Understanding Irish Spelling A Handbook for Teachers and Learners Nancy Stenson and Tina Hickey Understanding Irish Spelling A Handbook for Teachers and Learners Nancy Stenson and Tina Hickey i © Stenson and Hickey 2018 ii Acknowledgements The preparation of this publication was supported by a grant from An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta agus Gaelscolaíochta, and we wish to express our sincere thanks to COGG, and to Muireann Ní Mhóráin and Pól Ó Cainín in particular. We acknowledge most gratefully the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship scheme for enabling this collaboration through its funding of an Incoming International Fellowship to the first author, and to UCD School of Psychology for hosting her as an incoming fellow and later an as Adjunct Professor. We also thank the Fulbright Foundation for the Fellowship they awarded to Prof. Stenson prior to the Marie Curie fellowship. Most of all, we thank the educators at first, second and third level who shared their experience and expertise with us in the research from which we draw in this publication. We benefitted significantly from input from many sources, not all of whom can be named here. Firstly, we wish to thank most sincerely all of the participants in our qualitative study interviews, who generously shared their time and expertise with us, and those in the schools that welcomed us to their classrooms and facilitated observation and interviews. We also wish to thank the participants at many conferences, seminars and presentations, particularly those in Bangor, Berlin, Brighton, Hamilton and Ottawa, as well as those in several educational institutions in Ireland who offered comments and suggestions. Others who have shared their insights (but bear no responsibility for the outcome) include Benedetta Bassetti, Will Kenny, Wesley Koster, Ann Mulkern, Mary Roguski (special thanks for the subtitle to Chapter 7), Diarmuid Ó Sé, Regina Ní Chollatáin, Méidhbhín Ní Úrdail, Máire Ní Bhaoill, Aisling Ní Dhiorbháin, Pádraig Ó Duibhir, Noel Ó Murchadha and Monica Ward. We wish to thank Clár Ní Bhuachalla, Oifigeach Gaeilge UCD, her colleagues, and the students in Teach na Gaeilge UCD, most sincerely for their support throughout the project. We thank Prof. Alan Carr and Prof. Éilis Hennessy for their support during the fellowship programme, and Prof. Aidan Moran, Helen O’Shea, Claire O’Rourke and Conal Ó Dufaigh for their assistance with different phases of data collection and analysis. iii iv Table of Contents 1. Introduction: Why teach Irish reading? 1 Who reads Irish? 3 Neglect of Irish reading 3 Why teach reading in Irish? 4 How to use this book 6 2. Exploring teachers’ experience 9 Irish and curriculum 9 Neglect of Irish decoding 10 Preparation and language skills 13 Materials and resources 14 3. Why teach decoding? 19 Outcomes in Irish achievement 20 Research supports for explicit decoding instruction 21 4. On good terms with terminology 31 Defining some terms 31 The International Phonetic Alphabet 34 5. Sound to spelling: Consonants in Irish 39 Consonants in Irish and English 39 Initial mutations 39 Consonant quality: Slender and Broad 42 Caol le caol, leathan le leathan in spelling 43 Rules 1: Spelling rules for slender consonants 46 Rules 2: Spelling rules for broad consonants 50 Consonant cluster and Minimal Pairs 51 6 Sound to spelling: Vowels in Irish 55 Vowel length 55 Vowel phonemes and graphemes 56 Rules 3: Spelling rules for slender vowels 58 Rules 4: Spelling rules for broad vowels 60 Unpronounced initial vowels 60 Diphthongs 61 7. Spelling to sound: The Secret Decoder Ring 63 How do you handle new words in Irish? 63 Guideline 1: Teaching vowel spellings 64 Guideline 2: Teaching consonant spellings 65 What counts as regular? 66 Treatment of dialect variations 67 Decoding Irish spellings 67 Summary 1: Regular Pronunciations of long vowel spellings 68 Summary 2: Regular Pronunciations of short vowel spellings 69 Summary 3: Summary of vowels 70 Decoding Irish Vowerls: Summary 70 Summary 4: Additional pronunciation rules 71 8 Exceptions and variation 73 Patterned irregularities 73 Unpatterned irregularities 76 Dialect variation 79 9 Exercises 1-30 83 References 115 Resources 123 v vi Understanding Irish Spelling Chapter 1 Introduction: Why Teach Irish Reading? Q: What would you most like help with in teaching Irish reading? A: You mean the most help for teachers? I think, maybe to be taught how to teach [Irish] reading, rather than making it up yourself! The quotation above was one of several responses received from teachers in a series of interviews that sought their perceptions of how Irish reading is taught and of the particular challenges they face in helping school children develop literacy skills in their second language. Although less specific than some responses, this one captures vividly the sense of frustration on the part of teachers who feel unprepared for the task of building Irish literacy, and are uncertain of how to proceed. Although phonics instruction is now routine in teaching English reading, teachers report feeling that the preparation they receive for that task does not transfer to the teaching of Irish reading. We agree, and that is the primary reason for developing this handbook. Irish reading is currently neglected in schools on many levels, starting with the lack of preparation to teach Irish reading as a subject distinct from English reading. In the early years of primary schooling it is understandable when dealing with second-language learners that the emphasis is on oral language. But when written Irish is introduced, teachers struggle to support pupils in this task and often feel unsupported in their work. Mainstream (English-medium) schools often lack Irish reading materials. Teachers, who themselves never learned how the Irish spelling system works, report uncertainty about how to help their pupils understand it. Furthermore, curricular constraints make it difficult to provide dedicated time for Irish reading on a regular basis in many classes when priority must be given to developing oral skills in the language. In this handbook we aim to address the gap in preparation and support that is reported by both teachers and teacher educators, and that is reflected in the quotation above. Further exploration of data on Irish reading indicated that the teachers we talked with are not alone in feeling that something is missing with regard to teaching Irish. Inspectorate reports and other studies from the Department of Education and Skills indicated that weaknesses were noted in Irish reading instruction, and commented on a lack of teacher preparation and heavy reliance on Irish textbooks at the expense of more rewarding reading materials. Limited Irish reading materials are not the only problem: international research indicates that language awareness on the part of teachers is essential for development of pupils’ literacy. Moats (1994) found serious weaknesses in language awareness among reading and language arts’ teachers in the United States, and in 2009 she published a follow-up article arguing for the importance of developing such language awareness in pre-service teachers, and detailing the foundational knowledge necessary for effective reading instruction. Moats’s analysis related to educational settings where teachers are supporting literacy in children’s mother tongue. Clearly, the need for support is even greater for those teaching literacy in a second language to children who have limited proficiency in that language, or even to first language speakers of a threatened minority language such as Irish. The focus of this handbook is to describe systematic patterns of spelling in Irish that can be explicitly taught to help pupils relate written Irish words to what they already know of spoken Irish. However, our ultimate goal is to facilitate and encourage Irish reading as a supplement to 1 Understanding Irish Spelling the classroom experience of spoken Irish, to increase exposure to the language and to build vocabulary and grammar knowledge. This handbook is not a comprehensive course on reading pedagogy, but we hope that it will help to provide teachers with some ideas for approaching the teaching of the relationship between Irish spelling and pronunciation, and perhaps help to enhance their confidence in their own understanding of the orthographic system of Irish. If any readers are dubious about the value of such instruction, we discuss that too, in the next chapters. We are very aware that it is not only school children who find Irish spelling challenging. Adult learners of Irish likewise report frustration in getting to grips with Irish spelling. To our knowledge, there are no materials for adult learners that address, except in the most cursory way, the issue of Irish sound-spelling correspondences and of how they differ from those of English. Experience with teaching adults has led one of us to develop some systematic exercises for learners, which many students reported finding helpful. These were the inspiration for some of the material in this book. Although they have been considerably expanded and adapted here for use with a broader (and younger) audience, we hope that they will prove useful as well to adults studying Irish, especially those working independently without access to a fluent teacher to assist them. We believe that the book will also be a useful resource for student teachers and in-service teachers who wish to improve their own understanding of how Irish spelling works, in order to help them in teaching primary school pupils. The literature on bilingual literacy has provided little discussion of the unique Irish sociolinguistic situation in which native speakers of a majority language all study an endangered minority language in a variety of school settings. Most discussions of bilingual literacy acquisition are embedded in contexts where minority language speakers are learning the majority language of a society (immigration settings) or where majority language speakers study a minority language in immersion contexts, such as the study of French in Canada, Spanish (among others) in the US, or Irish in Gaelscoileanna in Ireland.