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?

OK. I think I see what you are saying. It's kind of a pure way of testing their knowledge of phonics, Yes?

So if a child can read real words but not nonsense words, then we would guess they aren't reaching this outcome using phonics, but by whole-word methods, and therefore that they won't be able to cope with unfamiliar words in real life because they won't know how to decode them?

"If you can't decode it, it remains unintelligible to you."

You guess based on context relying on what the rest of the sentence or paragraph is saying.

I really didn't link sound and how words were spelt or what shape they are - I either knew how to type/write a word or would have no idea and relied when reading on word shape so similar looking names would trip me up and still occasionally can. Whole words shapes would link to that word which was said like that.

Despite that I had high reading age and was an avid reader - spelling was bad though.

Teaching my DC phonics has improved my spelling. I can now pronounced unfamiliar words, usually now only Latin dinosaur names, and I now seem to automatically split words up. Phonics is a very useful tool.

Well I couldn't have read nonsense words - would have had no idea where to start with pronouncing and if they came with no context couldn't guess what they might be.

That why I always thought the idea of reading nonsense words to test reading made very obvious sense.

I don't think it is always a black and white distinction between whole word memorising and phonetics.
I have noticed ds using both, starting with whole words early on, and then using both.
What I do think is that currently the teaching methods seem to over complicate things.
In ds's maths homework this week, he was given a set of sums to do. Then he was asked to say what other methods he could have used, what the quick way was, and could he explain it.
He didn't really get the question, and neither did I. My friend who happened to be round at the time, and happens to be a mathematician, didn't really get it either.
What I do feel very strongly is that they have been using phonics in schools for years, and yet so many children leave school basically unable to write a decent letter, for example.
You learn what interest you, and I learned to read because I was surrounded by great books and I wanted to be able to read them on my own.
If the books are not capturing the imaginations of children, no amount of phonics will ever get them reading for pleasure, and reading for pleasure is what creates literate people.

My DD was taught phonics at school and home. She still couldn't read at 8yo. I then took the executive decision to try to teach her by memorising the shapes of words. It involved a lot of tracing paper.

Which was quite something, as I was a bit of a phonics evangelist.

Within 3 months, her reading age had jumped from 4y to 6y4mo. As ascertained by the school tests.

Phonics was just NEVER going to teach my DD to read.

Phonics worked for me, it worked for my Dbro, it worked for my DS1 and my DS2, and will probably work for my DS3. But it was never going to work for my DD.

Nonsense words today but MN baby name finder tomorrow? Just thought I'd throw that in

^^if the above reads badly it is because I am knackered and ready for bed!

The problem with word recognition is yhe brain is only capable of memorizing 3-5000 words so unless the child has worked out how to decode then you are limited to how much you can read.bIts called functional illiteracy.

I don't actually remember learning to read so no idea which method was used, I have no idea about phonics really, so just bumble about helping ds1 sound things out, he is doing ok.

I was way beyond functional illiteracy bruffin though my spelling was always lagging years behind - but I do have an exceptionally good visual memory as does at least one of my DC.

So I find that figure a bit suspect - perhaps I'm at some extreme end or something.

Thing is mixed method with my DC has caused problems - and I strongly suspect a pure start with phonics none of the looking at pictures or guessing crap their school does and they'd have had fewer issues. Ended up doing a lot of phonics at home to make up for the school and they've flown.

I can image there may be a few DC were the opposite is true - however I thought the latest research found the more DC were helped with good only phonics grounding at the start of reading.

Nowthen, the combination thing makes sense really, dd was an early reader, she could read a bit before nursery, maybe by memorisation, once she learned a few phonics it was like bam, she just got it and could basically read anything. Ds1 is a bit of a shock to the system after basically not having to do any work with dd.

Some children do work it out for themselves. Dd just absorbed reading and could read word like architecture within the first term of school.

It's odd isn't it that for for some children it's so easy and others such a struggle, obviously they mostly level out in the end.

I was taught to read without the use of phonics. My spelling is awful and I really struggled with English at school. I think that many children worked the phonics code for themselves with look say.

DH was taught to read with a weird code in the 1970s and his spelling is worse than mine.

My first encounter with phonics was when my son learnt to read and I think its the best way to teach reading in most cases. Ds is surperb reader.

I think in an ideal world children would have nothing but pure phonics for the first two years of primary and then other methods would be introduced in year 2. I think that expecting children to use mixed methods from the start is far too confusing. English is a complex language and I feel that if you start simply the child builds confidence.

I wasn't taught phonics at all (in infant school 1982-1985) and I was a very good reader and good at spelling.

Like nowthen, I have noticed my DD using both. They do jolly phonics and thrass at school but they also come home with lists of 'hotwords'- high frequency words- which they are supposed to memorise. Bizarrely, my DD will sometimes read 'and' for 'the' and vice versa. She knows it's a hotword but sometimes picks the wrong one!

My mum was a (fantastic, if I may say so) primary teacher. She believed in using a range of methods and would group children in her class according to their learning style.

That was my main point really Viviennemary. All of the information I have gathered from friends hail phonics as a revolutionary new method. Some are doing it, some aren't. It's quite a hot new -old- thing among my friends with older children and I was quite surprised that they didn't know of it. You know, having gone to school and being able to read themselves. I really hadn't realised that some people just didn't do phonics!

Having read this thread I think I may have had a mixture now. I could read before school but have no memory of my mother actively teaching me, and remember knowing some of the words we had to read phonetically already. Probably I learnt them at home with look and see.

Glad I started this thread, some good information here!

Yes, I think grouping kids according to learning style is a great thing to do-they are all so different.

The problem for us I think was that ds basicallly absorbed reading kind of on his own (I would answer his questions, eg if I was reading him a story he would ask "which word says "Thomas"? etc) and in the mornings, being unwilling to get up at 6 am, I would dump a load of books on his bed, and he somehow started reading. I call it reading through parental laziness!

I never knew about phonics until he started school, at which point I sort of got told off for teaching him the names of letters, rather than the phonics.
They would insist that he was simply memorising, and encouraged him with phonics, at which point he began speaking phonetically! (Very weird!)

I am not boasting about my child's reading, since it was nothing I did, and ds is probably behind other children in other areas of development.
I was the same, and have always been able to skim read whole pages, rather than that linear breaking down of words.
I just think they should have gone, OK, he can read. Lets give him some really good books, rather than taking him back to basics, which only confused him (and me).

I can't even remember how I was taught how to read (born 1980, what was popular early '80s) but it must have worked because I always loved reading and consider myself to be good at English and spelling (not perfect!). I struggle with DS (in year two) because he isn't a very good reader or speller and I'm not very patient, and have no idea how to help him. He's great at maths but just really struggles with reading and I find listening to him try to read like trying to get blood out of a stone.

I should have added that DS has been taught purely with phonics and I find it a pain in the arse!

I am finding phonics a pain.

DS1 can basically read, and has just started Reception. Fortunately his teacher has already established that he can read a lot of words, and he knows his alphabet and understands rhyming so he is starting to be able to make a stab at words he doesn't know yet.

DD 4yo is coming home rhyming everything ... mummy car rhymes with carpet, mummy cat rhymes with car, etc etc

She is also spelling out letters - wuh, eeh, ka - that spells PIG :)

teacher said she hasnt quite grasped it yet

My DD uses more than one strategy when she comes across a word she doesn't recognise. The first thing she'll do, before attempting to decode the word using phonics, is to look at the picture for a clue (I know some MNers don't think this is a 'proper' reading strategy but I disagree). The context of the sentence will also often give a clue- both in content and in structure, ie if Chomsky and Steven Pinker are right that grammatical structure is innate, then we must know on some level whether it is a noun/verb/adjective etc that is needed at a particular place in a sentence (acknowledging that many children and adults might not know the labels - their brain still know what 'fits' where).

I think an attempt to phonetically decode can sometimes come later than some of these other strategies.

I was taught by 'look and say'. By the end of infant school I was reading C.S. Lewis, so it evidently worked for me. I now teach a mixture of phonics and word shape recognition, as well as how to use picture cues, words within words, etc. So phonics isn't the only way, but it is good. I can't really fathom how I learned to read without it, to be honest. I knew the word 'Bedford' before I started school, because I read it on the front of lorries. The first word I remember recognising in school was 'build' and it took off from there. I suspect I have a facility for learning words and thus got 'lucky' on the system. I am glad that the current system seems to rely less on some mysterious 'alchemy' and more on methods you can measure. At teacher training college (late 80s-early 90s) I was taught, 'We don't know how children learn to read...' I'm relieved to learn that apparently we now do!

OP, I wish, in some ways they'd call it 'learning to read' too. A reluctant learner recently asked me, 'Why do we have to do phonics?' I read to him from a 'Dirty Bertie' book until he laughed and then I said, 'That's why - so you can learn to read and pick any book that takes your fancy.' Imagine all that sounding out and singing about eggs in a pan and not knowing why? Poor kid!

Sorry - I also should have agreed that, no, it is not new. I'm pretty certain my mum learned to read by a mix of phonics and look and say ('Janet and John' wasn't a phonetically based scheme, was it?) in the 1950s.

There more to reading than phonics. Phonics is just one method and other methods work as well. Otherwise most mumsnetters would not be able to read this thread.

The local Deaf School manages to teach profoundly deaf children to read without any phonics. These children manage to get GCSEs, some do A-levels and even (Shock! horror!) go to uni. The particular school has been rated as outstanding by OFSTED as well.