To ask for help teaching ‘th’

[WeBuiltThisCity]

Obviously this is an east London question.

Have you found a magic way to teach ‘th’ for phonics for children that aren’t hearing it from most people around them? Dad and I unfortunately do not have a first language with the the ‘th’ sound. Whilst we pronounce it correctly I think they subliminally dismiss that as part of our accents! I guess we also with the older ones still lapsed into a ‘z’ sound too before correcting ourselves.

Particularly with the youngest it’s such a barrier to phonics in writing, saying ‘fuh’ for ‘th’ and ‘f’… depsite me say ‘fffff’ not ‘fuh’.

Ive used mirrors for mouth shapes, but she retracts her tongue before bringing her bottom lip in. She just can’t see it, or seemingly hear the difference.

How do I teach it to kids who can’t hear it around them??? Plus dismiss our accents and think it’s us??

Writing fink, fird, birf etc in their writing is driving me nuts. What’s the solution Londoners?

Tongue between the teeth and blow is my best suggestion.

We called it a tongue sandwich and said the teeth were like the bread.

Stick the tounge out and really exaggerate it. This is how I teach it as an EFL teacher. It sounds the same whether your tongue is just touching your teeth or it's fully out looking silly, but it's easier to teach the correct "feel" if you're using the exaggerated version with tongue totally out.

Also, understand that there are two different "th" sounds. One like in "thick" and one like in "this" - the "thick" one sounds like a lisping snake, the "this" one feels like buzzing in your mouth. Have a go modelling the two sounds with a very exaggerated stuck out tongue at first.

Lastly to incorporate it into words, go backwards. This sounds strange but for example choose a word that has it in the middle somewhere: Slithering, or maths, and split it by phoneme rather than by syllable.

Instead of going Sli / the / ring you go

ng
ing
ring
ering
thering
ithering
lithering
slithering

s
ths
aths
maths

Concentrate on pronouncing each line before you move on to the next line.

Teeth on the tongue and breathe out while saying it.

Start with tip of tongue clamped between teeth, just a small bit of tongue sticking forward of teeth. Then bring tongue and lower jaw swiftly downwards, while breath pushing breath out, sharply.

PS I was ten before I could pronounce a hard "th" sound, not from London (NW England).

The difference between the two ´th’ sounds is voicing - ´think’ is unvoiced and ´this’ is voiced. If you put you fingers on your throat, on your voicebox (adam’s apple) you can feel thé vibrations. If you can’t make it work with the ´th’ sounds the. Try with ´s’ and ´z’ first.
I wouldn’t worry that much about whether or not the kids actually start saying ´think’ instead of ´fink’ - of course they are going to do what their peers are doing. But you want them to recognize that these sounds exist in other dialects of English and that’s why they are written down as <th>. Pick their favourite cartoon character’s voice as an example maybe.

Ugh. So many typos. Sorry, hope it’s still legible.

If you look up Read write inc videos online you could find the one for th and show your DC this