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?

Are you talking to me, greythorne?

Yes!

:)

I don't think in sounds. I don't sound out words. I don't hear sounds in my head at all. I think and read in whole words.

How would you read a word you have not come across before?

Which maizie has just said is impossible

"And as you read these words now are you quickly sounding out the letters in your head. Latest brain research shows that that is exactly what we do - but too quickly to register it."

Er.. no. We culod sracbmle the wrods in wtehaver form we wsih. As lnog as we awlyas miatiann the odrer of the frist and lsat ltteer the txet wlil sltil mkae snese.

It very rarely happens. But if I do, it doesn't matter what it sounds like as it's really unlikely I'd have to read it aloud. I just remember the whole word and how to spell it, not what it sounds like.

Jolly

Think of a longish word you have never come across before, like the name of a Russian president. You would have to sound out little sections to work out how to pronounce it if you had never heard anyone say it outloud.

Ah, that old chestnut. Hoping someone will show you that myth debunked soon, cote - can't link on my phone.

"How would you read a word you have not come across before?"

You would, if the language it is really written phonetically.

Like in Turkish, where every letter is read in only one single way and there is no such thing as letter combinations. Italian is also pretty much the same, except 2-3 simple rules on letter combinations.

So the word "hephetamunk" - would you be able to have an attempt at pronouncing it Jolly?

Jolly - but you've learned to read already. What someone who knows how to read does is very different from what someone who is learning to read needs to do.

And it'd be interesting to sit you down with a relevant expert and see if what you think you do is actually what is happening!

Here's the mixed up letters thing debunked:

scienceavenger.blogspot.fr/2007/12/cambridge-word-scramble-study-its-fake.html

I don't think in sounds. I don't sound out words. I don't hear sounds in my head at all. I think and read in whole words.

I doubt if any skilled reader 'thinks in sounds' (unless, like those of us who teach phonics, you have to be aware of 'sounds' most of the time). But learning to sound out and blend is the first step towards achieving rapid, automatic, unconscious processing of words so that they ultimately appear to be read 'on sight'. No-one thinks twice about it until they encounter beginning or struggling readers.

The problem is that reading theorists took the end result (rapid, automatic and unconscious processing) and said that as skilled readers appeared to read words as 'wholes' that was how children should be taught. They never stopped to consider that the process might have to be learned incrementally. And what an awful lot of bother and misery their theory has caused over the last few decades.

What do you do when you encounter a new and complex word?

Heavens, this thread is moving fast.

Which maizie has just said is impossible

I said it was impossible to learn the entire English lexicon as 'wholes' ; meaning, without any reference to the reason for the letters being arranged the way they are in each word.

Yes, if I needed to read it aloud I think I would have to do that, but it is not something I would do if I wasn't reading aloud.

Just wikid a list of Russian presidents.

Medvedev is a good one as it's fairly lengthy and has lots of syllables. I would break it down into smaller 'words' in order to spell it - as with compound words - but I only sound it out if I try to say it aloud.

I doubt anyone spells words like photosynthesis without breaking it down into at least two parts, but that's different from phonics when the individual sounds are sounded out.

I think.

Cote

It doesn't matter if the language is very phonically regular or not. If I tell yoy I have named my dog:

Pipdogpopdogmopdogflipdog

You can't know how to pronounce his name without breaking it down into simpler sections. All those sections pip dog pop dog mop etc are completely regular phonically but the dog's name is no more transparent for being ponically regular. Still needs to be decoded. Just as weird and wonderful Turkish invented dog's name would need to be.

"Surely the whole, tricky words are just large phonemes/graphemes that need to be learned?"

Is there a rule for how to correctly read I will now READ as opposed to I have READ?

And how about tough and plough or none and lone? If those are what you mean by "large phonemes", then what is the difference between learning those and simply memorising how those words are written?

*jolly

When chikdren encounter a new written word, it is just like an adult encountering a Russian president name for the first time. They and we break it down into sections that they kniw how to pronounce.

We call them phonemes. A phoneme can be a single letter like the "d" in dig, or a series of letters like "ght" in knight.

Maizie - that's what gets me, how amazingly dumb it was of the theorists to make the bizarre assumption that the way someone who can do a thing does it is how someone who can't do it learns. Baffles me. Someone who has learned to drive doesn't need to think about what order to slow down, use the clutch, use the gear stick, indicate etc. etc. etc. at a roundabout, while steering at the same time. But you can't just chuck a learner driver in a car and say 'off you go'!

"I said it was impossible to learn the entire English lexicon as 'wholes' ; meaning, without any reference to the reason for the letters being arranged the way they are in each word."

That is how we learned it, so obviously it is not impossible. After a while, you recognise the similarities without someone having to give you a list of all the words written and pronounced in a similar way.

Who is 'we'? I learned to read in England and we certainly did break down words into sounds. Consider the thickness of a decent dictionary - I really don't think anyone could learn all those words by sight without any clue about the sounds.

Yup, I'd like to sit down with an expert too! :)

I haven't seen hephetamunk before. I presume it's either hep het A munk or hefet a munk.

edam,

What gets me more is all the thousands of teachers and education 'academics' who blindly followed the theorists and who still believe that 'look and say' is a valid teaching strategy.

Phonics didn't work for dd at all. She couldn't grasp it and fell very far behind, she couldn't even sound out two letter words.

In frustration after a year and a half of getting nowhere I switched to memorization at home. Within a month she'd jumped to top of her class. At the end of last year she scored above average in literacy and is reading novels... She's 7.

Phonics doesn't work for a lot of kids, it's too abstract and disjointed. many children progress better with 'old fashioned' methods.