Vowel sounds: Is the letter y a vowel? Posted by Gabriele on Oct 13, 2012
If you ask an elementary school child who speaks English to tell you the vowels they will likely say “a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.” This is what I was taught about vowels as a child, it is what I have taught my ESL students, and it is still what children who are…
Vowel sounds: Looking at the letter u Posted by Gabriele on Oct 12, 2012
To continue our look at vowel sounds, today we will investigate the letter ‘u.’ I wanted to learn more about this letter to share with you and so I turned to Wikipedia for some help and found some very interesting information about how the vowel ‘u’ and consent ‘v’ were once connected. Apparently during late…
Election Season: Presidential Debates Posted by Gabriele on Oct 11, 2012
Throughout the American presidential election campaign the presidential candidates hold debates*. This election season there are three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate (the vice presidential debate is tonight!). In these debates the candidates are asked questions, which are sometimes posed by a journalist or sometimes by members of the audience watching the debate. …
Vowel sounds: Looking at the letter o Posted by Gabriele on Oct 9, 2012
To continue our look at vowel sounds, today we will investigate the letter ‘o’. What is there to say about this letter. Well it is the fifteenth letter of the alphabet and along with the capital letter H, I, and X, the letter O is one of the few letters that look the same if…
Mother, father, mom, and dad Posted by Gabriele on Oct 8, 2012
There are many different names for parents in English. Some of the different names people (children and adults) use to refer to their parents are found in different regions of the English speaking world, for example in England is more common to call one’s mother, “mummy” or “mum”, than it is to do so in…
Clara Barton and the American Red Cross Posted by Gabriele on Oct 7, 2012
The Red Cross or Red Crescent is a volunteer-led, humanitarian movement that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and education worldwide. This movement began in Europe in 1861, and now include member organizations with over 97 million volunteers, members and staff in countries across the globe. In the United States the American Red Cross is counted…
Vowel sounds: Looking at the letter i Posted by Gabriele on Oct 5, 2012
The next letter in this series looking at vowel sounds in English is the letter ‘i’. This is an interesting vowel because it is one of the only letters of the English alphabet that is a word in itself, as in the word for the first person pronoun in English ‘I’. The only other letter…