About the creator of Spell and Sound French phonics charts

Hi, I’m Janet and I want to present to you a little bit of information about me and why I created spellandsound.com.

For 15 years I enjoyed caring for and assisting people with disabilities to live independently in their own homes before I left to have my children. Both jobs have been extremely rewarding and flat-out busy! So whilst I had three children under school age, I somehow thought it would be the perfect opportunity to learn another language.

I had always loved the sounds of the French language so I started my first class, once a week for 3 hours at Alliance Française.

Learning French definitely started as a hobby but soon became a passion. I took on extra classes at a community centre and even hired a private tutor for a while. I enrolled in various on-line French courses and found myself meeting French nationals living around me.

The Sounds of Love

It was the sounds of French that inspired me. The romance and glamour of the language can really draw you in. Unfortunately, I didn’t convey romance or glamour in my French. In fact most of the class struggled to “get a date” in the romance department. Of course the teacher noticed and tried to model the correct sounds, but lets face it, if you can’t hear a sound, it doesn’t matter how loudly or slowly you say it – you still can’t hear it.

The Solution

A year after starting my French language journey, my eldest son was learning English phonetics (sounds and spellings) at school. A system based on the subject hearing more English than they write. Those sounds were then represented by letters or letter groups and it’s those letters or letter groups that enable us to read and write English.

You can probably see where I am going with this. I wanted to develop a quick reference chart that was also a learning tool for people who were native English speakers, learning French in an English speaking country. Simple right?

Not really. After a year of research I finally put together Spell and Sound French Charts that you can download for Free. They are a combination of French sounds and spellings, English words and International Phonetic Alphabet symbols.

Spell and Sound French Charts are different

What’s different about Spell and Sound French charts is that French sounds not normally occurring in English have been given the “closest equivalent” sound in English rather than being left blank and similar sounding French sounds (to the native English speaker) have been grouped together giving English speakers a “place to start”.

Once I had compiled my French phonics information, people soon noticed my improvements. My classmates commented on how “French” I sounded, my teacher remarked on my pronunciation and French native speakers were telling me that my French pronunciation was years ahead of my level!

I can’t tell you how proud I felt when French natives were raising their eyebrows at my pronunciation. My wish is that anyone learning French can do the same, right from the start.

I was more motivated than ever to pass this resource on to others.

I undertook some basic coding and webpage formatting workshops, which was way out of my comfort zone, in order to put Spell and Sound French Charts on line for everyone to use. And with the help of a native speaking French consultant, I think that the Spell and Sound website maintains the balance between learning French pronunciation from a French person and learning French from an English speaker – you get the BEST of both worlds!

Spell and Sound English

My remarkable progress with French pronunciation, motivated me to take a look at English, my native language.

I found that the same learning principles apply to English even though the sounds and spellings are different.

So, I developed Spell and Sound English charts. Charts contain all 44 speech sounds, International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and many of their spellings all in alphabetical order, perfect for the ESL student who reads more than they hear.

Find tutorials and lessons with audio to improve your English spelling and pronunciation.

Take a look at Spell and Sound English

And Now…

I am still enjoying my French classes and as my skills and proficiency improve each year, I realise the enormous effort needed to learn and maintain another language in an English speaking environment.

I would love for you to join me on my learning journey, to celebrate our successes and work through our fears and doubts.

Stay up-to-date with my articles and publications with our newsletter or for a more informal conversation, I’d love to hear from you on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

My contact form is another way of having your say and your feedback is always appreciated.

Good luck to you on your learning journey.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Spell and Sound French Consultant for her hours of work recording authentic French sounds and pouring over pages of written text.

A big thank you to the Spell and Sound English, ESL Consultants for their expertise and guidance.

I would also like show my appreciation to Capture Me Pretty who provided some beautiful images of Paris at night, the banner image and many more.