Posted on 03/31/2010 5:08:44 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Boys can learn to beat girls at reading if they are given old-fashioned teaching methods, claim psychologists.
The use of more traditional phonetics-based lessons helps boys catch up with girls - even doing better on some tests - and prevents some children from needing 'special' schooling, according to new research findings.
A study of synthetic phonics also found children from disadvantaged backgrounds do as well as those from better off homes.
The research, presented at the British Psychological Society's annual conference in York, has underpinned changes being made in the nation's classrooms.
They have been introduced after damning revelations that four in 10 children have failed to master the three Rs by the time they leave primary school.
There has also been concern about the growing gender divide in achievement, starting in primary schools.
Under the synthetic phonics system, children are taught the sounds that make up words rather than guess at entire words from pictures and story context.
Rhona Johnston, a professor of psychology at Hull University, and Dr Joyce Watson of St Andrews University, studied the results from 300 children originally given training using synthetic phonics when they were five.
The progress of the group at primary schools in Clackmannanshire was compared with 237 children using the more usual analytic phonics approach.
Boys taught using synthetic phonics were able to read words significantly better than girls at the age of seven, with all pupils ahead of the standard for their age.
Boys were 20 months ahead while girls were 14 months more advanced than expected.
At the end of the study, boys' reading comprehension was as good as that of the girls, but their word reading and spelling was better.
(Excerpt) Read more at thisislondon.co.uk ...
Because the alphabet is phonetic. It's designed that way. ANY other method of "learning to read" a language with a phonetic alphabet is doomed to mediocrity or outright failure, because it's ignoring the design of the system.
DUH!!!
A pox on "look-say" and the marxist freaks who inflicted it on too many children.
Modern English is not a "pure" language, and never has been. It is a combination of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Old French, Anglo-Saxon, Old English, Gaelic, Spanish, German, Hindi Japanese, Chinese, Korean, various African languages, various American aboriginal languages, and more that I don't want to bother thinking of.
It will only continue to grow.
You are correct. The stories repeat the words over and over so the children can memorize them. No reason not to let your beginning readers have them as long as they are sounding out and not using sight words though.
If children are taught not only the letter sounds but letter combination sounds (ex. “ai” says /A/) along with rules (that we may not use at the end of English words), they would encounter alot less “exceptions” than is believed.
Whole word is bad affects girls too. Those ‘taught’ by whole word become readers despite the method not because of it.
Of interest to homeschoolers
The purpose of government schools is to produce half-educated (at best), compliant drones for factory work and tax-paying. Non-phonics reading methods are part of the overall project of government schooling. Non-phonics reading methods have been adopted BECAUSE they don’t work.
I was actually somewhat incorrect. Even in its earliest forms, the “Dick and Jane” readers, while based on a whole-language concept, included some phonics. Later on, like the ones I was taught with in the early 70s (probably written in the 60s), even more phonetics was mixed in. Which makes sense, because while phonics are certainly very useful when learning to read, normal reading is mostly sight-based.
I have a friend at work who is Hungarian. He has explained to me how Hungarian spellings are pretty much consistently phonetic, so that not only can you tell how a word is to be pronounced from reading it, but if you have heard a word you can generally make a pretty safe guess at its spelling. Foreign words imported to the language get added to the language using Hungarian phonetics. This has its obvious good points, while the downside is that the linkage to the original word’s spelling is lost. Certainly such a system makes learning to read and write easier.
While English spellings are largely phonetic, there are typically multiple letter groups that represent the same phonemes, so that while figuring out pronunciation from spelling is mostly not too bad (other than the exceptions), the reverse is quite a bit more difficult.
What do you mean by some phonics? The books don’t teach phonics. They are readers. All of the words in the books can be sounded out phonetically but they were made for teaching look-say reading.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. The books themselves didn’t include any phonics, but the lesson plans that went with them included some usage of phonics, apparently. That actually happens to mirror the way I was taught to read in the early to mid-70s with those books, which was mostly sight reading, but with some phonics.
You are right, the whole language method does produce a life long learning disability unless corrected. It makes it difficult for the sufferer to learn new words and therefore concepts. But don’t think of it as victimization but rather propaganda. The victimization of boys even more than girls was just a happy accident for the marxists.
Exactly right. See my #53.
I always thought “new reading” was just a way to make students stupid.
(see brave new world. you had Alphas, Betas, Gamas, and Deltas)
Any kid who goes through Saxon math learns how to solve for square and cubed roots by pen and paper. Useful skill. My kids will use Saxon like I did, and phonics to learn to read, and they’ll go into a government school over my dead body.
Thank you. I did misunderstand. My kids read some of the Dick and Jane books when they were beginning readers but they had already learned the phonics “code” and were sounding them out.
phonics is more than just learning to read... learning what all the prefixes and suffixes mean, means even if you don't know what a word means, from the prefix/suffix you have some of an idea of what the word is about. very important when you are learning to read
“Because the alphabet is phonetic. It’s designed that way. ANY other method of “learning to read” a language with a phonetic alphabet is doomed to mediocrity or outright failure, because it’s ignoring the design of the system.”
Very well said! You said what I was trying to say. The alphabet is phonetic!
I had to homeschool in order to teach my youngest to read. The oldest, having a better attention span and more interest in books, was taught phonics and to read before he entered the herd. The youngest would not have learned to read had I not taught him myself. I feel very sorry for boys today.
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