When do children stop needing to sound out words they've seen many times?

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My daughter is in reception and being taught phonics. She seems really good at sounding out and blending simple cvc words but it doesn't seem like she is getting to the stage where many words are entering her long term memory- ie every time she sees a word it's as if she's never seen it before and she has to use her phonic knowledge to work out what it says. She is able to do this successfully but it makes reading a whole sentence, even a short one, kind of laborious! Is this fairly normal or something to worry about?

wonderingagain
What I could not help but notice as an English teacher, and even more as a wife, mother and grandmother, is that

1. Spelling 'mistakes' are nearly all caused by irregular spellings (sed, bruther, wos) or unfathomable inconsistencies (arrive – arise, shorten - certain)

b) Some people learn to spell very easily, without really having to work at it (like me, my daughter, and two granddaughters) while others work their socks off and still keep making lots of mistakes (lots of pupils, my husband, my son, one grandson) and that the majority take years to become fairly confident.

The gifted spellers are simply better at imprinting the right look of words on their minds. The latter keep looking for sense and get hopping mad when there isn't any: bed - head, ballad - salad, fatten - abandOn. They hate having to learn things for no good reason. Their logical spellings are nearly all still perfectly legible (muther, uther, bruther). They can't understand why need to be spelt illogically instead.

Being a fairly good speller, but with a fairly logical mind too, i can't understand why so many people are so firmly in favour of leaving things as they are. I can't see any benefit to anyone from having to spend far longer than need be on something which is a daily necessity. So I am in favour of modernising English spelling and making learning to read and write a bit easier. Not changing any of the basic rules - just cutting some of the clearly surplus dross (e.g. havE, arE, promisE - cf, save, care, surprise) and restoring some of the sense it had earlier: ditty - pitty, send - frend, tuch - much. I can't bear generation after generation, children and parents going through the same pointless agonies.

In the eyes of Mrz, Maizie, Feenie and some other passionate phonics evangelists, this makes me stupid, verging on evil, and I am puzzled by that. Are they unable to see that the words which take longer to learn to read and write do so because of their irregular spellings? Why are they so in favour of keeping things as difficult as they are?

Moreover, their snippy and often quite rude comments don't fill me with respect. They merely leave me believing more strongly that i must keep explaining what makes learning to read and English exceptionally difficult.

Masha there are lots of things in life that are hard to do but we don't shy away from. Science advances because people go beyond their currrent knowledge and expand it. Sports people go through processes of learning base skills then adding to them.

Why do you suggest that if the English language is complicated to learn, we should change it? If nothing else, children will learn persistence and determination from refining their skills in spelling.

When children using RWI at DDs' school have a word to spell with two different options for spelling, they can often be heard to ask 'Miss X, is it 'ou shout it out' or 'ow brown cow'?, for example. They gradually become familiar with the context that a word is used in and which spelling option is used in that context.

I don't think Masha you advocating re-definining the english language, I assume you mean that it's time we accept that the english language needs to be learned in a way that will make allowance for its peculiarities.

The Chinese written language is pictorial with thousands of letters and no logical system, we need to learn to read in the same way that chinese children do - obviously we can break down words a little but it is as you say Lougie, essential to look at words within the context that they are spelled - never as isolated letters except at a very basic foundation stage, where phonics comes in very handy.

I foresee a lot of bad spelling in years to come if they don't make sure that phonics is taught correctly.

My dd never learned her spellings every week in primary yet she spells almost impeccably. That's because of the way I taught her to read - fairly large groups of letters together, making up a word, always within a sentence and usually in a book or newspaper. Always breaking words down to their constituent parts - 'con-grat-ulations' and, if it still doesn't make sense explaining the meaning behind words 'with/con' 'grateful' etc.

I'm hoping that schools do that within the systems they use.

I foresee a lot of bad spelling in years to come if they don't make sure that phonics is taught correctly

What, even worse than it is now after years of 'invented spellings' and inattention to the role of phonics in spelling?

I think you need to look at some data

Try the data in this report compiled over a number of years by one programme developers:

www.sounds-write.co.uk/docs/sounds_write_research_report_2009.pdf

It won't matter how phonics is taught it has little to do with how many English words are spelled. Phonics might help children (and some adults) to break the words down into their constituent sounds. But it won't help anybody to remember which particular variant spelling of that sound is correct in any particular word. That's the job of memory.

I don't think Masha you advocating re-definining the english language, I assume you mean that it's time we accept that the english language needs to be learned in a way that will make allowance for its peculiarities.

You assume wrong - masha has an entire spelling reform agenda (starting with changing 'you' to 'u') and has bored teachers to death campaigned on TES about it for years.

Moreover, their snippy and often quite rude comments don't fill me with respect. They merely leave me believing more strongly that i must keep explaining what makes learning to read and English exceptionally difficult.

I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with you doing that, marsha, apart from the fact that it is extremely boring.

Where you get the grief is when you start badmouthing phonics because it is absolutely clear that as far as phonics is concerned you have very little knowledge of how it 'works' and you post a load of nonsense about learning to read.

I still think that the reason you are anti phonics is that it is so successful in teaching children to read and write that one of the main rationales of your spelling reform campaign, the difficulty of learning to read & write, is minimised by good phonics teaching.

I'm not all that sure that masha is all that anti phonics. Phonics has close to bugger all to do with spelling which is masha's main concern.

Ah, well. The signs are all there for those who can read them...

I assume you mean that it's time we accept that the english language needs to be learned in a way that will make allowance for its peculiarities. you assume wrongly

So written words aren't a visual representation of spoken words? columngollum and letters aren't the symbols we use to visually represent spoken sounds in our language? very

When writing many English words the sounds are not particularly useful because the words include letters which are silent or the word itself can be spelled in more than one way, so it's not the sounds that are important in the spelling of the word. The important skill is in remembering which letters the word in question possesses.

Contractions, for example, contain apostrophes which have no sound and yet it is necessary to remember them and not to include them in possessive pronouns.

All letters are silent columngollum people make sounds if they read aloud the letters on the page are totally mute.

"so it's not the sounds that are important in the spelling of the word."

The sounds are important. What is as important, is building up a knowledge bank of the different way those sounds can be written. For example, DD2 insisted that 'sable' couldn't possibly be 'sable' because it would be 's-a-b-e-l'. I compared 'sable' with 'table', when she then insisted that it couldn't possibly be 'table' because 'table' is 't-a-b-e-l'. I helped her use her Oxford Phonic Spelling dictionary to look up 'table' and see that the 'bel' sound is 'ble' in that case.

Lougle
Why do you suggest that if the English language is complicated to learn, we should change it?
The English language is exceptionally simple and easy to learn - thanks to the lower classes ridding it of most of the Latinate grammatical dross which still encumbers most other European languages. They did this between 1066 and roughly 1350, when 'educated' people abandoned English in favour of French for everyday usage, and intellectual discourse continued to be conducted in Latin.

Most children already speak English remarkably well by the time they start school, but the inconsistencies of English spelling make learning to read and write it exceptionally difficult and very much slower than in any other alphabetically written language. I would like us to do for English spelling now what the peasants did for the language between 1066 - 1350.

Children can indeed often be heard to ask 'Miss X, is it 'ou shout it out' or 'ow brown cow'?,. And because they keep having to do so, it's much harder for them to concentrate on what they are trying to say and to learn to use language well, at secondary as well as primary level.

When letters have just one sound (keep sleep deep) learning to read is easy (unlike 'how slow'). Learning to spell is easy when sounds have just one spelling (cat, sat, mat) and beastly when they don't (speak, shriek, seek, see, me, ski, key...).

If learning to read and write English was not quite so ridiculously time-consuming (in comparison to all other European languages), children could learn more maths and science, spend more time on creative activities, learn more about health and nutrition, history, geography, etc., etc.

That's why i would like to see English spelling made a bit more sensible. Not changed root and branch. Just tidied up - removing the worst gremlins that needlessly waste precious learning time.

Maizie
Please stop repeating the lie that i am anti-phonics. I've corrected u on this many times before.

I merely want English spelling tidied up a bit, so that phonics works better - more like in the six other languages which i learned to read entirely with phonics and to write largely just with phonics too.

Perhaps you should take the time to actually learn how phonics is taught in schools in England before making blanket statements about usefulness masha

Once again you seem to imagine that English sounds the same around the UK or do you want us all to speak with your accent?

Mashabell, changing the english language to accommodate quirky spelling is a novel idea but I really doubt whether it would ever happen. If we want language logic we can always try Esperanto, or even abandon latin/germanic English altogether in favour of Welsh.

The point I am trying to make is that English isn't that hard to learn, it's hard to learn because we teach it in the same way that we teach other European languages. If we taught it in the same way that we learn Chinese we would be much better spellers.

I remember the Maisy mountain mountain thing, it is a very old system and was initially used to connect the abstract letter symbol with the recognition of sound. Great for early learning but rubbish for spelling later on.

masha has an entire spelling reform agenda (starting with changing 'you' to 'u') and has bored teachers to death campaigned on TES about it for years.

Aaaaaaah

Penny drops. Thank you Feenie.

If we taught it in the same way that we learn Chinese we would be much better spellers.

Did you look at the data I posted the link to, wonderingagain?

Chinese is taught by memorising the symbols representing the words as 'wholes'. From what I have read it seems that the 'average' Chinese learns somewhere in the region of 3,000 symbols. this is very difficult and takes years, far longer than it takes to learn to read and write English. The written English vocabulary would be far in excess of this and it would be impossible to 'learn' each individual word. I wonder if you have ever worked with children who have absolutely no knowledge of the fact that the spellling of a word is closely related to the sounds of which it is made up? I have. Their 'spelling' is non-existent.

Maizie if you had read my post you will see that I didn't suggest in any way that children should make no phonetic connection with written words.

Of course they shouldn't learn 3500 words by recognition, but they should move towards pictorial / memory based learning in context much sooner and save phonics to the early stages.

Yes I have worked with children, yes I know how hard reading can be without phonics, yes I know how hard spelling can be with too much phonics.

If you want me to read a link please repost it.

wonderingagain
I don't think Masha you advocating re-definining the english language, I assume you mean that it's time we accept that the english language needs to be learned in a way that will make allowance for its peculiarities.

Like so many people, u also confuse the words language and orthography (or writing system). When Turkey switched from Arabic to Latin letters in 1929, it did not change the language in any way. Nor did Finland's adoption of a brand new, very regular spelling system in the 19th century change the Finnish language. It merely enabled children to learn to read and write the language much faster than before. - I am advocating that intelligent people should get together and give serious though to making some similar improvement to English spelling.

But i felt that an essential first step towards this was to establish exactly how irregular English spelling is and which of its irregularities impede literacy progress most seriously. The work which i did for this has ended up being very useful to teachers, parents and many students as well. And i am very pleased about that, because until English spelling gets modernised, several more generations of children will have to put up with its current difficulties. I am as keen to help with that, as i am to get modernisation of English spelling of the ground. I value literacy extremely highly and don't dislike anyone being needlessly left educationally marginalised.

For many people, me included, it helps to understand what u have to learn and what's difficult about it. But i am intensely disliked for trying to improve understanding of English reading and writing difficulties by evangelical phonic furies who like to blame all poor literacy progress simply on insufficient use of phonics.

they should move towards pictorial / memory based learning in context much sooner and save phonics to the early stages.

Why?

If you want me to read a link please repost it.

You only had to scroll back up the page a little bit. Now you'll have to back a page..