What do you think of the Education White Paper?

[Shamster]

Our head went through the key points at last nights staff meeting and the effect was pretty depressing. Sounds stupid but two of us almost started crying! Just wondered if anyone has read it for themselves, rather than picking up whichever bits each paper decides to highlight according to their leanings. If you have; what do you think?

granted I don't think it is Feenie who looks ignorant on this thread.
I'm going to add that all languages are phonetic (as Shams husband will know as a linguist) including English. Where the "difficulties" arise with learning to read and write English in the orthographical inconsistencies.

Most children will already be "tested" internally at 6 to identify those who are struggling so it is simply a standardising of existing practice.

What a ridiculous comment, granted. On the contrary - and my comments are based on valid educational research and fact, as ae the latest proposals. They are not plucked from thin air, you know, and neither is the alphabetic code. Read up on it (perhaps you could start by using the link I gave earlier) and come back then and accuse me of ignorance.

Show me please where I have been 'shockingly rude'.

And I am 'narrow minded' because I know for a fact that teaching children to use picture clues is just guessing? Again, do your research on that particular piece of terrible practice and come back to this thread.

I am totally mystified as to yours and Shamster's problem - debate is apparently now not allowed on MN, and if someone comes on making statements that are absolute hooey, we've all to agree with them, yes?

You are 'narrow-minded' because you refuse, despite all the evidence in this thread, to see that there is more than one way (ie your way) of doing things.

As I stated above, I come at this from a very different perspective to you, because I am not a primary school teacher; I am an EFL specialist (Chief Examiner as well as teacher), and can assure you that from that perspective, your views are not just qwrong, they are laughably ridiculous.

So you have produced some links which 'prove' that English is a phonetic language, have you?

Wel, the internet will allow one to post links to 'prove' almost anything one chooses.

Just for an experiment, I tried typing 'English phonetic language' into google to see if it agreed with you.

The very first article that came up - try it yourself, if you don't believe me - was this one:

www.englishclub.com/esl-articles/200104.htm

Here is the start of the article:

"English is not Phonetic

Josef Essberger

Some languages are "phonetic". That means you can look at a written word and know how to pronounce it. Or you can hear a word and know how to spell it. With phonetic languages, there is a direct relationship between the spelling and the sound.

It is important to understand that English is not a phonetic language. So we often do not say a word the same way it is spelled."

etc etc

Entry no 6 is "Is English the only major non-phonetic language? - Yahoo! Answers"

You're talking nonsense, which is entirely your right, on a free forum.

But it is totally inexcusable to have a go at poor shamster, in an extremely personal way, attacking her competence/dedication as a teacher, whatever views you may have of her strategies for teaching reading.

As I said above, speaking as someone who taught my kids to read using shamster's methods - not yours - I know that they work.

To ignore all evidence to the contrary, is of course your right - though I hope you're less rude to your primary-school aged pupils than you are to your professional colleagues!

You're not required to agree with shamster or I, contrary to your last statement.

Could you explain why you are so determined that we agree with you, thouggh???

Entry no 6 is "Is English the only major non-phonetic language? - Yahoo! Answers"
strange

Can I clarify granted you teach EFL by guessing the word from the picture?

Certainly, with the lower levels we use lots of pictures.

Of course it's not the only method - but no-one was suggesting it should be.

I'm writing some papers for little kids currently - entirely full of rather twee illustrations. :)

Should add, that in EFL, we're not just testing reading skills - that's only 1 of 4 skills.

But to test the other skills, it is important that you are testing that skill, not also reading eg if testing listening skills, they need to tick MC answers that are pictures, not words - because otherwise a candidate whose listening skills were great, but was rubbish at reading, would automatically be disadvantaged.

If that makes sense.

Incidentally, I'm finding the discussion interesting - there should be more crossover between ELT and primary literacy - obviously closely related.

Plus, as a parent with a 4 year-old currently learning to read, I obviously find it very interesting in that way too.

The entire premise of synthetic phonics, Jolly Phonics, Read Write Inc, Floppy Phonics, Rigby Star, Letters and Sounds, Support for Spelling, etc, etc, etc, etc is based on the fact that most of English is phonetically regular, and so almost completely decodeable. All the documents that Shamster is required to use to teach, in fact.

It has been found to be the most successful method to teach most children to read.

Some children would be fine using sight reading. It works for some SEN children - I have said I know two autistic children who learnt by sight reading alone, and that was best for them). But it doesn't work for nearly all children, as synthetic phonics teaching does.

That said, I have absolutely no problem with Shamster using whatever method she likes to teach reading (apart from picture clues). If it works, it's none of my business. What I have a problem with are the purely fictional comments she has made on here, and I have argued them all with her:

"Reading must be taught using primarily synthetic phonics; never mind real books, enjoying what you read or seeing value in it. Never mind the context of the text, which is as important as the actual phonics"

That English is not phonetically regular.

That picture clues are a valid method to teach reading. Shamster should know that it's discredited now - guessing does not help any child, rather it atually disadvantages them.

You still cannot cite a post where I have attcked "her competence/dedication". That's because I haven't.

I don't think that teaching children to read would be the same as teaching English as a foriegn language, and plainly nor does anyone else, which is why different methods are used for both.

I am the fourth poster on this thread to assert that English is phonetically regular - not sure why you have chosen to pick just me up on this. I have patiently explained some words wich Shamster believed were irregular (again, slightly worrying since she has to teach these) and I explained for you the timings of some of the phonics teaching and how it works - none of which can be discredited and all of which happens very successfully across the country, yet you sem unable to discuss this calmly with me. Strange.

Links:
Latest study in Scotland

Report on same project in Literacy and Learning magazine.

US study

Debbie Hep's overview of the alphabetic code.

REading Reform Foundation

Not sure why you think I'm not discussing this with you 'calmly'.

I'm v calm - rather enjoying it, actually.

I haven't bothered to find posts in which you outrageously rude because, I admit it, I can't be bothered - reading through 7 pages of back posts purely to fight someone else's personal battles is not my idea of how I want to spent my Saturday night and just doesn't interet me, sorry. Your comments are blatantly obvious to anyone who is interested; though I doubt anyone apart from you is, and I hardly need to remind you of what you yourself typed.

I take issue with your above post on these specific points:

1. "The entire premise of synthetic phonics, Jolly Phonics, Read Write Inc, Floppy Phonics, Rigby Star, Letters and Sounds, Support for Spelling, etc, etc, etc, etc is based on the fact that most of English is phonetically regular, and so almost completely decodeable."

It's the words in bold that matter, and that you keep repeatedly ignoring.

1. "That English is not phonetically regular."

No, it isn't - you're just wrong there, as above.

Your insistence it is means I find it very, very hard to take any of your other points seriously.

1. I think you're wrong on picture clues not helping. Just from observation. Sure, no-one's claiming they're suitable as the only method, but a poster above has described specifically how helpful they are for her DC, yet you choose to discount this.

As you do any view that is not your own.

"The entire premise of synthetic phonics, Jolly Phonics, Read Write Inc, Floppy Phonics, Rigby Star, Letters and Sounds, Support for Spelling, etc, etc, etc, etc is based on the fact that most of English is phonetically regular, and so almost completely decodeable."

It's the words in bold that matter, and that you keep repeatedly ignoring."

How can I be ignoring them? They are my words! Show me where I have ever said English is 100% decodeable.

"I haven't bothered to find posts in which you outrageously rude because, I admit it, I can't be bothered - reading through 7 pages of back posts purely to fight someone else's personal battles is not my idea of how I want to spent my Saturday night and just doesn't interet me, sorry. Your comments are blatantly obvious to anyone who is interested; though I doubt anyone apart from you is, and I hardly need to remind you of what you yourself typed."

You sound about eight - you have 'bothered' to accuse me of being 'shockingly rude' and of 'attacking her competence/dedication as a teacher', yet you can't be 'bothered' to actaully show me anywhere that this is the case?

Perhaps you couldn't be 'bothered' to read any of the links that you asked for either. You are not calmly debating; you are either shriekingly insistent that I have attacked Shamster, wriggling out of it, or using a blanket insistence that I am 'wrong' without reading any links or considering any of the research - or answering any of my replies to your points last night.

To go back to mrz's post at 17:35:50 - all languages are phonetic. Phonetics and phonics are not synonyms.

English is phonetics because we produce sound to express ourselves in it (or in any language). As a study of the sounds of the language, it's not part of the written version.

In learning a language, people need to make sense of the stream of noise coming out of the other person. This can be done by learning the phonemes of a language - that is, the bits if sound that make a difference to the meaning of what you say. This is what most children do spontaneously as they learn to speak, and teachers/parents enhance by speaking motherese and using rhymes and songs. [As an example, if you listen phonetically to most English speakers, the word "handbag" is actually said "hambag" because of how the mouth moves between the sounds. But we "hear" it as "handbag" because if our phonemic awareness].

This is unrelated to writing, and what us needed to understand squiggles on a page. As these squiggles correspond to the oral language, a bridging mechanism is needed - which is where phonics cone in. It's a system of taking knowledge of which phonemes are represented by which squiggle and learning to blend them together to reproduce speech.

As mrz says, English spellings are very irregular and there are lots of variants to learn. That is however an issue or spelling, not the phonemic let alone phonetic, qualities of the language.

'You are 'narrow-minded' because you refuse, despite all the evidence in this thread, to see that there is more than one way (ie your way) of doing things.

As I stated above, I come at this from a very different perspective to you, because I am not a primary school teacher; I am an EFL specialist (Chief Examiner as well as teacher), and can assure you that from that perspective, your views are not just qwrong, they are laughably ridiculous.'

Ah, so that is why you randomly type any old crap into Google and come up with some amateur 'English Club' website run by a prick who doesn't even know what 'phonetic' means.

So, with Shamster in charge of little kids and you holding the fort for learners of English as a foreign language, we're in a safe pair of hands.

Your level of ignorance is terrifying.

Just to clarify, It's Granted who is coming out with these nuggets of ignorance.

As someone who has many years experience of teaching children your child's age (I'm also a SENCO and Literacy coordinator)I would say that far from helping picture clues can actually hamper children who are taking the first steps to become readers.
There is a profile point in the EYFS reading strand "knows print carries meaning" which is there for a very good reason. Some children really do get stuck on the pictures and struggle to master the words.
Yes there are children (a very small number) who seem to be natural readers and don't use phonics for reading (my son is one of them) but they are very much in the minority. But for the majority of children phonics is the best introduction to beginning to read. Once they have mastered decoding other skills develop context syntax but never guessing.

There are a vast number of children who learn to read without phonics; the Chinese, because the characters of the written language are not related to the sounds of the words.

This means that you have to learn to recognise every single one of them by rote. It can be done, but it produces a very different classroom experience.

Sorry I should have made it clear I meant beginning to learn to read in English

Sorry, didn't mean to sound as if I were criticising you, mrz. I meant rather to follow on. To me, it adds a significant extra burden of rote learning if you tackle an alphabetic language without phonics.

I didn't take it as a criticism but sometimes I type in my own shorthand (I expect people to know what I know and what I mean )so I understand but isn't always so clear to others

^There are a vast number of children who learn to read without phonics; the Chinese, because the characters of the written language are not related to the sounds of the words.

This means that you have to learn to recognise every single one of them by rote. It can be done, but it produces a very different classroom experience.^

It is said that the limit of memory for symbols, such as chinese characters, is 2,000 - 2,500(except in a very few exceptional people). The number of symbols to be learned in order to read chinese is, I have been told by an EFL teacher in China, about 1,800, so within the memory limit.

Brain scans of chinese readers show that different parts of the brain are activated when they read; different from the parts activated when skilled English readers are reading. Their method works for their script but it doesn't work for English.

If one were to try to learn English by memorising whole words one would end up with a quite restricted reading vocabulary as there are some 200,000 words in a standard English dictionary. Even apparently very simple texts, like The Sun newspaper have a vocabulary well in excess of 2,500 words.

I'm afraid that I, too, disagree completely with Shamster and granted when it comes to the teaching of reading. I have seen far too many children at KS3 who have been damaged and demoralised by their failure to learn by to read by picture reading, learning high frequency words as 'wholes' and context guessing.

How do I get the italics thingy to work please?

On either side of each word.

Each word! Blimey, how long does it take to do a whole sentence?