AIBU to think that phonics should just be called "learning to read"?

[lukeiamyourmother]

I was taught phonetically, so was my brother, husband, mother as was every friend I have talked to about this over a range of ages. I can't see any other way of learning to read? I am probably completely naive to this topic but I have overhead so many people praising phonics lately, so many forum posts about it, blogs etc.

Phonics just sounds like such a hot new buzz word for a pretty standard and old fashioned way of learning to read. I am 36 so it isn't even new! In fact I was a bit when someone recently proudly announced that their child was learning phonetically "Its just like, sooooooo great." Er... Doesn't everyone?

Sorry - HumphreyCobbler I'm MN while essay writing and clearly making a hash of both

Phonics is also good for children beginning to write. They can segment words if they have learnt the sounds and can write understandable sentences from an early age.

Going back a few years I learnt to read by a Look and Say method in 1960 and my brother learnt by phonics (ITA) in 1964. So that was another era in which phonics was a new-fangled thing!

kim

"rule" was the wrong word. I meant that children are taught the most common spelling pattern first, then the alternatives later. So to begin with they will use the one they know.

... which is in no way a criticism of phonics, merely an observation.

The thing is, that children who don't learn with phonics would not actually have to learn every word individually.
As others have pointed out, language is not an isolated code that only exists on the page.
We learn language by hearing it as well, and putting it in context.
There does seem to be an assumption that children who learn by taking in the word as a whole are somehow not understanding the meaning of what they are reading.
I would pose the opposite; that often children who are taught to "decode" words are not understanding what the meaning of the word is in context.
Plus, speaking for myself, and not as any kind of expert , I find phonics really frikkin complicated.
It's like learning Latin before you can learn Italian. You don't need to. You just need a few Italian friends around.

Also, what I meant about teachers and methods is that, ime, they do seem to be quite blinkered to other ways of learning.
It sometimes seems as though the method is what they consider important, rather than the end result.
Plus school reading books are shite. Boring stories that probably cover all the necessary bases of the chosen method, but have no charm whatsoever.
Having seen some of the dross ds comes home with, designed, it would seem, to actually extinguish any interest in literature!

no, the assumption is that children who are learning to read by a whole word recognition are not being given the skills to decode new words (or only if they work out the phonic code for themselves).

If you can decode a word then you can read it aloud, and you can link it to the spoken word you already know, or find out what it means if you don't already know. If you can't decode it, it remains unintelligible to you.

Learning to speak and learning to read are two different things. You DO have understanding of phonics. You have just written a clear and correctly spelled message using combinations of letters to represent spoken sounds on the screen.

I have heard the Phonics screening test criticised, because good readers sometimes mistake the "nonsense" words for similar-sounding real words, and thus do worse on the tests. Divorcing words from meaning defeats the whole purpose of reading.

OTOH, children for whom English is a second language may do better here, because they are good at applying the phonics code and won't be as likely to mis-interpret these non-words because they have less experience of the real words they may resemble

the reason I am so passionate about the correct teaching of phonics is because it works really well, and I want the children in my care to learn really well. Not because it is fashionable. The method matters in terms of successful learning.

... sorry, not saying all EAL children are good at applying phonics code.

I was taught to read long before I went to school. I was DC number 5 and my mum wasn't too impressed with the various methods the schools had used with DCs 1-4! Mum used a variety of methods, my favourite being the ELC flashcards we used to spend hours with. A 'one size fits all' method is just stupid.

The really messed up system was the Initial Teaching Alphabet which condemned many children to poor spelling.

It's risible that this phonics business is being presented as a whole new invention of some renowned educationalist. Instead of a system that was used to teach generations of children. Till it was dropped in favour of more trendy ideas.

Xposts

I like the ORT phonics books. They are funny, well-illustrated

no, nonsense words test phonic knowledge, not comprehension (there are other tests that do that). Without phonic knowledge you cannot do reading. If you can decode it you cannot read it.

This is why there is a symbol next to the nonsense words. The children should know that these are not real words.

I do agree Viviennemary. I also love the word risible, a very under used word imo.

My son has autism and can't process phonics at all, he just can't compute the natural link between letters and sounds. But he is learning to read, memorising whole words at a time. There are other ways to learn to read -although yes, of course, phonics is always where you would start before it becomes clear the individual child is not responding.

Pronounced phonetically as rizzable?

The tests alternates nonsense and real words though AFAIK? I can see why a child might mistake a real words for non-words. I real life, we read to gain meaning. Why ask a child to switch off this striving for meaning in order to simply test the teaching method?

The outcome should be that they can read the word. Testing using real words is sufficient, isn't it?

^ that was to Humphrey

YABU it was called phonetics back when I learnt to read, and no not everyone learnt that way, I had a childminder who used to berrate a young boy who spelt his name phonetically instead of the ABC way

we are testing to see if they can decode all the sounds, so that they can then go on to use that phonic knowledge in real word

nonsense words is an effective way of testing their actual knowledge of PHONICS. So that they can then use it to correctly read real words.

it is not either or, it is just testing their phonics!

I am bemused by this. If we were testing their times tables, NO ONE would complain because there is more to mathematical understanding than times tables, what about addition and subtraction etc etc. They would just think we were checking on their times tables

Both ds and dh are dyslexic. Dh was taught using look and say and could not read until he was taught phonics at 10. Ds was taught phonics from 4 and didnt click until he was 7 but neither can spell.

anyway, it has been fun
off to bed now