Phonics blah blah blah

[expansivegirth]

This link is interesting from the bbc today ... a 'viewpoint' with various contributors questioning the supremacy of phonics (hurray).

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19812961

remind me masha how many children have you taught to read and write?

And you object to our spelling system not being totally reformed at your behest, don't forget that one, Masha.

And you object to our spelling system not being totally reformed at your behest

I find it strange that people insist on preserving some scribal whims from over 1000 years ago (some, month, love), or 550 years ago (read now, read then), or the spelling mistakes committed by printers in the 15th and 16th century because they spoke no English (friend, ghost) and the dictates of one deranged man (rabbit - habit), all of which make learning to read and write English much harder than need be.

Matters cannot possibly improve while so many people are not even prepared to admit that spelling inconsistencies make learning to read and write much harder than with more regular, more logical spellings.

I also think that only by lots of people working together on this can things be made better, not by following the whims of one individual like Johnson.

Boris or Samuel?

ITA was a totally regular orthography, with enough letters (including new ones or ones with ligatures) to cover all 40+ sounds of English with one grapheme each. Is it something like that you want to see, masha?

Do you know what else is stupid? Imperial measures. We got rid of most of them years ago when we switched to metric. Much easier now.

....except...distances are still measured in miles. Why did we not switch to km and m when we did the rest? Even my KS3 kids can figure this one out. They can tell me that a system where there are 1760 yards in a mile is ridiculous compared to one where there are 1000m in a km. But they also point out that it would be hugely, massively, horribly expensive to make the switch. All those maps. All those road signs. All those speed limits. Confusion would abound, no doubt accidents would occur. So no matter how much sense it would make logically to make the switch, it isn't going to happen.

Same with changing the spelling of the entire English language, I expect.

Now I like furlongs and chains and rods and poles and perches and yards and feet and inches

I like pints

quarts are better

"scribal whims from over 1000 years ago (some, month, love), or 550 years ago (read now, read then), or the spelling mistakes committed by printers in the 15th and 16th century because they spoke no English (friend, ghost) and the dictates of one deranged man (rabbit - habit), " Masha, tell me more! My y6 class would love this.

I'm a TA in a school which uses Read Write Inc. My experience is it seems to work like magic, encouraging reading, spelling and good letter formation, covers blended sounds and singling out "Red Words" which can't be read or spelt phonetically.

I'm all for it.

Red Words can be read and spelt using phonics!!

Changing English spelling would be more complex than changing units of measurement because, as people keep pointing out to masha, the 'change' would have to be based on a standard pronunciation of English. Unlike measurements which remain the same whatever country you happen to be in, the letter/sound correspondences vary quite significantly from English speaking country to English speaking country (not to mention from county to county as in the UK). The reason that millions and millions of English speakers world wide are able to read and understand the same words, but with completely different accents, is that they can assign their own phonemes to the universally understood alphabetic code.

For example, a Canadian phonics programme would teach that the 'ar' in 'marry' is code for the /air/ sound, because that's the way they say it. Fine. We can all read the word and extract its meaning. But what if it were written as 'mairy' in all English texts?

How confused would my NE children be if 'grass' were written as 'grarss' to conform to the Southern pronunciation of the word? That's not the way they say it.

Trying to standardise spelling to one English speaking country's version of the code would set up world wide confusion.

I have never know masha to be able to explain away this little difficulty.

I think that, all in all, it would be better not to respond to Masha. Responding makes the issues seem more confusing than they are. Yes, she writes tripe, but that's not unknown on Mumsnet, and calling her out on it just makes things worse.

Changing English spelling is an interesting discussion, but she needs to take it to Politics or AIBU or somewhere.

"scribal whims from over 1000 years ago (some, month, love), or 550 years ago (read now, read then), or the spelling mistakes committed by printers in the 15th and 16th century because they spoke no English (friend, ghost) and the dictates of one deranged man (rabbit - habit), " Masha, tell me more! My y6 class would love this.

It's a long story and I don't want to break any MN rules by giving u links to any of my stuff.

In brief:
Early scribes did not like short, downward strokes next to each other (e.g. sum, munth or luu - there was no v in ealy English) so they changed u to o.

Adding an extra e and doubling a consonant was a common practice for padding out lines (in - inne, word - worde, shop - shoppe) by early printers.
Most were got rid of again by the pamphleteers of the English Civil War (1642-9) because they wanted to squeeze the maximum of information onto a page, but quite a few still survive (e.g. relative).

The royal scribes did weird things with English spelling when they had to switch from using French and Latin to English after 1430 (end of 100 yrs war with France), like introducing ea for /e-e/ and /e/, e.g. 'treat threat' for earlier 'trete thret/thrette'.

The biggest messing up of English spelling occurred after the publication of Tyndale's New Testament (1526). Its many editions were printed abroad, by people who spoke no English, because possessing an English bible was illegal for laymen in England until 1539. People bought them anyway and learned to read and write with their different spellings. For most people, it was the first and only book they owned.
Tyndale lived in hiding on the Continent. He was hanged and burnt at the stake in 1536 for transalting the whole bible into English.

Because Sam Johnson had far greater respect for Latin than he did for English, he made some changes, such as Shakespeare's 'cittie/citty', 'pittie, pitty' to 'city' and 'pity'. If a word had no doubled consonant in Latin, he liked to drop in English.

Masha: perhaps you could start separate threads about spelling reform?

I know that threads can and do take different turns, but this one was started about how to teach reading to children who are learning right now

Edith, I asked Masha to explain her earlier remarks, because interesting facts like that help my y5/6 class to remember some otherwise difficult spellings. I am sorry if I am spoiling your thread.

I would check masha's "interesting facts" before passing them on as often they are not based on fact ...

Any 'explanation' of English orthography that omits the Great Vowel Shift cannot be considered reliable. As it is such a big subject, it might be better as a stand-alone thread. Not least as there are a number of linguistics graduates on MN who would have interesting contributions but who might not be looking at a phonics thread.

Any 'explanation' of English orthography that omits the Great Vowel Shift cannot be considered reliable.

Really?
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (1999 edition, p 55) says:
?A great deal of evidence has been used to support this interpretation, in the form of the order in which new spellings appeared (such as for /i:/), the use of new rhymes, and the descriptions of contemporary writers.?

^?In the 1980s, as more textual evidence became available.. . this explanation was called into question.
?... what was for so long an uncontroversial issue has become an open question.?^

Having studied many texts with original spellings over the past decade, and also because I speak German and French and some Spanish, I could find no evidence for the vowel shift theory at all.

Languages do change over time. Chaucer?s spellings of ?daunce? and ?plesaunt? suggest that they were pronounced the French way when they first became part of English. There have been noticeable changes in the pronunciation of English by newsreaders since the 1950s.

But the ?vowel shift? theory simply does not stand up to close scrutiny. Most English spelling changes have been whimsical and erratic (e.g. batailles - battells ? battelles ? battles; doune ? downe ? down; beleved ? beleeved ? believed).

what was for so long an uncontroversial issue has become an open question

has happened with literacy teaching too.

Before 1539, the possession and reading of an English bible by laymen was punishable by hanging. Henry?s decree of 1539 made it both legal and desirable.

But the population of Britain was only ca 6 mil then. Until the 1870 Education Act, when it had grown to ca 30 mil (21 mil in 1850, 37 mil in 1910) few children went to school. They learnt to recite prayers and bits from the bible in Sunday schools, but went down mines, up chimneys, helped on farms or swept factory floors for the rest of the week.

The luckier ones who did go to school learned by the method first recommend by by James Dunn in 1766, in his book 'The Best Method of Teaching to Read and Spell English':

1. Begin with words that are absolutely regular,
   in the sense that they are pronounced in the way children would expect.

2. Build into the exercises material that unobtrusively revises earlier work.

3. Give special emphasis to the pronunciation of c and g, the first big difficulty;
   introduce other difficulties progressively....

By the early 1920s employers were complaining that, despite general schooling, many of their new recruits could not read or write well enough for their needs (as reported by the Newbolt commission of 1929). Major surveys of literacy first began in the 1950s and have been consistently disappointing ever since.

So teachers started to experiment with different approaches:
Initial Teaching Alphabet (i.t.a.) for first year of school in late 1960s and early 70s,
Whole Word (Ladybird Janet and John books, ORT books - which most teachers found much better than the Ladybird ones).

Since the early 1990s, gradually turning back to Dunn's approach:
Jollyphonics,
Literacy Hour,
Labours Literacy Strategy of 1998,
Rose Review (2006) and Letters and Sounds (2007)
and many new phonics schemes since.

There is no sign yet that, despite vast increases in expenditure on literacy teaching, literacy standards have improved noticeably.

Masha, can you point to the comparative standards that you say haven't changed much?

Roughly 1 in 5 pupils still leaving primary school with weak literacy skills, and secondary school too.

The SATs have shown slight improvements, but they and their marking keep being changed, and over time teachers learn to teach to tests.
With new SATs in 1999, English SAt scores for 11-yr-olds rose from 64 in 1998 to 71% in 1999, and to 75% in 2000, but then stagnated for 3 years, with 1% gains and losses since.

Secondary teachers have not noticed any difference, other than more pupils making phonic spelling errors.

Rose Review (2006) and Letters and Sounds (2007)
Roughly 1 in 5 pupils still leaving primary school with weak literacy skills, and secondary school too.

And there you have the reason why you see little in your comparisons - children starting reception in 2006 are still in junior school, so their results are not yet known. Also DS1 started school in 2006 and he was not taught phonics in any way like it is now being taught for DS2 who started school last year. So it will be a while for the results to filter through to age 11 and secondary school. Even longer judging by the way that most schools still teach mixed methods.

Since the DSs' school switched to a purely phonics approach a year ago, the increase in children reaching the appropriate reading age (right through the school) has increased by a massive percentage, surpassing the expectations of those who set the guidance as to what increase was expected.