Why don't we use 'magic e' any more?

[Pozzled]

And is it a problem if my child is taught in that way? I'm not very impressed (especially when I've already taught her 'split digraph') but want to know if it really matters.

dipthong whatsit phoneme b*llocks.

they're five.

i only learned what a magic e was last week when my kids did it at school

it seems pretty magic to me

i read with five year olds at school - they are applying the rule all over the place.

makes sense to them. works. pretty cool.

I sang the magic e song to my 6 yr old DD (I too remember Wordy!) recently

the problem with applying rules that don't exist expansivegirth is that you are lost as soon as you hit the majority of words where it doesn't work ... basic words like have, live, love, give, none, more, some ....

You're not though, mrz. Most children are usually bright enough to understand that there are some ways/rules of helping them read words but that those rules don't always apply. It doesn't mean that they aren't still a useful tool for them.

So later is /l/ /ai/ /t/ /er/, 5 letters, 4 sounds.

It does seem silly to say that there is a rule about something that has as many exceptions as inclusions.

How is telling a child a rule that doesn't apply for more than 50% of words a useful tool Thewhingingdefective?

Maybe not rule, but tool.

perhaps I'm biased as my own kids have not learned to read by rigidly applying rules

Whatever you call it - rule, tool, trick - it does serve a useful function, although perhaps not for everyone, but then that could be applied to every teaching and learning method.

I think the problem is our language has its roots in so many different languages.

Our language is full of exceptions, we could write as many rules/tools/whatever you want to call them as we would like to but there will always be exceptions, of course you could write something to include each exception as well and just say it only actually applies once or twice in the whole language but I am not sure that gains us anything either.

At the end of the day some things just have to be learned and I think we just have to accept that.

like "i before e, except after c, except for the ones that don't", then learn a list of the ones that don't. My DC have always enjoyed the fact that "the rules" don't work lots of the time.

If anything doesn't work, it's just tricky - so there's lots of "tricky" Ys but I use magic E rather than tricky E, because a Y is always out to trick you, but the E is helping.

Explaining Split Vowel Digraphs

www.ontrackreading.com/phonics-program/explaining-split-vowel-spellings

HTH

You might also like this:

Spelling Rules

www.spelfabet.com.au/2012/06/spelling-rules/

The ontrackreading advice sounds like a really complicated way of doing something simple.

mrz & learnandsay - I find apparent anomalies exciting. Then when you find out its not an anomaly and you can refine a rule woo hoo! (I have discovered purest green moment...!)

Having a dyslexic DD we have pointless 'e'

The one on the end of have, give and seemingly a thousand other words in English that DD2 just knows is there, because (there's another one) she remembers words and DD1 forgets as she has to sound everything out every time.

What I find interesting is how much of this I must only know subconsciously, as I can read.

I could read on school entry, after being only taught some very rudimentary phonics. I loved books, fairy stories, 'Alice through the looking Glass' and 'Brer Rabbit' were my favourites. The school used mixed methods, flash cards, more rudimentary phonics including 'magic' e (which liked - fairy stories). I refused to read to my reception teacher apparently after I 'forgot' a word (I was scared to death of her after she smacked me). After I left reception I whizzed up the reading scheme.

At university (studying English!) I was pulled up on my spelling. I was lazy and not great at typing or proof reading. I rebelled for a while and told myself spelling was bourgeois , I liked reading Chaucer in the middle English version and Shakespeare didn't spell consistently!

I think my spelling improved vastly with the advent of good spell checks - combination of consciously trying to 'beat' the spell check and getting snobby about things like the Oxford 'z'.

Anyway it goes to show not all is lost, much can be recovered, after an initial patchy experience of learning to read.

Tell the child that lots of words end in "e" because of the bias held by Samuel Johnson

You realise that you're dealing with children who don't know what a dictionary is or does, don't know what bias is and won't understand the significance of Dr Johnson. In fact, Dr Johnson's continuing significance is largely not because he compiled his dictionary (which was true at the time) but because in Britain we don't have language regulating institutions in the way that France has the Academie Francaise, or Spain's RAE.

Unfortunately spell checks are only really useful if you can spell fairly accurately daftdame.

mrz - just relaying what happened to me.

I'm flattered you think I could probably spell fairly accurately, not what it felt like after my tutor had a go at me!

Get your point though - it is a matter of scale. Spell checks are a fantastic tool though (I had a mini melt down once when I had to go back to the dictionary!).

I think you need to have a rough idea of how the word is written for a spell check to be useful and I personally think it has improved my spelling accuracy but I do like the Spell Checker poem

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

mrz - yes, I've made the odd blooper in my time!

My ipad and iphone love to change what I type into complete nonsense

Maybe that's another reason people are being forced to proof read! Invariably you spot some embarrassing mistake when it is too late...dratted machines! (Its a conspiracy to catch us out...)