The Use of Face Clues in Teaching a Second Language

Abstract

The Face Clues programme arose when struggling to teach a severely hard-of-hearing child how to speak. It was then developed further to complement the conventional methods used by therapists in teaching speech production to clients who are hard-of-hearing and deaf When the Face Clues are used in combination with auditory, tactile and kinesthetic stimulation provided by the teacher, the result is clearer speech production, which preserves individual variations in pronunciation and dialect without compromising comprehension. The basic template for the Face Clues is kept constant throughout the entire series of face phonemes. The shape of the mouth and essential element symbols depicting what cannot be seen in the production of each phoneme, are included in each face diagram. The Face Clues are not language bound and have already been adapted into English, Afrikaans, French, Zulu, and Kikonza. They are used locally and overseas in therapy with clients who present with different speech communication difficulties. The Face Clues have also been used in several schools to teach auditory discrimination, pronunciation and phonics in the mother tongue.

The Face Clues effectively illustrate the differences between the sounds of the mother tongue and the new/unique sounds found in the second language.