how is reading taught in other languages?

[Periwinkle007]

just curious, is it also through phonics?

what are Mashabell's lists?

If you do a search on Mashabell you'll find that most of her posts consist of long lists of words which she hopes will persuade you that English is far too difficult to learn to read and spell and therefore her proposals for spelling reform must be supported. The lists are endlessly repeated.

Masha's knowledge of how to teach reading with a systematic synthetic/linghuistic phonics programme would struggle to cover a postage stamp. She prefers to put her fingers in her ears and sing loudly when offered evidence that reading and spelling results from schools where good systematic phonics is taught are excellent. To acknowledge that phonics teaching makes learning to read and spell English easier would diminish her case.

Maizie
I have never denied that good, systematic teaching enables more children to become literate than bad, disorganised teaching. But sadly there is still no universal agreement among teachers on how best to teach children to read and write.

Anyone who has learned and achieved fluency in languages other than English knows that learning to read and write English is more difficult and takes longer than in other languages because many English words have quirky spellings (blue shoe flew ...) and quite a few letters have more than one sound (sound soup ...). Many posters on this thread have confirmed this, as has the international study by Seymour et al of 2003.

Children cope with those inconsistencies in different ways, and that's why no particular method works equally and well anr reliably with all children. Hence the endless chopping and changing of teaching methods and arguments about them among teachers.

What I have done is identify the spellings which are responsible for making learning to read and write English exceptionally time-consuming, by analysing the 7,000 most used English words. I have identified those which use the main English spelling patterns (3,005) and which children can learn to read and write systematically, and the 3,695 which contain one or more unpredictable irregularities (said, head, any) and for spelling all have to be learned one by one.

For learning to read, the problem is smaller, because some variant spelling (fly high) have regular pronunciations.

If it was up to me, I would remove many of the gremlins from English spelling, to make learning to read and write easier and reduce the time needed for doing so. But as most people continue to see nothing wrong with putting children through pointless difficulties at the start of their schooling, I realise that this is not likely to happen any time soon, or ever.

But what I have done (for those who are interested to know) is to make clear why English-speaking children take roughly three years to master the basics of reading and writing, while most other Europeans manage it in one year or less. - If English did not have 3,695 common words disobeying the main patterns of its spelling system with one or more unpredictable letters, learning to read and write the language would clearly be much easier than it is with them.

Masha Bell

TheBirdsFellDownToDingADong

My work is not a 'theory'.

I have identified the words with spelling quirks which make learning to read and write harder.

I don't think that anyone who ever gives it any thought would deny that learning to read with letters which have only one sound (keep sleep deep) is much easier than with letters which can have different sounds (treat threat great),
and that learning to spell a sound in several unpredictable ways (blue shoe flew through too...) is much harder and takes much longer than doing so with just one spelling (cool, fool, pool....).

I am very pleased to learn that my work is beginning to be brought to the attention of at least some younger people.

Could u possibly tell me in what paper or book this was?

I think, probably, all things considered, the English words with irregular spellings had been "identified" a very long time before you came on the scene Masha.

I can't remember offhand tbh, as I said, it was a translation from English which spoke about how English is being dumbed down and how some linguists believe that spelling irregularities need to be eradicated.

"the English words with irregular spellings had been "identified" a very long time before you came on the scene Masha."

Only partially. Fowler (2929), for example, was aware that the unpredictability of consonant doubling (very - merry) is a major spelling difficulty. I have established exactly what makes it so.

Before the advent of computers, doing a proper analysis of English spelling was extremely difficult. The first major one was done by Hannah and Hannah in the US in the 1950s. That one concluded that roughly half of all English words contain some unpredictable letters, as did another in the 1990s (E Carney).

Yet u still get some highly esteemed 'experts' like David Crystal arguing in 2012 that only 25% of English words do.

The idea that English spelling could do with modernising, because it makes writing 'long in learning; and learned hard, and evil to read' (John Hart 1551) has been around for while.

"Only partially." could that be because no one agrees with you that some many words are the problem you think they are.

I remember, when studying English Lit, how much suspicion the novel evoked when that style of writing came out, tantamount to damnation! Particularly suspicious regarding women being adversely influenced.

I think some people regard our language with the same suspicion for its unconventional spelling....woooo...!

I think our language is brilliant. I vote to keep it and all its complex beauty and history. I don't want the language police, thank you (ever so nicely) Masha (don't 'mash-up our language) bell.

But I'd better go before this becomes a 'drunk thread'... I already failed my pass word twice!!

I rather think that 'ireegularity' is in the eye of the beholder and marsha beholds far more irregularity than do teachers who understand the English alphabetic code and how to teach it.

B*gger...'irregularity'

There's a difference isn't there? One set of people are teaching children how to read and the other set are arguing for a reform of the entire language. Of course their scopes are going to be different. Masha isn't alone in her views.

I'm getting tired of non-words being dissed on mumsnet; can people really not see what they are used for? If you can't see any beauty or mystery in the fact that a string of symbols can change meaning, lose it or gain it so easily (string - strong - strung - strang - strange), and if it doesn't make you curious about what your brain is doing when it processes those strings of symbols, then I wonder what your own education was really like and how you normally react to concepts outside your immediate experience.

Reading in French is taught in a similar way to reading in English.

Reading in Turkish takes very little time, because each letter is pronounced in only one way. If you can recite the alphabet, you can read in Turkish even if you don't understand a word.

Oh, but joanofarchitrave, we're not bothered about the language, just the Great God Meaning

LandS. I appreciate that marsha and I are approaching learning to read from completely different perspectives but she is deliberately overstating the 'difficulty' of learning to read and write English. She doesn't understand the English alphabetic code, or synthetic phonics teaching, and she doesn't want learning to read and write with the current 'code' to be any easier because that diminishes her argument (her only argument). I object to her trying to frighten people into agreeing with her...

The biggest stumbling block for spelling reformers is that at present the 'code' accomodates every variety of English accent (and I am talking worlwide, not just in the UK) Respelling would have to be to a sole English accent and so would be very difficult to read for English speakers who don't have that particular accent. Can you imagine reading an entire novel respelled to, for example, a Carribean accent? (Which is absolutely no adverse reflection on my part on a Carribean accent; I had a West Indian grandmother and I loved her accent...)

thanks CoteDAzur - that is very interesting about Turkish, what a shame I didn't have to learn that at school, I would probably have managed it!

She's frequently been asked the same question on TES. Same result

Periwinkle - You don't need school. Just find a Turk to teach you the alphabet and you will be reading in no time. It is almost the same as the English alphabet - there are a few extra letters (like ç for "ch") and several that don't exist in the Turkish alphabet (x, q, w).

Re how/if a phonetic alphabet accommodates accent: IME it reduces accent. When rules on pronunciation are crystal clear with no room for interpretation, you see very little regional variation and noticeably different "accent" is usually due to lack of proper education.

I am told by English friends that already happens to a certain degree in the UK - people who go to "good" schools speak Queen's English, regardless of where they are from.

Not as simple as that, CoteDAzur.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1080228.stm

Although I do think the written word will have some effect on the spoken language, not sure about pronunciation.

Written language is a representation of spoken language. Speech came first and writing evolved as a method of recording not the other way.

mrz Yes but the written word can still influence the spoken word, it is an interaction. For example new vocabulary can be introduced through the written word as can new expressions, sentence structure.

My husband has started to speak using Oxford commas (since working in the public sector). This could be all the lovely documentation he has to read and write. He always used to criticise me when I did this with my writing but at least I didn't speak it!

^Don't get me started about text speak .

daft - What is "not that simple"? I read through that link but I would prefer it if you could actually say what you mean.

I have told you what happens with a language written phonetically. It wasn't always so - Turks converted to this alphabet in 1928.

When every letter is pronounced in only one way, it is difficult to insist on alternative pronunciations.

"When rules on pronunciation are crystal clear with no room for interpretation, you see very little regional variation "

Hmm, I'm not 100% convinced, having learnt Spanish in Almería province (merca'o = mercado, 'dio = adios, etc) . . .