phonics experts -come and settle an argument

[sausagesandwich34]

scone it's an oldy but a goody!

pronounced to rhyme with cone or gone?

does the magic 'e' come into play?

does the magic 'e' even exist anymore?

Missbopeep masha suggests we all adopt U as the spelling for you as it is works for I [rolls eyes]

Maybe she can write all her posts phonically then- no one will understand what she is saying.

Job done!

You obviously don't visit TES

I'm afraid so

Miss BP
you didn't speak English until you were 14- so ti's not your mother tongue? How you taught it without a degree in the subject is odd too
I am a bit exceptional in my abitlity to learn languages.
I taught in state schools, a girls grammar first, before it became comprehensive. My English was deemed good enough, but like u, my background bothered them initially. I was allowed to continued, because my results were good. Many English teachers only have A level English like me, or not even that sometimes.

campaigning for a reform of the spelling sysem- which is what you want
Because I understand how English spelling aggravates dyslexia, how it makes learning to read and write much more time-consuming, I have no doubt that removing some of its gremlins would improve the situation.

My main aim, however, is to help people understand why there is so much debate about how best to teach children to read and write in all English-speaking countries, with much changing and chopping of methods.

That's why I am so disliked by people who like to pretend that learning to read and write English is no different from other alphabetically written languages. - It makes it much harder for them to sell their piggies in a poke.

People who believe that English spelling was god-given, or that it is an integral part of English culture, hate me too and keep looking for ways to shut me up.

That's why I am so disliked by people who like to pretend that learning to read and write English is no different from other alphabetically written languages.

I've never seen anyone say that to you, ever.

The sticking point for most if when you it is so complicated that most children find it incredibly difficult to learn to read and take years and years, when it would be oh so much easier if we reformed spelling.

All without having any experience of teaching reading at all.

Euphemia that is the question teachers keep asking masha and the one she keeps avoiding.
She fails to understand that most people don't have a problem learning to read and write even with our complex system.
The other important thing she fails to realise is that our spellings reflect the root/meaning of the word.
But most of all she doesn't understand that we quite like the idiosyncrasies of our language.

Masha I need to ask my mum about this but I recall that when my brother was learning to read in the late 1960s, there was an experiment (I think it was limited to certain parts of the country) with teaching reading- it involved first learning to read and spell using a phonically regular code- then having to re-learn to read words as they actually are. It might have been called IPA- will have to research. I know at the time that many parents were up in arms because they saw that children were having to learn twice over. The method was dropped as quickly as it had sprung up.

I am interested in the way you use "u" when you mean "you". This is a bit silly of you. "U" on its own sounds like the short vowel in cup. To make it sounds like "yoooo" it would need another vowel.

How are you going to discriminate in the type of spelling you would like to see used between people using the names of letters and their actual sounds?

I think TBH you are being disingenous in your claim that you want to "educate" people.

What you seem to want to do is continue your campaign to change the language. There is loads on the web about you and the interviews etc you have done- and it's not all about "educating"- you want change.

Our langauge has evolved over centuries and is still evolving.

Initial Teaching Alphabet -ITA

Yep- voila!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet

So you see- it has been tried before- and never took off.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_Teaching_Alphabet

I went to secondary school with children that were taught ITA, they were put in remedial class for year 7, to be retaught the basics.

but it did take off Missbopeep the initial "experiment" was extended and other English speaking countries adopted it, even Ladybird produced books using ITA www.theweeweb.co.uk/ladybird/ita_ladybird.php
The ITA foundation is alive and well and still selling materials.

But that doesn't mean it was a good system. It did my brother no favours- and he is a lot younger than me, so I missed it thank goodness.

I think masha's argument would be that instead of children who had been taught ITA having to make make the transition to conventional spellings everyone should have been taught ITA (or a similar regular spelling system).

I know schools were still using it in the late 80s and the ITA foundation seems to suggest it is still around.

I'm sure she would.

But what a loss to our heritage and the derivations of words.

It's a bit like racism/ nazi-ism- but applied to language.

masha is from Lithuania so doesn't share our affection for our heritage.

As I understand it, ITA was very easy to learn because it was all one to one letter/sound correspondences. It's just that no-one gave any thought to how children were going to change from one system to the other. Which was stupid, but really quite typical of the way education works in this country.

We do have ITA to thank for one of our best known SP programmes, Jolly Phonics. Sue Lloyd taught ITA and she says that it gave her a real understanding of how written English worked and the best way to teach reading. Don't forget that ITA was introduced at a time when 'look & say' methods had taken a strong hold and to many people the idea of mapping discrete sounds to letters was a real novelty.

As far as marsha's spelling reform is concerned, the one point which she has never addressed, though asked to many times both here and on TES, is which accent is she proposing English is respelled to, given that it is spoken world wide in a huge range of accents? At present, no matter what your accent, and thus how you pronounce it, the same written word has the same meaning to anyone who reads it. Respelling to a specific accent (which is how it would have to be done) would leave huge chunks of English speakers completely baffled (just like ITA did) as respelling alters the 'sounds' of the word to them.

I have dyslexia and a lot of my spelling mistakes are because i write things phonetically (thank goodness for spell check) my brain does not seem to remember the correct way of spelling words. having said that maybe if i had learned i a bit more phonics rules as a child i would have a better chance of getting things correct. I have no problems reading though just a bit slower so when i see a word i know it is correct.

I think if the language was to change i would probably be better at spelling but reading it would be awful, i struggle to read my daughters writing because as yet her spelling isn't great so everything is phonetic. I also hate text speak. But more than this i think the words would look horrible. Even as someone who struggles with the language, there is a certain something that makes it lovely.

masha is from Lithuania so doesn't share our affection for our heritage.

That much is clear.

Rather than campaigning to scrap the language which has evolved over centuries, why not focus on teaching people how the words have evolved.

Entymology is fascinating- and with my older pupils it often helps to tell them the derivations of words from French, Norse, latin, etc etc. Much more "educational" than scrapping our heritage. And sometimes, appreciating the orogins even helps them with spelling- especially prefixes and suffixes.

But that would ruin her quest to make use all spell you as U

Magic E is still taught in some schools but apparently is seen as old fashioned nowadays. It's a split digraph. As for bath/barth, it does mention the regional differences for this word in the letters and sounds book for phonics.

Do you mean U ( as in cup) or U as in use?

And what about A- as in ant or as in arrrrrrrrrgh!