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

[Susheel]

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 phonetic an d the alphabet is used phonetically in various languages, however not in English.

 

[ahhell]

The alphabet may be phonetic an d the alphabet is used phonetically in various languages, however not in English.

The words that 5 and 6 year olds use and learn to read are almost entirely phonetic.

I wonder, there does seem to some resistance to the notion that when teaching kids you start simple and then get more complicated as they build their skills. I see it in the reading debate and in things like history. Its curious.

 

[theprestige]

The alphabet may be phonetic an d the alphabet is used phonetically in various languages, however not in English.

The entire sentence you typed is phonetic. The only sticking point is the "ph" dipthong. And you know what? Schoolchildren are taught the phonetic dipthongs along with the rest of their letters.

 

[bruto]

The entire sentence you typed is phonetic. The only sticking point is the "ph" dipthong. And you know what? Schoolchildren are taught the phonetic dipthongs along with the rest of their letters.

true enough, and even if there are phonetic failures in English, enough of most words is phonetic that they can be extrapolated. Phonetic learning is not just about what a word must be but what it cannot be. You may have to guess how "would" is pronounced but you can know it's not a towtruck.

 

[Blue Mountain]

I don't remember a time when I didn't know how to read. I was extremely fortunate that my entire family—mother, father, grandparents, and two older siblings—read books, newspapers, and magazines all the time. It seems to me it was just something I picked up as I went along. I suspect what happened was I saw everyone else reading and asked how it was done, and they showed me.

 

[Susheel]

The entire sentence you typed is phonetic. The only sticking point is the "ph" dipthong. And you know what? Schoolchildren are taught the phonetic dipthongs along with the rest of their letters.

Maybe you need to brush up on what phonetic means. For example, the letter e has atleast three different sounds in the sentence I used the letter I represents two, as does the letter a... I could go on.

 

[novaphile]

I don't remember a time when I didn't know how to read. I was extremely fortunate that my entire family—mother, father, grandparents, and two older siblings—read books, newspapers, and magazines all the time. It seems to me it was just something I picked up as I went along. I suspect what happened was I saw everyone else reading and asked how it was done, and they showed me.

That is a very likely scenario.

I have many, very fond memories, of my brother reading to me.
(He's four years older than me).

We still have some running jokes about the way he would 'be silly' when reading some stories... e.g. "Thhhhhhsmall thhhilver bear thhhhhhlid thhhhhlowly down the thhhhhining moonbeam."

(Imagine the 'thhh' as a spittle soaked raspberry sound.)

 

[bruto]

Maybe you need to brush up on what phonetic means. For example, the letter e has atleast three different sounds in the sentence I used the letter I represents two, as does the letter a... I could go on.

True of the vowels, except a couple which have hard and soft forms, but if you can figure out the majority of a familiar word it is usually possible to figure out the rest.

 

[bruto]

[Oops, double post, stupid tablet, blame it!

 

[Lithrael]

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.

Eeehhhh, there’s a lot of psychology in teaching too; a lot of kids react very badly to being presented right up front with the idea that the thing they are trying to learn and be proud of learning at the moment is just going to be deprecated later. You wouldn’t want to tell a small child who is learning to count or add on their fingers to try doing it without their hands until they had a pretty good handle on the concept of numbers, right? I mean you can but a kid with low confidence who isn’t good at it is just going to be discouraged. So maybe try it, but if they aren’t engaged with the challenge, let them get comfortable with numbers on their fingers, right? And don’t keep pointing at the kids who don’t count on their fingers saying “why don’t you try to be more like billy?” At least not until they clearly can count and add reliably on their fingers and it’s time to move on.

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.

Yeah, in that specific context it makes sense. Generally agreed with the rest of your post.

 

[Brainster]

I confess I'm a little amused at the complaint that phonics only works for about 50% of the language. For what percentage of the language does guessing based on the first letter or two and context work? I'm guessing quite a bit lower.

Phonics actually helps me remember how to spell some words that are not phonetic. Tucson, because when I write it I mentally pronounce it 'Tuck-son'. Phoenix is 'Fo-Enix'.

 

[arthwollipot]

Spoilered for length:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation--think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough:
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!

- Gerard Nolst Trenité

 

[jeremyp]

Re chemists, probably.

I was once looking at a molecule diagram on screen, and a friend (who ended up with a PhD in chemistry) looked over my shoulder and named the substance.

When I asked her how she recognised the molecule, she explained how chemical names often are just descriptions of the molecule.



If you understand the code, the names become things like: two hydrogens stuck on a carbon ring...

Many elephants pass by public houses.

 

[novaphile]

Many elephants pass by public houses.

(I had to look it up and it took a while...)

Weirdly enough I still have the first 20 elements memorised, purely because someone recited them to me as: H HeLi BeBCNOF NeNa MgAl SiPS ClArKCa

(aitch heli Bebcnoff, Nina muggal sips Clarkca)

Mnemonics work surprisingly well and seem to be very persistent.

Oh be a fine girl and kiss me...

Every good boy deserves fun...

And those are just the two that are in the front of my mind at the moment.

 

[bruto]

I don't know enough chemistry to get the many elephants mnemonic, I guess.

I only remember a couple. There's one for taxonomy: King Philip came over from Germany soused.

And I have forgotten the end the pi one: Now I sing a silly roundelay of radial roots...

I remember many years ago when we got social security cards my sister came up with a mnemonic. I found the mnemonic harder to remember than the number.

 

[arthwollipot]

I've said this before. Lots of people have mnemonics to remember the order of the planets in the solar system.

Mine is "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto."

The last is still part of it because I learned it when Pluto was still a planet.

 

[Reformed Offlian]

(I had to look it up and it took a while...)

Weirdly enough I still have the first 20 elements memorised, purely because someone recited them to me as: H HeLi BeBCNOF NeNa MgAl SiPS ClArKCa

(aitch heli Bebcnoff, Nina muggal sips Clarkca)

Mnemonics work surprisingly well and seem to be very persistent.

Oh be a fine girl and kiss me...

Every good boy deserves fun...

And those are just the two that are in the front of my mind at the moment.

When the 'mites go up, the 'tites come down.
Goddesses have double D's.

 

[bruto]

When the 'mites go up, the 'tites come down.
Goddesses have double D's.

I remember my sixth grade teacher came up with that first one, although a bit inaccurate on what mites are, she suggested "just remember what happens when you have ants in your pants."

 

[jeremyp]

I don't know enough chemistry to get the many elephants mnemonic, I guess.

meth - 1 carbon, eth 2 - carbons, prop - 3 carbons, but - 4, pent - 5, hex - 6

add -ane and you get carbon chain molecules: methane, ethane, propane, butane etc

Add -anol and you get the alcohols: methanol, ethanol, propanol etc.

There are other endings you can add to get different classes of organic compounds.

Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain. I found it easier to just remember ROY G BIV

 

[jeremyp]

I've said this before. Lots of people have mnemonics to remember the order of the planets in the solar system.

Mine is "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto."

The last is still part of it because I learned it when Pluto was still a planet.

There was a quiz night at my nephew's elementary school. One of the questions was "name all the planets". Naturally there was a bit of consternation, so the headmaster who was also acting as the question master (but didn't write the questions) said "we are looking for eight planets". Well that was fine except the answer he had written down (and the question master is always right) included Pluto but excluded Venus.