1/3 of US schools teach reading in a way that doesn't work.

[Roger Ramjets]

It's possible to mix and garble letters in words quite a bit without making a written text unintelligible:

Fro emxaple I ma suer yuo hvae no pborlme raedngi thsi, rghit?

None of you is deciphering phonems in the above line,

Again you miss the point. We are all experienced readers who know what the words should be from the context. We can quickly scan some text and just by picking out a few letters we already have a good idea of what most of the words (probably) are.

That does not apply to children who are learning to read.

But faced with an unfamiliar text you might not do so well. For example, here's part of the technical description of a device in the 1962 General Electric Instruments databook:-

FUNCTION

To measure inverse reactive current in unilateral phase detractors with display of percent realization.

OPERATION

Based on the principle of power generation by the modial interaction of magnetoreluctance and capacitive directance, the Turboencabulator negates the relative motion of conventional conductors and fluxes. It consists of a baseplate of prefabulated Amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two main spurving bearings are aligned with the pentametric fan.

Six gyro-controlled antigravic marzel-vanes are attached to the ambifacient wane shafts to prevent internal precession. Along the top, adjacent to the panandermic semi-boloid stator slots, are 47 manestically spaced grouting brushes, insulated with Glyptal-impregnated, cyanoethylated kraft paper bushings. Each one of these feeds into the rotor slipstream, via the non-reversible differential tremie pipes, a 5 per cent solution of reminative Tetraethyliodo-hexamine, the specific pericosity of which is given by P = 2.5C_n^6/7 where "C" is Cholmondeleys annular grillage coefficient and "n" is the diathetical evolute of retrograde temperature phase disposition.

The two panel meters display inrush current and percent realization. In addition, whenever a barescent skor motion is required, it may be employed with a reciprocating dingle arm to reduce the sinusoidal depleneration in nofer trunnions. Solutions are checked by Zahn Vis-cosimetry techniques. Exhaust orifices receive standard Blevinometric tests. There is no known Orth Effect.

TECHNICAL FEATURES
• Panandermic semi-boloid stator slots
• Panel meter covers treated with Shure Stat
• Manestically spaced grouting brushes
• Prefabulated Amulite baseplate
• Pentametric fan​

A few unfamiliar words there I bet. But could you pronounce them correctly?

 

[psionl0]

You wonder what they could possibly be doing 7 hours a day.

They are filling out reams of paperwork for their bureaucratic overlords and don't have enough time left for teaching.

 

[bruto]

When I started first grade in Detroit in 1953, it was "whole word" and flash cards or big illustrated Dick and Jane flip books. I was totally at sea and did not learn to read until the Christmas break, when my parents were surprised that I couldn't. So they explained phonics. Since I knew the alphabet and was not stupid, it clicked immediately, and by the time the break was over, they were using the front page of the New York Times for practice. The rest of the class struggled on, some reading badly, some not at all, and for some years after, most of my fellow students were poor readers and, though facile speakers, could not write a coherent sentence, because it never really occurred to them that reading and writing were in the same language, with the same rules, with which they spoke.

Reading instruction is a disaster in many places. Many kids think of it as a foreign language. In that first grade, the effort of teaching a room full of kids to read at first grade level was so all-consuming that during the entire year there was not time (and I mean this entirely literally) to teach any arithmetic at all, even to count! The first grade was numberless, except for a futile attempt to teach us to read a clock, which was equally disastrous for some at least. The clock in question had one long thin hand and one short fat one. Which one is the "big" hand? To me the short fat one was bigger. It obviously had more real estate. Another one my parents had to pick up. All they had to say was "long" and "short," but apparently the pure doctrine by which the teachers were guided was convinced, probably some condensation of the errors of Dr. Gesell, that children think taller is bigger until they're past seven.

I wonder if an earlier reference to blaming the Kiwis for this relates to Sylvia Ashton-Warner. She got half of it right, I think. A teacher in New Zealand, she found her largely Maori kids were not learning to read, and realized that they could not relate the material to their own lives, so initiated what she called the "key word" system, in which a kid was told to think of a word and learn it. No rule on what word, kid's choice, and one word at a time. They came up with words that were relevant to what they needed to say, and learned to read and write because, instead of "Janet and John," NZ's analogue of Dick and Jane, they were using language to read and write about what concerned them.

It was "whole word" learning, but worked in this context because the words were important enough, and the curriculum tailored to the kids. (e.t.a. and they were motivated to learn the connective and peripheral words in order to use the key words) It would not surprise me if people reading Ashton-Warner's books took the whole word part and threw the rest away.

Experienced readers, of course, learn to recognize and skim whole words and to use context, and rarely have to resort to phonics after a while, but looking at a whole word as a picture whose characters make no other sense is a very clumsy way to learn to read - slow and inefficient for many, impossible for some. If you are first learning to read, and if the material you're reading is entirely alien to your life, context is hard to find.

 

[Delvo]

In short, although nearly all* writing systems began as something more like Chinese (one drawing for one word or idea), everybody everywhere outside China who has been exposed to a more phonetic system has switched over to that instead. Some China-adjacent countries just have a bit of Chineseness leaking into them because China's there, and China itself just sticks with it for written communication between speakers of different languages/dialects within China, and because they hadn't invented or imported something better yet before sudden exposure to the Occident made Chinese writing a big part of what distinguished them from the Occident and thus became a big part of their "we're not them" identity.

And soon after posting that, just by coincidence, I ran across some new-to-me information from somebody more familiar with China than me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fL_S9GAVzE

China has apparently decided several times that its writing was a problem that needed to be fixed, because it's so cumbersome that it's kept Chinese literacy down. (And that was before computers became so prominent and Chinese people who wanted to interact with computers had to learn foreign phonetic systems just for that anyway.) Some of the reforms that have been proposed have passed and some have not. Some simplifications of the traditional system without touching the fundamental way it works have actually been done. A couple of phonetic systems have also been developed internally in China, and they do actually use one now, but it seems to have been relegated to sounding out foreign names & imported words, not replacing the whole-word system as originally intended. Adopting the Roman or Cyrillic alphabet has also been proposed and debated but rejected so far. (The fact that Chinese people with phones or computers use Roman letters on them, even as the input method to create Chinese characters on them if & when they do create Chinese characters on them at all, would indicate that literacy in the Roman alphabet is as high among Chinese people as literacy in Chinese characters is, or higher, but that does not mean the government wants to adopt it officially; that would be too much like admitting that something non-Chinese is better than its Chinese counterpart.)

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

No rule on what word, kid's choice, and one word at a time. They came up with words that were relevant to what they needed to say, and learned to read and write because, instead of "Janet and John," NZ's analogue of Dick and Jane, they were using language to read and write about what concerned them.

This may fit into a general idea that kids will learn what interests them.

Our 12 year old learned to read by looking at rusty old trucks. All he wanted to see was rusty old trucks. Flatbeds, box trucks, fire trucks, bread trucks, tool trucks, boom trucks, etc.

So he learned to read "1947 International Harvester" instead of "see spot run".

He read technical manuals - parts diagrams, hydraulic systems, drive trains, etc. So now he runs our 24x50 fully equipped shop. He's worth over $30k from the assets he has amassed. All I had at his age was a bicycle.

About a month ago he dropped an engine into his mom's dead subaru after the engine blew. It's worth about $15k now, and proves this idea of children costing so much is when you don't teach them any valuable skills.

 

[dudalb]

They keep on trying to find a "better way" of teaching reading then phonics, and keep on failing.

 

[dudalb]

I've long said that the United States isn't one country divided into states for administrative purposes like Australia is, it's fifty more-or-less independent nations that have all agreed to work together in certain limited ways.

There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.

ANybody familiar with US History knows that.

 

[Lithrael]

In my experience the worst thing about it is the way it frames phonics as a last resort if you can’t figure out the word any other way. Kids are both, on principle, discouraged from sounding out words, and by accident, made to feel stupid if they resort to phonics.

 

[theprestige]

So bizarre to me. It's a phonetic alphabet. The relationship between the written and spoken language is very tight. Phonetics are the gateway to reading and writing the language.

 

[lomiller]

So bizarre to me. It's a phonetic alphabet. The relationship between the written and spoken language is very tight. Phonetics are the gateway to reading and writing the language.

The alphabet may be, but the English language isn't particularly phonetic. The pronunciation of only about half the words in the English language make sense phonetically. The rest either need to be recognized on sight or decoded using other means or other, non-phonetic rules.

from the WSJ article linked on the first page:

Very briefly, to illustrate how the English spelling system encodes meaning, consider the morphological families associated with the bases <act> and <go> in the figure below. The key point to note is that the spellings of the bases are consistent across all members of the morphological families despite pronunciation shifts (e.g., acting vs. action; do vs. does; go vs. gone). Similarly, note the consistent spelling of the <-ed> suffix in <jumped>, <ed> and <painted> despite the fact that <-ed> is associated with the pronunciations /t/, /d/ and /əd/, respectively. The spellings of <does> and <gone> make sense once you understand that spellings also encode the meaning.

Note how you really only need to recognize act, do and go, either by sight or phonetically. After that what you need to do is understand how the word is morphed based on meaning and these rules can remain consistent even as pronunciation drifts away from what makes sense phonetically.

 

[lomiller]

In my experience the worst thing about it is the way it frames phonics as a last resort if you can’t figure out the word any other way.

While it may be the first skill kids need when they learn to read, phonics really is the last skill you need once you learn to read. Being a proficient reader ultimarly requires kids to use phonics as a last resort, so it makes sense to teach them it's a last resort.

It's entirely plausible that the initial success of whole language in a remedial reading context is because it was being used with children who had stalled out at the stage of sounding everything out phonically and never moving on to other techniques. Conversely, teaching phonics to children who have learned other techniques but struggle because they can fall back on sounding out words should also be successful.

IMO Viewing either as a silver bullet for teaching kids how to read is probably not going to work. Kids need to lean all the above. This means teaching phonics, word recognition by sight, word recognition by context, word recognition by similar morphology, etc.

 

[Sherkeu]

English is a language with a lot of borrowed words.
Webster (dictionary guy) wanted to simplify changes to easier spelling but it didnt happen. People are stubborn to keep what they know.

The ancient origins of letters were based on the letter shape representing a word starting with that sound- but in one language family. Then others adopted, changed sounds for their word, deleted.some, added new.ones, combined.them.

After a few thousand years of sharing, trade or war or merger.
.....here we are. Id blame zee Germans, but my father's language of Fryslan
(Frisian) is closest in the English language tree.
And the French!!! Blame them too.

 

[lomiller]

English is a language with a lot of borrowed words.
Webster (dictionary guy) wanted to simplify changes to easier spelling but it didnt happen. People are stubborn to keep what they know.

The ancient origins of letters were based on the letter shape representing a word starting with that sound- but in one language family. Then others adopted, changed sounds for their word, deleted.some, added new.ones, combined.them.

After a few thousand years of sharing, trade or war or merger.
.....here we are. Id blame zee Germans, but my father's language of Fryslan
(Frisian) is closest in the English language tree.
And the French!!! Blame them too.

Who can we blame for forgetting the real name for bear?

 

[Blue Mountain]

English is a language with a lot of borrowed words.
Webster (dictionary guy) wanted to simplify changes to easier spelling but it didn't happen. People are stubborn to keep what they know.

Yeah, Americans are still using cheque, honour, and metre.

I personally dislike check instead of cheque because check by itself is a word. Is "Check name" an instruction to ensure a name is accurate, or the name one should put on a cheque?

Meter is the same. The whole rest of the world spells it metre, but, no, the Americans have to go and use a word that already means something else—an instrument for measuring something.

 

[bruto]

While it may be the first skill kids need when they learn to read, phonics really is the last skill you need once you learn to read. Being a proficient reader ultimarly requires kids to use phonics as a last resort, so it makes sense to teach them it's a last resort.

It's entirely plausible that the initial success of whole language in a remedial reading context is because it was being used with children who had stalled out at the stage of sounding everything out phonically and never moving on to other techniques. Conversely, teaching phonics to children who have learned other techniques but struggle because they can fall back on sounding out words should also be successful.

IMO Viewing either as a silver bullet for teaching kids how to read is probably not going to work. Kids need to lean all the above. This means teaching phonics, word recognition by sight, word recognition by context, word recognition by similar morphology, etc.

While I agree more or less, I disagree with the initial statement. You need not teach kids that phonics is a "last resort." It's generally a natural process. What you start with is not dependent on what you end up with. Many skills are first acquired in a way that will be left behind later. I think it a mistake to teach any skill backwards, as if it had already been acquired. The familiarity and mental shortcuts experienced readers use require experience.

An experienced skier does not do snowplow turns, but a ski instructor who expects beginners to schuss down the hill without them is going to fail more often than he succeeds.

 

[lomiller]

While I agree more or less, I disagree with the initial statement. You need not teach kids that phonics is a "last resort." It's generally a natural process. What you start with is not dependent on what you end up with. Many skills are first acquired in a way that will be left behind later. I think it a mistake to teach any skill backwards, as if it had already been acquired. The familiarity and mental shortcuts experienced readers use require experience.

Why do you think it's natural? Learning to read isn't like learning to talk, our brains don't come pre-wired for it.

An experienced skier does not do snowplow turns, but a ski instructor who expects beginners to schuss down the hill without them is going to fail more often than he succeeds.

I'm not really a skier, but I can't imagine people stop using snowplow turns until they learn something to replace them.

 

[theprestige]

Why do you think it's natural? Learning to read isn't like learning to talk, our brains don't come pre-wired for it.

Or do they?

Our brains may not have "come pre-wired for it", but it turns out that pretty much any neurotypical human can be taught to read to at least a first-grade level - the vast majority much further.

Meanwhile, no other species can be taught even that much (though one or two can be brought kind of close).

If that doesn't indicate some sort of pre-wiring, then what is it? Lack of public schooling for crows and marmots?

 

[theprestige]

Why do you think it's natural? Learning to read isn't like learning to talk, our brains don't come pre-wired for it.



I'm not really a skier, but I can't imagine people stop using snowplow turns until they learn something to replace them.

"Experienced skiers don't snowplow, so the best way for you to learn to ski is to not snowplow until you figure it out!"

 

[lomiller]

Or do they?

Our brains may not have "come pre-wired for it", but it turns out that pretty much any neurotypical human can be taught to read to at least a first-grade level - the vast majority much further.

They can learn, if they are taught. This doesn't mean they can figure it out on their own just by watching someone else do it.

If you expect students to replace phonics with other skills, it makes sense that you'll get better results if you actually teach those other skills instead of just expecting them to figure it out on their own.

 

[bruto]

Why do you think it's natural? Learning to read isn't like learning to talk, our brains don't come pre-wired for it.



I'm not really a skier, but I can't imagine people stop using snowplow turns until they learn something to replace them.

I probably put it badly. What I meant was that the progression from phonic decoding of words to recognizing them whole is pretty natural and that does not mean you shouldn't start with phonics or that you should start out as regarding it as a last resort.