YourBabyCanRead.com?

[Prometheus]

Mrs. Coyote and I were pondering the best way to raise a bilingual English/French speaking child. You'll have to let us know how it goes.

Canadian universities have produced a lot of good research on this topic. When I get some time I'll see if I can dig some references up for you.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Didn't the " look and say " method of reading teaching ( as opposed to phonics ) turn out to be a dismal failure ? ( In general ) ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readin...2Sight_Word.22.2C_or_.22Look_.28and.29_Say.22

Although the number of words taught by the whole word method may be different today, Dr. McGuinness’ studies shows that unless the students learn phonics (on their own or from help outside the classroom) in addition to their whole word training, they cannot learn more than about 2,000 words by sight alone.

 

[Prometheus]

Didn't the " look and say " method of reading teaching ( as opposed to phonics ) turn out to be a dismal failure ? ( In general ) ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readin...2Sight_Word.22.2C_or_.22Look_.28and.29_Say.22

Yes. Published research pretty much blows the whole language woo out of the water, but like a lot of other woo, it just doesn't seem to go away.

 

[arthwollipot]

At school, my kids were taught the whole word method. At home we used phonics. They picked it up pretty quickly, and I don't think it was because of school.

 

[Prometheus]

At school, my kids were taught the whole word method. At home we used phonics. They picked it up pretty quickly, and I don't think it was because of school.

That's common. I'll have to dig up a link; there's a researcher at Harvard, I think, who showed that most children given whole word method in school actually learn to read via phonics instruction they get outside of school.

 

[iMaGiNaTioN]

When your baby can calculate surface integrals, let me know.

I would rather have my daughter learn early math over reading. Then she can understand why her parents are always broke.

 

[Rairun]

I wasn't even quite aware the whole word method existed. It doesn't sound very productive to me, but that might be because my first language's phonology is more closely mapped to orthography.