How Do I Help an English Learner Who Says /h/ for the Letter 'j'?

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Antonio Fierro: I am Antonio Fierro. I'm a literacy specialist, and I work with teachers, professors, and students across the country. One question that I received had to do with a child who speaks Spanish at home and this student pronounces the letter 'j' as a 'h'. So the student sees the letter 'j' and says /h/. Now let's start to think about this. Our English learners are doing double the cognitive work. What they're doing is they're taking the properties of their home language and transferring them over to English. So we honor all those assets that they bring with them. We celebrate those. And then we know though, as we study these cross-linguistic transferences, we know why it's happening. The letter 'j' represents the /h/ sound in Spanish, right? So they're transferring that over. Now what do we have to do? We have to be explicit. We have to describe. We have to teach, right? Be deliberate about our instruction. That the letter 'j' in English, oh, we have it too, right? We have it too, but in English, it represents the /j/ sound. So think about all that cognitive workload that's going on, which means we have to provide plenty of time for them to really think about it, internalize, think about the answer, and practice lots of opportunities to practice because it doesn't come easy. Alright, good question.

Narrator: Are you a teacher? Do you teach reading to English learners? Reading universe can help.

Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: You don't know that home language. It's okay. Say cringe.

Student: Cringe.

Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Go like this. Oh, if I see a spider! What am I going to do? Say /ch/, but add voicing, /j/, and it actually represents the medial sound. Every teacher is a language teacher. Carpintero. Change the sound /h/ to /j/. Bring in those cross-linguistic connections. You can do this. You are a teacher.

Narrator: Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan shares her expertise in a timely talk from Reading Universe. And yes, it's free!