Half of Americans can’t read

Oh ok.

so this sort of thing is quite common in the uk in infants, probably reception or year 1.

if a child of say five or six sees a word they don‘r recognise some of them do just look at the first letter and guess. This is discouraged in the U.K.

if they are reading with a TA or teacher they are encouraged to sound the word out and recognise it that way.

those sorts of strategies (initial letter and guess) are typical of a U.K. reading age of five or six.

by seven the phonics is usually pretty embedded, as are parts of words ( so eg you might read snorkeling and recognise the ing on the end and know how that sounds and is spelt even if you are not sure about the snorkel bit).

I’d be surprised if those techniques (initial letter and guess, or first few letters and guess) were used by many ten/eleven year olds in America. It’s a pretty poor strategy

How interesting, I didn’t know there were different methods to learn to read (I don’t have DC) and don’t remember learning, beyond ‘Kicking K and Curly C’ I always loved that for some reason. This was early 70s, I definitely didn’t learn ITA. I guess it was mix of look and say, and phonics.

For the Latin point, absolutely didn’t learn in my state primary, we learned very little of anything except working our way by ourselves through maths workbooks. I did learn Latin in my state comp, which was an ex-grammar. I think it was the only comp in the county though that taught it, so not usual.

Latin was common in secondary private schools and grammar schools in this era. But we can hardly call it very common at a population level (which is what’s relevant for this discussion) when the majority of children in the UK did not attend either of these types of school, and even within private and GS not everyone learned Latin.

(the claim re Latin being common in primaries can easily be examined and debunked, of course).

Same age, "learned" with ITA (what a total waste of time that was, miracle any of use learned to read at all) and did Latin at state comprehensive school.

Mind you, Latin was a piece of piss compared to ITA!

I feel safe to express that here though. I am shocked! And I want to talk about it! Because it’s making me think do we have that here too? I literally am close to someone this nearly happened to - what are the chances?

The Sun assumes reading age of 9 while Guardian requires 14.

18% of adults in UK are functional Illiteracy. So around around 6.6 million people in England have low literacy skills at or below Level 1, meaning they can struggle with unfamiliar texts, bills, or official documents.

Phonics has apparently increased decoding ablities - which you'd expect but comprehsion skills are still lacking so overall reading not improved even in younger population. However in Wales teaching reading still left up to individual schools - so phoincs usage is up to the school - and reading and exam results are behind England even compared to similar social economic areas.

In US it's 21-28% fall at or below Level 1.

Again, you are describing phonics - in particular, the blending aspect of phonics.

I learned to read in the 60s. My feeling was that it was phonics based but I wasn’t sure. I know other schools nearby used ITA but we had a series called Happy Venture Books - Dick & Dora, Nip & Fluff anyone? I had to google to see what this used and it says a mixture of look and say and phonics. The first 30 words were whole words to get started and then introduced more using phonics. I can remember being encouraged to sound the word out, broken down into parts but it was never called phonics.
I also learned Latin in my grammar school and it taught me not just the basis of many words but also English grammar -far better than in English lessons.

As I explained, I am sounding out the word as a continuous whole. Not sounding individual letters.

Sounding individual letters makes no sense because we don't pronounce words as individual letters.

I agree. I didn't learn to read through phonics (started school in 1959) neither did my daughter London in the 80s. Phonics was introduced later not at the beginning.

As a teacher when I had to teach through phonics(it's not how I was trained)I found it worked for most children but not all. My dyslexic grandson only learned to read when phonics was abandoned. I think some of the terrible spelling nowadays is due to over reliance on phonics.

Pretty much this. Although I never really feel I can feel the difference between, say, a d and a t if there isn't some vowel sound after it. I just make a weird sort of tappy sound that isn't as much like the consonant.

I did Latin in a UK Grammar school in the 60s

I used to teach and disliked phonics for two reasons:

1. I think it makes learning context harder as they are just learning the sound of the word
2. Spelling takes longer to get as kids learn to sound with phonics.

Something I found ironic was phonics was pushed for children who have issues like dyslexia. I always struggled to work the sounds out and break them down. I later found out I had dyslexia .

If that’s the case how was I able to read new words as a child and teenager when I wasn’t taught phonics? I was a very good reader from a young age but had no idea what phonics was until my own DC started school but somehow I managed to do an English lit degree.

My mum definitely did. But she’s 70s now. She found learning French really easy apparently due to learning Latin.

I have never heard of Latin being common in state primaries.
Grammar schools yes.
But no other state schools.
And my connections go back a long way before even I was at school.
So I'm slightly puzzled by this.

How are you getting ddddooooogggg if you aren’t looking at each letter though? You are describing blending phonic sounds. The alternative would be to just look at the word ‘dog’ often enough that you just recognise its shape. We do this with ‘the’ and ‘he’, because they can’t be sounded out (and are very common). However, if you wanted to read the word granodiorite or electroencephalographically, you’re likely to break it down into the phonic sounds, plus a bit of recognising some parts (like gran or electro because you’re able to recognise to the ‘whole word’ for that part).

Also, schools teach children to say d- not duh, no vowel sound attached - just the shortest possible sound with your mouth in the correct position for that letter. It is usually parents who aren’t trained in phonics that say duh o guh.

At my state girls' grammar school (I started there aged 11 in 1975) if we'd done well at French in first year, we were offered a choice of Latin or German from second year to O level. I regret to this day taking German instead of Latin, I don't know why I picked it. As far as I know, Latin wasn't taught in local primaries.

I haven't a clue how I learned to read, but it was probably through Look and Say. I remember Dick and Dora, and Peter and Jane books. I know I picked it up quickly and had a reading age much higher than my actual age. I was read to at home a lot, too. My DC, born in the mid-90s, learned through phonics and DH and I used to read to them at bedtime long after they could read fluently for themselves. They all still read a lot.

The actor Kevin Whately was in Look and Read as Geordie Racer's Dad. (Before Sgt Lewis in Inspector Morse). It was a very good programme and did really help some of our struggling readers.

The "Mississippi Miracle" refers to Mississippi's - one of the poorest states- rapid rise from 49th to the top 10 in national fourth-grade reading scores over a single decade.

One major thing was embracing phonics - so if they want to raise reading rates they have home grown programs that have shown results.

Research I've seen say about 80% of kids work out phonic underlying reading what ever teaching method used even whole word - they work out underlying patterns themselves.

With phonics the remaining 20% about 19% get reading and assoicated encoding spelling quicker and better with phonics.

I was taught whole word method- lots of using sentence context a useful skill but means unkown words can not always prounounce - and spelling huge issue. I'm relying on a wide vocabulary knowing words having heard them in conversation or had them read to me at some point and working out an approiate word if I can not read one in that sentence that makes sense in context. So similar spelled names in reading books are a real pain - even if out loud they are clearly different or words that mean similar and are spelled similar. I know basic one letter sounds but letter combinations never worked out I am dyslexic though as are my DC - learning them to teach my DC added to my tools.

I think phoincs being taught to them has made the issues slightly less than I had same ages but also give them more tools to use. They still misprounce/misread words and spelling never been great but they are not so bad speller checkers are useless as they were at one point for me.

What you describe is still phonics. You seem to be hung up on the sounding out part whilst completely forgetting about the blending aspect.

The difference is that phonics involves sounding each individual letter.

If we use the "dog" example, then a child using phonics would look at that and say
"duh"
"oh"
"guh"

Which is useless, because sounding each individual letter doesn't allow you to sound out the word as a whole.

The way I learned, and the correct way to sound out a word, is to move across the word while sounding it out as a whole.

So if I never seen "dog" before, I would move along the word while sounding out the word as a whole, and it would sound like

"dooooooooooogggg... ah yes, dog."

Or for the "invaded" example in the original post, I would look at that and say

"innnvvvaaaadeed."

The word should be sounded as a whole. Sounding individual letters is silly.

Try it with French:

L'hmuan bdreoit peut lirie du txet mÊme si les ltretes sont mléeangrumes."

I’m a little confused in this case by what you mean when you say reading the word.

so for example if I look at a word in French I can usually say it (pretty accurately) but rarely know what it means.

are you meaning that people look at (for example) the word

doctor
and can’t say it out loud?

or that they can say it out loud but don’t know what it means?