Does anyone else get fed up with the phonics method?

[ProbablyJustGas]

Maybe I'm a bit more stuck in my ways than I thought, but does anyone else get frustrated trying to stick to the synthetic phonics system when working with young DCs reading and spelling?

My stepdaughter's name ends in a y ("ee" sound). She knows how to pronounce her name, and how to write her name, but insists her name is spelled with a "yeh". This is because she's been taught that the letter "y" is a "yeh". I think that's misleading - the letter is "y", and the sounds it makes depends on where it is. "Yeh" at the beginning, yes, but "ee" when it follows a consonant at the end of a word ("carry"). If she's spelling her name out loud with sounds, she should say "ee" and write "y".

She has trouble writing my name, which starts with a "g" like in "general". In her mind, "g" is a "geh" and only a "geh" even though we tell her all the time that it has two sounds. She may not come across too many books with words like "gentle" or "scary" right now, but she will someday.

I didn't grow up with satpin and jolly phonics, so the method is just maddening to me sometimes. I don't want to undermine her teachers - DSD is finally making some progress reading with phonics when she can be arsed with decoding - but it feels like she's missing some important facts about the alphabet sometimes.

It's curmudgeon week on my end...

I don't think there are any reasons why the sounds are the way that they are. They're just are like that. The trick seems to me be to know what the hundreds of permutations of the forty four sounds in the English language are, (about two hundred permutations,) and teach the children all of them. And then when you come across a word that you don't recognise you guess (there are some people who won't admit that guessing is taking place) which of the various sounds that you've been taught contributes to pronouncing the new word.

And if you don't know which of the sounds is appropriate then you just pronounce the word incorrectly. Even phonics can't teach us how to pronounce strange new words (if there's no one to help us,) and we just don't know how to say it.

The reason sounds are the way they are depends on the root of the word - English-Latin - Greek or a multitude of other languages, the history and the meaning.

How does phonics teach the difference between through and trough? Is it part of the "tricky" words that just have to be learnt?

have a look at

www.phonicsinternational.com/unit1_pdfs/The%20English%20Alphabetic%20Code%20-%20complete%20picture%20chart.pdf

Families - there are EIGHT different ways to say ough.
You just have to learn which goes with which words.

Thanks. I guess I can't quite bring myself to buy a load of books etc and learn phonics sounds myself because my son can basically read already. I completely see how it can help with beginning to read - and think Alphablocks is a brilliant programme - but as the vocab that he comes across becomes more sophisticated, it seems less relevant. his teacher has said that phonics should help with spelling as well as reading, but has struggled to explain to him (as have i) why "enjoy" is spelt with a y rather than "enjoi", as he did on his last spelling test, when actually that's a valid spelling, other than "it just is".

Perhaps this is all because, like the OP, I just don't get phonics!

oy is a valid phonic combination.

Yes, but so is "oi" - why isn't it a "noysy toy" instead of a "noisy toy" except that ages back the spelling was standardised as "oi"? That's a history of language thing, not a phonetic thing.

English is such a bugger to learn!

that's very true.
I think it's normally oy at the end of a word and oi in the middle.

so
employ
enjoy
joy
annnoy

but
noise
boisterous
voice
choice

The other words he got wrong in the test were "annoy" (so fits the rule) and "royal" (so is the exception that proves the rule) :)

/oy/ ''royal" -end of a word or end of a syllable.

ough can represent the sounds oe as in though
or as in thought
ou as in bough
oo as in through

the ough in trough is two separate sounds ou and f written gh

Ostensibly the sounds relate to the languages that words originate from, but how do we know how the ancient Greeks pronounced anything, (and countries have regional accents, so) which ancient Greeks would we be copying? How do we know how the Romans pronounced anything? The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were three different tribes and presumably spoke differently. So Anglo Saxon was presumably a mishmash. I think it's possible to theorise that this word should be pronounced in such and such a way. But often nobody really knows.

In the end we take many English pronunciations on faith.

The Ancient Greeks wrote many things that included pronunciation guides - remember that they divided the intelligent from the barbarian by who could speak their language so have many texts on it. Same with Latin. Many of these texts have survived. There are also word plays in many of the writings that only make sense if they are pronounced a certain way. The pronunciation of many words have changed and this is reflected in their spelling (most silent letters used to be sounded) but it certainly isn't a case of 'no one knows' -- there are whole fields of research on this and have been when the spellings of official English were fixed a couple centuries ago.

Nice to see all the discussion about phonics here :-) Thanks for the tips, mrz and maizieD. Very useful to have everyone's input I think.

Fields of research, Derby, are by far the best place for no-one knowing. You show me a scholar who has the definitive answer about anything and I'll show you one who has published the fact that he's wrong.

At least a scholar's answer, while it is not definitive, is formed by an in depth knowledge of the subject. Unless, of course, you believe that knowledge is not a necessary precursor to formulating an answer.

Scholars aren't adversed to having an agenda.

Very few people are averse to having an agenda.

At least the scholars who admit they've been wrong show a genuine willingness to modify their views in the light of (new?) evidence. It's the ones who pursue their agenda despite the evidence who are a worry...