I've just read[url] this article [/url]which I think is very good. I'm particularly taken by the acronym WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic).
Thanks! That's a great article.
Thank you! Very interesting.
A very valid argument.
Sadly phonics is one of the only specific teaching methods that is imposed upon teachers in the UK.
The problem with phonics is that good (i.e. fast and fluent) readers don't use phonics for reading. So, in teaching phonics, we are teaching children to be, at best, second-rate readers.
The problem with phonics is that good (i.e. fast and fluent) readers don't use phonics for reading. So, in teaching phonics, we are teaching children to be, at best, second-rate readers.
Yes, for the child that has already learned to read, it makes learning phonics pointless, irrelevant and boring.
However there are more problems with phonics: children have to reach a specific developmental stage in order to recognise phonetic sounds within spoken language. If they don't recognise the sound within words, then they cannot learn to relate it to the letters it represents. Naturally, children reach this developmental stage at different times in their lives. Again, the teaching of phonics to a age defined class, for those who have not yet reached that stage of development will be pointless, irrelevant and boring.
Another problem for English speaking countries, is that our language has a considerable number of words in which the phoneme has no relevance to the grapheme and a considerable number of graphemes for each phoneme. So teaching reading through phonetics alone is limited.
But also, teaching a child to read phonetically must not be confused with a child's ability to read - as reading as a whole is not just the translation of letters into sounds, it is the ability to comprehend what is being read. Therefore, if reading lessons in the classroom are confined to phonetic translation, the whole point as well as the excitement and mystery of books is likely to be lost and children are more likely to become reluctant to read.
Absolutely. I've never met a home-educated child (of whom I've known quite a few) who did not learn to read, often within a couple of weeks of them deciding for themselves that they were ready to do so.
My friend's son did not read until he was 12 - last year. One day, he simply announced that "I can read, you know" when his mother started to read out a label in a museum to him.
I compare this with my brother who, at school, was pushed into reading before he was ready and had huge difficulties. I asked him recently (he's 53 now) how old he was before reading 'really clicked' for him. He said, "I'll let you know if it happens." This is in no way lack of intelligence - he has an MSc in Physics. If he had been left to his own time scale, I'm sure that he'd have had no problems.
Sounds Good.!!!!