Talk:Systematic Phonics

If phonics were a quaint, fanciful and eccentric theory advanced in internet chatrooms by people who palpably lacked a knowledge of English phonology, it might be harmless. The trouble is that it is used to teach real children in real schools who must, therefore, learn literacy despite it.

A child who is told by a perhaps otherwise trustworthy adult that "a" has a long sound (as in "make") and a short one (as in "cat") will be unable to read "father" correctly till he has learned to ignore those rules. A child who is told that "e" can only represent the vowels in "beat" and "bet" will be unable to read the words "English" and "enable" properly until he learns to ignore that rule. A child who is told that the two vowel-letters in "beat" are a diphthong is being downright misled.

Phonics has the appearance of a scheme devised by people who don't know phonetics trying to find patterns in a chaotic system, and often getting it wrong. Fundamental mistakes include a failure to distinguish vowel-length and diphthongs, as well as a belief that spoken language renders the orthography rather than the other way around.

My hunch is that people learn to read and write in a similar way to the way in which they learn to speak. This would make sense, since it is all about language. &mdash;the preceding unsigned comment is by 80.189.226.94 (talk &bull; contribs)

Sorry, I've got to disagree with your semi-rant. No system of education can provide a learner with the tools to be immediately capable of performing every task within a field of study.

You might want to check out some of the work cognitive scientists (e.g. Pinker) have done regarding language acquisition vs reading skills. Reading appears to be learned through very different paths from speaking and listening skills.

In the US, there were many arguments made in the 60s that said essentially what you have said. As a consequence, quite a few school districts dropped phonics from their curricula, saving a few dollars. In its place was a different approach to teaching reading, the "look and say" method, which is the alternative you seem to be advocating. The results were disastrous for students. Pure memorization of spelling, pronunciation, and meaning for each newly acquired word is absurd.

For the last 15 years, phonics has been either reintroduced into the classroom or has been the primary effective method of choice for tutoring those non-disabled students who have struggled to gain reading skills. Parents have turned to phonics as a means to assist their children outside of the classroom. I have never known a child whose reading skills were not improved by the study of phonics.

Phonics is a necessary class for most, if not all, children. It has never been promoted as the sole method of teaching reading (as far as I can recall) but has a long history as an essential adjunct in the acquisition of literacy.

You specifically pointed to perceived inadequacies regarding the pronunciation "rules" for certain vowels. This poses a minor problem at most. If you keep in mind that English is a consonant intensive language, you will note that there are only a few consonants with unpredictable pronunciations.

I suppose that none of this matters much, seeing that, at least in the US, school districts are under funded, under staffed, and over politicized. Hmm. I guess that was rather POV of me! Ande 09:00, 7 April 2006 (UTC)