Posted on 12/01/2005 4:25:16 PM PST by ncountylee
LONDON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Starting next year, all British school children will learn to read using the traditional technique known as synthetic phonics.
A report released Thursday said that, by the age of 11, children taught by the phonics method are typically three years ahead of others in reading ability. Jim Rose, a former director of the Office of Standards in Education and the report's author, also found that synthetic phonics works best when used alone and not in a combination of methods, the Times of London reported.
Rose recommended that children be taught nothing but phonics until they are 5, followed by a rich exposure to language. Under the present system, phonics is combined with the "look and say" method where whole words are taught.
"I am going to adopt the recommendations in this report to make sure that synthetic phonics is taught systematically and early in British schools as quickly as possible," Education Secretary Ruth Kelly said in a BBC interview.
END
Reminds we of the columnist Carl Rowan years ago. When an issue first arose in the news it was usually obvious that he had no opinion one way or the other at first. Once other liberals explained what the liberal position was, in their columns and on TV, he always fought like hell for it. Unless other liberals laid out the party line for him, he never had a clue on which way to go on an issue.
This is the root of the problem: what you defined is thinking (conceptualization), not reading. When you teach a child to walk, you do not even bother with meaningfulness of that ability, how it will be used and for what purpose. That will come later; for now, you just help the child to learn to walk. The same is with counting: when you teach it, do you bother with the question of meaning here? I hope not.
Reading is about mechanical intake of information. How that information is processed is an altogether different part of education.
He only did that after a major study showing California high school grads had a functional illiteracy rate of 60%. Too hard to ignore.
I beg to differ. Ask yourself what is the purpose of reading. We read merely to complete communication. Without the communication aspect there is no reason to read. Thus, reading must include comprehension of the message we are decoding.
Oh, sure you can.
Lack of phonics leads to illiterates.
Illiterates lead to crappy test scores.
Crappy test scores lead to outrage by all.
Outrage by all leads to demands for MORE FUNDING.
More funding leads to bigger budgets, more union dues paying teachers, and more more more.
Making sure there will be failure guarantees that something must be done which always leads to boatloads more government money. Failure is good for those who run the government schools.
I learned more or less on the whole-language method. As I understand it, neither method is really "better" than the other, since some kids learn better on one method, and some on the other. I learned to read long before I got to kindergarten, so I don't really remember it, but my parents tell me they used "whole-language".
They're still peddling this at the teacher colleges!
I asked my mom, a reading teacher, about this. The sight words they start in kindergarten are words like "Two". Ones that don't fit straight phonics.
Studies have show that is not the case for most all students. Overwhelmingly, children learn to read better if using phonics...especially those who are not from homes of English speaking families. Children who are slow learners also do better learning to read with phonics. Those children who are least damaged by whole language are those children who are above the norm in learning.
Agreed; a plummet down to a 60% literacy rate after replacing phonics with whole language guessing methods is a hard sell to keep promoting it as an effective method of instruction.
Huh????
Phonics is better for the majority of kids. Overwhelmingly, the teachers I encounter think teaching phonics is important. The trouble is that it is boring. Created readers (ones that are written to focus upon a particular sound or combination) are inane. Example: Sam sat. Sam sat on the hat. Oh drat!
Now, instead of neglecting good stories in favor of phonics instruction, teachers are trying to give children both. The school I am currently in teaches one hour of phonics per day followed by reading aloud or guided reading of a "real" story with characters, a setting, a beginning, middle, end, etc.
Really? Not the one I attend.
They currently are here in central New York; and they were in Colorado, at least through 1998, when I graduated....I assume they still are, as I got to know the professors who teach future teachers, and they were adamantly AGAINST teaching phonics.
I started back to school in 2002 (and graduate in 16 days). All of my texts that mentioned the subject, advocate a combination of phonics and real literature. I think you'll find there has been something of a shift in the last handful of years. I'd expect liberal bastions to be more stubborn about it, but I'm in Kentucky. :)
I started on fonix and I toorned awt just fyne!!!
(actually, I really think Phonics workd pretty doggone well).
The debate over what method or procedure to use to teach reading has been going on for decades and is not likely to end satisfactory to everyone. Everyone can learn given adequate teaching and sufficient time. By the way, what sort of phonics do Chinese and Japanese children use???
While attending college in Colorado (I was in the teacher ed program but dropped out...due to the insistence of liberal teaching methodologies throughout the college and town), I wrote a term paper in my History of English Language class on phonics vs. whole language, and provided evidence as to why phonics was a better way for children to learn to read. My professor wrote she was "giving me an A, but could not disagree with me on a subject more strongly, but because of the thoroughness of my research and how well it was written, the grade is deserved." I don't know what colleges she attended to get her bachelors and doctorate, but to call her a liberal is an understatement. (And she was NOT in the Teacher's Education Program.)
That's a strawman question. Phonics is used with the English language; as you know, Japanese and Chinese do not use the same sounds or even the same symbols.
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