People who know about phonics - how on earth do you explain the difference in pronunciation...

[emkana]

between

lemon

and

demon.

Hah! I knew it! There is no explanation is there?

similarly:

Tow

Bow

How

Now

..does this come under the catch-all of "tricky words" and if so, which is the tricky word?

Actually I think in my example it is that there are 2 sounds which "ow" can make, as there are with "oo" and that you just have to try and see which sounds right. Not so easy in yours....

But I always read that the great thing about the phonics approach is that they can read any word - but they can't then, can they?

Isn't one supposed to use several approaches in order to cover all bases?

because our language is a mixture of loads of other languages.

does anyone know how to pronounce the town Rougham? Once drove past it & it's driving me mad that I can't work it out! (ineed to get a life)

Exbury - good example but 'ow' sound is also 'ou' sound as in crown or proud! Its a minefield out there. There is always an exception to the rule.

Well, I think there is an explanation, but I'm not sure it's very helpful for a young child. I'm pretty sure it's because the words have different origins - demon from Latin 'daemon'/Greek 'daimon', and lemon from Latin 'lemon'. So that has probably affected how they've been pronounced, even when the spelling has changed.

A good rule for early readers is "If the short vowel doesn't work, try the long vowel". So 'demon' has the long 'ee' and 'lemon' has the 'e'. The letter 'e' often represents both these sounds ('these'/'rebel').

It is true that once children have a good phonic understanding, they can decode everything plausibly. This doesn't mean that it is always accurate, if the word is outside their comprehension eg DS2 read 'trough' as 'trow' recently, because he didn't know what a trough was.

It's the fault of English orthography.

Er.

No, in English they can't read any word with phonics - look at "one" FGS!

A combination of phonics and look and say seems to work best in learning reading in English purely because there are so many words which follow no rule.

It is a mad language (but I like it!)

'Ow' almost always represents 'ow' as in 'now' or 'oa' as in 'snow'.

'Ou' almost always represents 'ow' as in 'cloud' or 'oo' as in 'would'.

In those cases you teach the two correspondences and then the reader has to work out which one is more likely - which is difficult if the word is unknown to them.

(I have never forgotten being mortified aged about 10 when I read "misled" as "mizzled" the first time I met it )

Actually, emkana, I find that DS can already make a stab at it even with words which don't "read" correctly. What he seems to do (all credit to his wonderful teacher, I certainly didn't teach him) is to sound it out to himself, and then repeat what he ends up with until he "spots" a word which makes sense.
So in your example, he would probably end up with "leemon", as it were, and realise that it had to be "lemon".

As singersgirl says, it breaks down when they don't know the word or what it means

JanH - "one" is a tricky word - officially - I have it on DS's authority.

Penelope - envelope

Fat-head or Fath-ead

ha ha

JanH - I was into my late 20s before I cottoned on to "mizzled/misled"! [blush[. I would say "miss-led" in conversation, but I read it as "mizzled". .

And I am articulate, with a mother for an English teacher, had won the English prize at school (by a mile) and had a degree in French and Economics!

Ruffam???

English is a very hard language because everyone invaded us. However most words are phonetic and there aren't many which are completely irregular. Children get very good at "tweaking" words like

lemon
was
lamb
Monday

Life gets fun with words like eyes, laugh and people.

Even so, if 40% of words are decodable and the rest can be read with a bit a tweaking the child has flying start. Otherwise the child is faced wiht memorising every word in the English language.

I just explain every exception individually. Make sure we use the word a lot over a few days so it sinks in.

Tis why English is such a difficult language to learn as a 2nd language.

Ds sounds out words phonetically so I explain each exception individually. If it's a word like 'cow' he'll say it phonetically and then say 'don't I sound posh?!' but he'll be able to tell what the word is from the rest of the sentance.

Starfall is a good site for learning the rules of reading English. www.starfall.com/

prettybird- I had a similar reading faux pas. I used to read lot of Mills & Boon as a teenager and often the hero was described as a chameleon.
I thought it was a word akin to debonair and used to read it as shamelyon.
Twas only in my mid 20's when I saw a restaurant called Chameleon with a picture beside it that I realised my mistake.

Ds1's class are doing the 'o' sound - ow, oa, o-e, o, ou

Useful!

We should all join this !

My dd1 really got fluent at reading when she was six and we spent a term in America. Her teacher's approach was to try to sound it, to look at any pictures and to look at the context. So she was able to be poncey 'I read mmmmmmm today, I looked at the context.'

DS's wonderful teacher is very into them using all the clues - including visual - but I don't think DS actually knows the word "context" - must try it and see!