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?

Most bilingual children are not at bilingual schools and surrounded by other bilingual families. The extent to which it is appropriate to push one or two languages once children start school does also depend on the child's exposure and environment in both languages. One of the main problems with research that I have read into the teaching of reading to bilingual children is that the research does not describe or differentiate the different types of environment in which a bilingual child may be growing up.

How good is your DC's German, noramum? My DC's majority language is English (which is nominally the minority language.) They speak English above the level of an average monolingual English child. It would make no sense to delay teaching them to read in English, especially as French schools choose to wait until Year 2 to teach reading in French. That would mean waiting until year 3 to start teaching reading in English.

And I disagree about the literature on bilinguals learning to read sequentially. Please link to research which supports the sequential approach.

noramum,

From my reading of international research into reading it appears that German children are taught to read with phonics as a matter of course. So children taught in Germany should be fine. Greythorne's problem is that the child is being taught by a method which conflicts with phonics teaching and even conflicts with French govt advice on the teaching of reading.

Three days may not be a very long time before making a judgement, but no good phonics instruction ever begins with giving children lists of words to learn as 'wholes'.

Exactly, MaizieD

Greythorne - your DD1 (and, in due course, DD2) will be just fine of course, like my DD, because you being you will make sure the right thing happens (however you have to engineer it)

Best of luck Greythorne. As Bonsoir says, you'll make it happen no matter what.

As an aside to an earlier comment, I (and I imagine a lot of posters on here) would want their DC to be of an equally high standard in maternal + second language. I think it's a terrible shame that many ex-pats I know are happy for their DC to speak and read/write fluently in French and only speak English fluently. Practically, this is a great problem if they later want to study at a UK university (as many do). But even if they don't, the English language is such an important language to master in it's written form for many careers.

LeBFG

I completely agree. When we first set out on the bilingual journey, I briefly made the sad assumption that our children would never be able to write in English as well as they would in French, based solely on the many bilingual kids we knew, whose parents also seem to accept this as reality.

When I dug a bit deeper and met other families who were really committed to true bilingualism, I realised what a silly, lazy myth that is.

An extreme example of this is an Australian woman whom I met last week who told me that none of her three girls, aged 13, 10 and 9, speaks to her in English. And of course, none of them can read or write English. She just shrugged when she said this. But when I queried this, she has never undertaken formal schooling in English, never been really strict about OPOL and never ensured quality exposure in English.

I will walk over hot coals (and we really do make many, many sacrifices) to ensure my DDs are balanced bilinguals, on all scores, speaking, reading and writing. Hence my concern from the get go about the French school apparently employing some retrograde reading method. I take this bilingual lark very seriously!

Excellent Greythorne. I will be doing the same thing!

Funny, I met a French/English couple where the English woman, who works as a literary translator, spoke to her DC all the time in French. This just seems weird to me (cooing to a baby in language not your maternal tongue?!) but that aside, what a shame that that the DC won't have the gift of being truely bilingual in the way their has mother clearly profited from.

Various hieroglyphic languages don't correspond to modern sounds. (They may have corresponded to ancient ones.) Incidentally Chinese does have a Romanised transcription method called Pinyin. But we should try to avoid these ideological debates about whether or not the entire universe is phonetic or not! (It doesn't matter anyway.)

"to ensure my DDs are balanced bilinguals, on all scores, speaking, reading and writing"

On this note, do any of you know which London schools offer summer courses for children? We are thinking of enrolling DD into a course when we are there next summer, with the aim of boosting her language skills.

I sent my DD to sports day camp at Tonbridge School (not London...) when she was 4 and 5, and this summer, when she was 7, she went to the US to a residential summer camp for 3 weeks. She came back speaking very fluent American . Definitely good for language skills!

"But we should try to avoid these ideological debates about whether or not the entire universe is phonetic or not! (It doesn't matter anyway.)"

It's not an ideological debate. It's a basic definition. Phonetic is the correct term for any language which involves making a sound. The phonetics of an utterance are affected by accent and assimilation and are too variable (between speakers, and even between utterances of the same speaker) to be any practical use in terms of reading and writing, other than when describing exact speech using IPA (which can be used for any language).

"Phonetic is the correct term for any language which involves making a sound."

As opposed to languages that don't involve making a sound?

Exactly!

Yup - that's why I specified sign language and mime way earlier in the thread.

Bonsoir - I had a slightly more formal language education in mind - reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar etc.

I heard that some schools provide summer courses (as preparation for their entrance exams?) and thought this could be interesting for DD, although we don't intend to send her to a UK school for at least the next four years.

Was it not clear to you two that the use of the word "phonetic" on this thread was re spelling? Spelling of the spoken word, that is.

Was it not clear to you two that the use of the word "phonetic" on this thread was re spelling? Spelling of the spoken word, that is.

And?

'Phonetic', in the context of spelling, refers to the representation of sounds by symbols. I believe that you talked about 'non-phonetic' words. This a nonsense because in all English words the discrete sounds (phonemes) are each represented by a letter or group of letters. You may not like some of the representations of some sounds, but that doesn't make written English words any less 'phonetic'.

Maybe you should tell Dictionary.com that their definition is "nonsense":

Phonetic spelling... is a system of spelling in which each letter represents invariably the same spoken sound.

Like Turkish. Not like English. Which is what I was saying.

Cote - I've no idea, I'm afraid. My DD gets formal instruction in written English all year round but is constantly in a bilingual environment so our focus is on putting her in a monolingual English environment in the holidays so that she can up her vocabulary, expression etc which tend to get diluted in plurilingual environments.

It's an interesting thing you're doing Bonsoir. I've wondered about ex-pat children - yes, they speak English to a level anyone would call 'fluent' but I often hear mistakes. Typically, older children making mistakes really only younger children make like the irregular past participles. And I often find that as soon as you ask teenagers to explain somthing they struggle a bit or choose 'flat' expressions. Hard to explain what I mean really.

I think about how much English is a pivotal part of UK education and yet many children still struggle with the written (and spoken!) language by the time they leave formal education. This puts into perspective how much the ex-pat children must be missing out on.

I met a boy for work the day before yesterday whose mother is English and father is French. He was at school in England in the very early years and then returned to England when he was six and did ten years of French school and passed his bac (a year early) last June. He was at a highly demanding Parisian Catholic lycée and did very well in his bac, and speaks fluent Spanish and German in addition to French and English.

His spoken English is very good, if a little "hyper correct" and old-fashioned in accent (my own DD is a victim of this too, when she isn't speaking American ). However, when he showed me his written English it was of a way lower standard than the English of an equivalently educated English boy - his vocabulary and expression were very limited, although his grammar was correct. When we got into more conversation, he also made some errors with past participles (eg he said "talken" for talked).

returned to France

I'm about to order the first part of Susan Wise Bauer's writing course for DD. (Writing with Ease, which covers four years - it's followed by Writing with Skill). Formal, but solid - to supplement the fill-in-the-blank-type books. (DD won't be at a bilingual school. Her future school does have a special English after-school class for bilingual children, but it's only once a week).

I don't know that course but I am sure that you are doing the right thing, vesela, by working specifically on your DD's writing skills in English.