David1917 wrote:First and foremost, it is more instantly gratifying to learn some words/phrases, but if they are chosen carefully they can be used to immediately address issues of pronunciation/orthography. So in Spanish, we have c, g and j as some example letters which do not behave the same way as in English. You might want to include phrases with words featuring ca, ce, ci, co, and cu (carro, cena, cintura, como, cuchara). Then break them down to just these individual words comparing and contrasting: "carro - como" hard C, "cena - cintura" soft C. Then the same with ga, ge, gi, go, gu and the j in general. Of course you have to make it your own and figure out what can be done better.
Ooh, I love that format in The Program That Shall Not Be Named. I can't believe I'd forgotten about it.
Could I mix what I thought of with that somehow?
Like, we learn some natural phrases that would be used on a bus.
"Cierra la ventana, por favor. Hace mucho frío hoy."
"¿Cómo estás?"
"Estoy a cargo de tu seguridad. Es mi trabajo."
"Gira y mira al frente del autobús. No te sientes así."
"Justo ayer ustedes eran amigos. ¿Qué pasó?"
These would be read aloud. Then the spelling rules would be broken down like you said, with soft and hard for each consonant, and a quiz would be given on the words in the phrases. Then there'd be a quiz to test the user's knowledge on whether or not they understand the issues being presented in the lesson by doing the minimal pair thing that The Program does, matching audio with spelling. The words tested in the quizzes would come up in later lessons, too to avoid learning things that didn't need to be learned.
And maybe I could describe the pronunciation card I have in my mind. It has a video of the native speaker's mouth on one side, saying the sound. This video can be repeated over and over. There's a button you can click on the bottom left that says "Flip" and this allows you to view a technical diagram of how to pronounce the sound. Like pictures of the throat and everything. Depending on resources, it may or may not be animated.
Thanks for the help, guys. This is making me think hard about how I'd be as a teacher, something I've considered doing. So this is helpful.