That's not the way phonics is taught here, at all. Phonetics is primarily used by speech therapists.Originally Posted by agamemnus
If they were doing that to you in elementary school I can see why you would be entirely against phonics instruction.
That's not the way phonics is taught here, at all. Phonetics is primarily used by speech therapists.
If they were doing that to you in elementary school I can see why you would be entirely against phonics instruction.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Small point. There wasn't really ever a concept of phonics in Russia (USSR) when I lived there (up to 6 years old; kindergarten), but how many Russia (USSR) were illiterate? Drunk, starving, poor, and prone to not questioning authority, yes, but everyone was incredibly literate. More than the US at the time, by a mile.
Edit: but then again, Russian mostly is spelled how it sounds. It took me a few years to pick up perfect spelling in Russian (which is now sadly no longer perfect), but it took me many more years to pick up perfect spelling in English. I could still understand new words, though (if not pronounce them correctly all the time) because I understood what the roots of the words were, and they were always in a context.
The Soviet education system is absolutely something the Americans should emulate. I'm not entirely sure of your age so I'm not sure if you were post-Communist or not.
Part of the problem with English is that there are multiple pronunciations based on how a letter is used in a word. Most other languages aren't like that. It can be confusing to many kids.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Yup, I edited the post above a bit... left right before the fun began.
Still, non-perfect spelling shouldn't be interfering with comprehension, right?...
Ok, here we go:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2510667/posts
Says it better than I did. So here I go again with my mean style: sounding out parts of words is fine in kindergarten, but there shouldn't be a one-year mega-course on phonics, let alone more than a year.Next, the phonics vs. whole word really only matters for beginners learning to say words. Phonics won't help you learning that a bat, cat and rat are different and what they mean, even though you can pronounce them.
EDIT:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/20342563
It does. Words don't look the way people think they should sound, so it interferes with understanding.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
From your link aggie:
Huh? Education can be politicized, but that's a bit conspiratorial.PS: I just put a review on Amazon of Samuel Blumenfeld’s wonderful book of essays, “Victims of Dick and Jane.” This book contains a comment that sums up everything:
“We’ve known now since 1955 that whole-word methodology is the problem. Flesch naively assumed back then that after the educators read his book they would recognize the error of their ways and return to the sane phonetic method of teaching. What he didn’t understand, however, was the political agenda behind what those progressive professors were doing. Their goal was to use education as a means for changing America from an individualist, capitalist, religious society into a socialist, collectivist, humanist society.”
[For more on topic, follow link to “37: Whole Word versus Phonics" on Improve-Education.org.]
Also, we don't interchange phonics with phonetics (no matter what your links say....) No kindergartener would be learning maelstrom or eustachian, so who's that Helen Bowyer talking about?
edit--her article is from 1961! The footnote says Russian kids are in kindergarten at age seven, and once they learn the alphabet can read in 2-3 months because the Russian language is so nearly phonemic.
and ps, Whole Word and Whole Language are different methods.
Last edited by GGT; 07-19-2010 at 06:09 AM.
It's the Free Republic, they're all still paranoid about the Communists.From your link aggie:
Huh? Education can be politicized, but that's a bit conspiratorial.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
It doesn't make sense, though. The 'progressives' were trying anything new and individualized to teach kids to read. After all, it took a long time to recognize and diagnose dyslexia, let alone finding ways to accommodate all the different learning styles kids have.
Continuing on the current tangent of teaching reading.....that old article from JSTOR had some World English examples that looked like Ebonics. Is that how the Russians (and aggie) learn to read? If so, it's no wonder he doesn't think proper spellings matter so much.
It's almost like little kids learning how to 'read' from texting on cell phones or chatting online. Hi U R L8. That's fine for a certain medium, but it won't help a child learn to read literature or write a book report.
I never said that. I merely meant to point out that I don't see what all the fuss is about if you can't spell a word correctly... a few times. People should get to remembering stuff. It's not like Russians don't have to remember anything. Sure, we don't have to remember so many spelling rules as American kids, but just purely because we aren't (weren't) treated like we all had a severe form of A.D.D., we did well.
I memorized several children's books for no good reason. I can't do it now, but I used to be able to recite them.
And another thing. In Russia, children's books are different from children's books in America. The kind of books that toddlers read (or used to read) in Russia are the same books that 5th graders were reading in America. Children's books differed from adult books in that:
* they always had some sort of fantasy, cartoon-like setting.
* that their letters were about twice as big as that you'd find in a cheap paperback here in America.
* the books themselves were about 4 times bigger than the cheap paperback and 1.5 to 2.5 times bigger than children's books in America.
* a lot of the books had full-page, beautiful illustrations.
The actual content was not one or five words per page, but maybe several paragraphs per page. It was a lot of content. I guess my point is that kids read a lot, in terms of volume.
The image that is always stuck in my head during this discussion is that of my fellow 3rd grade class (USA) taking several minutes to recite a sentence using the weird phonics system we were using, while this normally would have taken me about 10-15 seconds to read (in my head, not aloud) if it was in Russian.
Last edited by agamemnus; 07-19-2010 at 01:59 PM.
wait, ag's entire hang up was because he thought phonics and phonetics was the same thing?
Phonetics is fine, while phonics is not. There are different phonics systems, and some are more "advanced"/complicated than others. A system system is much more advanced/complicated than a system, and I disagree with using a phonics system system to teach reading and writing.wait, ag's entire hang up was because he thought phonics and phonetics was the same thing?
But English is not Russian. If you learned to read a predominantly phonemic language (Russian), that doesn't mean English works the same way.
There's also a difference between reading in one's head and reading aloud. Most every listener thinks the narrator is going too slow, if they're reading print text.
But if it's a language you're not familiar with, reading captions while listening to a narrator can leave gaps, and something is missed.
What are you complaining about again? If you learned English as a Russian, I'd say you learned very well. I had no idea English was your second language.
It isn't, but the gap in pronunciation difficulty doesn't, to me, explain the performance gap.
True, true...but the gap is still insurmountably huge!There's also a difference between reading in one's head and reading aloud. Most every listener thinks the narrator is going too slow, if they're reading print text.
I'm complaining what I see as the lack of thought that is put into the structure of the educational system; (sometimes) weird phonics systems, (sometimes) books that perpetuate false facts (which were disproved almost immediately after being offered up), and (recently), a proclivity to replace recent movements and events with historical movements events.What are you complaining about again?
Zanks yoo. I luhv Amerika. I nevar go bak. Waloo de fredom beink here. Zank you fer listenink.If you learned English as a Russian, I'd say you learned very well. I had no idea English was your second language.
Yes, it does deserve the outcry it is getting. And it's not just liberals. Libertarians are very upset by the discrimination against gays.
IMO the reason people can say the discrimination "isn't that bad" is because gays don't have automatic lables on them, like skin color or gender. So it is harder to discriminate. I don't think that makes the discrimination any less bad.
I disagree. Some methods are better in one context, another method in a different context.
From what I understand, the hallmark of good teachers is that they can reach kids with different strengths and weaknesses. But a lot of it comes from parents as well. I was an exceptional student through primary and secndary except for one thing: I almost failed to learn my multiplication tables. Why? I certainly don't remember. But my teacher contacted my parents to tell them that their perennial A student was all of a sudden wiping out. My parent smade flash cards and ground the multiplication tables into me. Was her teaching style wrong? Well, seemed to work for other kids, including those clearly not as smart as I. But the teacher made sure that I wasn't left behind. Could have been a phase I was going through, could be some weird learning block or even learning disability. Am I going to blame the teacher or her system, whatever it was? No. I'm just thankful that the system and my parents didn't fail me there.
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