School teaching "sight memorisation" rather than teaching phonics...what to do?

[Greythorne]

We live in France and are a bilingual family (English - French).

DD1 is 5.9 and in Year 1 in a French school. Last year, in what would have been her Reception year had we been in the UK, I taught her to read using phonics. Thanks to lots of advice on here (waves to mrz and others) it worked really well. It seems to me like DD made the two big leaps in learning to read: she has "got" the concept of sounding out sounds (not letter names) then blending them AND she has learnt a lot of the sounds, so she is reading pretty well. Still a long way to go and we have not covered all sounds yet, but we are getting there very surely.

So, in French school, this is the year they start to teach reading. They are supposed to use phonics, according to government guidelines, but I have heard that many teachers are wedded to older methods, esp the sight reading / "méthode globale" / look and say approach.

It is only day 3 and DD has already been given three lists of words to memorise, not read, just memorise. She has memorised them, but as soon as they are in a different context or even a different font, she is struggling, as she has obviously just memorised the shape.

I keep suggesting that she sounds and blends, but she has never been taught the French sounds, only letter names so far. I have avoided teaching her much in French as I am not French and to be honest, I have got enough on my plate teaching her to read in English! I really thought I could rely on the school to teach her to read in French, esp as she already has the concept of reading down pat.

Any advice?

Yes, I will try to get a meeting with the head.

So hard. I don't really want to put my head above the parapet and single myself out as 'that parent'......

I would speak to the teacher first and explain the situation.

Although I speak French fluently I don't have any experience of teaching reading in French ... however I am surprised to hear of teaching phonetically since French is even less of a phonetic language than English is. I think before you go to the head I would just go and chat to the teacher about it and ask about methods / talk about what you have researched.

what you said about not wanting to stick your head over the parapet, go with it.

No experience at primary level but having been at a French uni, they do like memorizing and not questioning much.

jayne
there are three methods in France:
"globale"
"syllabique"
"mixte"

Although to an English person, it looks likt French is not phonically regular, it is more phonically regular than English.

The are fewer phonemes and fewer graphemes to represent the same phonemes. Take a word like "est"... It looks irregular to us, but if you teach a French-speaking child that the grapheme "est" is pronounced "e" (the "s" and "t") being unsounded, then it is no more comolicated than an English child learning the digraph "igh" is pronounced "i".

Hmm I see your point, but as you can't actually teach a child to break words up and sound out letters very successfully they have to learn by memory lots of combinations such as the example you gave. This is the same in English, as the other example you gave, and shows why phonics alone / sounding out doesn't work, and there always has to be at least an element of learning by sight.

Absolute bollocks.

Gotta love a helpful post!

jayne
what ia your understanding of synthetic phonics?
It is precisely teaching discrete letters of combinations of letters to represent sounds which are then blended together!

Sorry jaynebxl, but yours aren't helpful either. There are very, very few words which are not phonically regular in the English language - and all languages are 'phonetic' by definition!

Discrete letters or combinations of letters

Well, I think feenie's (admittedly blunt) post was rather more helpful than the deeply inaccurate one that preceded it.

Getting back to the problem :)
The school have so far taught her letter names, no sounds. So when DD sees the word "non" she will have a stab at sounding and blending baed on her English exoerience, but comes uo with "en oh en".

I cannot for the life of me figure out ehy for three years of maternelle they have been teaching only letter names not any sounds at all.

Well since you ask about my experience I have taught FS or KS1 for over 20 years and have a masters in language development. I am very familiar with synthetic phonics, as well as other alternatives. I was merely pointing out that there is more to reading than just phonics. Feenie, I am puzzled by your comment about how few words are not phonically regular, since that is quite an unusual viewpoint. All languages are not phonetic. A few years ago I did some dyslexia training in a multi-lingual context which focussed on the fact that some languages are more phonetic than others, and incidentally the more phonetic languages have much lower incidences of dyslexia than the less phonetic languages such as English.

pho·net·ic/fəˈnetik/
Adjective:

Of or relating to speech sounds.
(of a system of writing) Having a direct correspondence between symbols and sounds.

Therefore all languages are phonetic.

I think you are confusing 'phonically regular' with 'phonetic'.

Which words do you think are not, jayne? The majority of words are decodable if you know the code.

Most dyslexia programmes are phonic based, and do not use sight word teaching.

Oh, bloomin' hell, I really did not think this thread would turn into a phonics versus other methods debate!

I'm not sure what exactly your problem is.

Is it that your DD's French teachers are not teaching her to read French in the way you taught her to read English? Are you worried that she will not be able to learn to read French?

DD (7) learned to read in French last year and this is how they started - with letters. She was reading within three months.

Why don't you give it some time and see what happens?

jayne

As long as everyone agrees on the code, the letters are just arbitrary.

Take the word "français". To our English eyes, it looks like it should read "fransays" but it only requires that all French kids are taught the French code (you tell French kids that "ais" is pronounced as "ay" as in français, avais, savais, etc.) for it to work as "phonically decodeable".

They are far fewer variations in French than in English.

Sorry, Greythorne - it is odd when you clearly know what you are talking about.

I have no idea either why they would ignore phonics and use letter names.

I actually am 'that parent' - I stepped in and queried some of the practices ds's school had (I did wait until a term into Y1) like not teaching phonics daily and having most of the year group still learning Reception phonics at that stage, being nearly a year behind. They really didn't like it, and I am not sure it helped.

I gave in and taught ds at home instead. It was harder by then because his self-confidence was rock bottom - don't wait until then is my best advice

I think some people just like to pick an argument, when I only joined the thread because i was intrigued and interested in what happens in the French system. I'm not interested in point-scoring - I think it is what gives Mumsnet a bad name, and is why I stopped visiting for so long.

When My DS was beginning to read in France, I was recommended the book 'Bien lire et aimer lire' by Clotilde Silvestre de Sacy. It uses a phonic method with gestures a bit like Jolly Phonics but without the fun. The head teacher who recommended it did get very good results!

Therefore all languages are phonetic
ah but what about Chinese?
to be honest, OP I would leave the teacher to it, at least for now.

French teachers do not like being questioned.....even less than UK ones! You will not be thanked for your efforts, neither will anything change. Teaching methods are incredibly antiquated there.