Ymeyer, again with the straw men. You have a real talent for setting up false opposition.
Thousands of children learn to read every year without any formal phonics exposure. Most of my DCs did this, two at age 3.5 and the others from 4 to 4.5. None suffered any damage from this horribly dangerous practice. Some of their friends did the same thing. Again, no sign of damage to any of them. Their progress through school has been remarkably unimpeded by their bypassing of phonics.
Your suggestion that reading to young children might be dangerous to them is incredibly bizarre -- the idea that this practice should be warned against is just plain funny. Funny but sad too. Not funny though is your idea that a play-based curriculum for 4 year olds is a waste of time. Play time is time children will never be able to make up? pfft.
Reading aloud to a child while the child sees the pages as they turn and looks at the pictures is a very enjoyable activity. It is also a very important pre-reading activity for many reasons. Through being read to a child picks up the rhythm of English reading. She hears new words that she might not be exposed to in the course of daily conversation. She sees the printed words frequently, (and may learn a whole book off by heart just by frequent exposure) and may be able to do what my DCs did and learn to read that way, just by suddenly associating the letters with the words they heard. As DD3 said to me when she started, "The letters disappeared!" There really are more ways of approaching reading than through phonics. Children's brains are not all wired the same and they can learn in a multitude of different ways, alone and simulatneously. And no children's brains will be hurt in the process. A child who has been exposed to a lot of conversation, songs, stories, rhymes and words in general (all that silly playing, etc.,) throughout her life will be able to learn to read using both methods, which are not mutually incompatible, but are in fact often complementary. DD1 went from The Runaway Bunny (her first book, which she read to me after hearing and seeing the story hundreds of times, pointing to each word with her finger, with nice inflection for speech, and pausing for punctuation) to Nancy Drew in two years.
Phonemic and phonological awareness and the realisation that the letters represent the sounds of language are essential precursors to reading. Paper on the importance of phonological awareness and its usefulness as a predictor of subsequent reading strength, confirming other studies on the same subject, by Stanovich, Cunningham, Cramer. (Some pre-reading activities that can enhance phonological awareness and /or awareness of the written word/sound link are identifying opposites, identifying matches/ similarities, rhymes and song, sequencing and pattern activities, and activities that model left to right progression. All can be accomplished in the course of play.)
Stoatsrevenge, I don't think you misread the post at all and sadly you are not getting the wrong end of the stick imo.
The 6 sounds of 'ough' (see the long list) are basically memorised, and read based on what letters surround them. True sounding out or phonic reading of ough is not possible. Reading this sound is based on seeing the context, that is, the whole word and maybe even the context of the sentence. Sounding out and building the words by blending is not possible using the sounds alone in isolation from the context. The other words, among them 'was', 'said', 'one' (there are many more) must also be simply learned.
All over the world, children are taught to read English from age 5-7, and by and large, it works. In the UK by contrast, children are now being taught at age 4. The move towards a play-based curriculum in Ireland has been noted earlier. In Scandinavia, play for the sake of play is valued for preschoolers (which means mostly children under 6) with no excuse required.
'Research studies that have examined the effects of differential instructional approaches on young children?s achievement and motivation indicate that if a programme is overly-focused on formal skills, it is more likely to provide opportunities for children to fail, generate higher anxiety levels and to develop a higher dependency on adults, promoting in children negative perceptions of their own competencies (Sylva and Nabuco, 1996; Stipek et. al 1995 cited in OECD, 2004). It has been suggested that such activities may have little meaning for young children aside from the fact that success at them pleases their parents (Bettelheim, 1987).' From Play as a Context for Early Learning and Development by Margaret Kernan, a paper that informed the Irish Department of Education's decision to move towards a play-based curriculum. The paper includes 7.25 pages of references to studies bolstering the author's argument, if you want evidence.