6.
Phonics as a Foreign Language (EFL) literacy instruction in English Language
Teaching (ELT) has strong educational significance. Yet, EFL teachers are often
reluctant to use phonetic transcription because they are unfamiliar with it, and the
odd appearance of the IPA makes it seem complicated to them. However, the
International Phonetic Alphabet is very easy to learn, and in many situations the
use of phonetic transcription can save time and facilitate the teaching of concepts
related to the spoken language. If we haven’t previously used phonetic
transcription, it takes only a few hours to learn the IPA and a few more to understand the basic concepts, which we will rapidly gain back as time and energy
saved in teaching our students