ and ‘r’ sounds in wordsImportant: Before trying these activities read the general information about listeningand discrimination methods in Chapter 6.Gliding of ‘l’Memory gameTarget sound: ‘l’Contrast: ‘y’Words: lawn, yawnResources: pictures of ‘lawn and ‘yawn’ from the CD (make about five copies of eachpicture and back them with cardboard so the child cannot see through them); a scorecardActivityThe child looks at the cards and then lays them face down on the table in lines, and triesto remember the pattern. The adult then says which picture to find – ‘find lawn’ or ‘findyawn’. The child turns over one of the pictures. If correct, the adult gives them a point onthe scorecard, and that picture is given to the adult. This is not really a memory game, sothe child should be encouraged to lay the cards down systematically, such as alternatingthe pictures in the rows, so they are really only listening for the word the adult says.Other word pairs illustrated on the CD could be included or used instead of those above,for example, lot, yacht; luck, yuck; lap, yap.Action gameTarget sound: ‘l’ word initialContrast: ‘w’Words: leap, weep; lead, weedResources: none necessary but some props could be providedActivityThe adult needs to familiarise the children with the pairs of words. Do the actionstogether at first. Once the child has practised the actions a few times, the adult simplysays one of the words and the child does the action. The actions are as follows: leap(the child jumps), weep (pretends to cry), lead (pretends to have a dog on a lead), weed(pretends to weed the garden). Each action can be carried out a number of times. Inthis activity it is important to just say the word ‘lead!’ and then ‘weed!’ and so on, sothat extra clues about the word are not provided (see Chapter 6, page 70).114