Sight/tricky words - do we actually ‘know’ the best way to teach them?

[TheDuchessOfKidderminster]

I stumbled across this blog post recently, where the comments underneath are actually more interesting than the blog itself, so well worth looking at the whole thing. It’s something I have a professional interest in (I’m not a teacher though) as well as personal (my DS is in Y1 and learning to read following the Letters and Sounds guidelines). It strikes me reading this that we really don’t know yet what is the best method, although it is very clear that phonics teaching should predominate, it’s debatable whether that should be to the exclusion of other methods.

I’ve read a few debates about this recently on Mumsnet (there’s one in AIBU that sparked quite a long discussion about it), so I thought some people might find this interesting. Or maybe just me

readoxford.org/guest-blog-are-sight-words-unjustly-slighted

Catching up on this thread.
Please Irvine, do not be SO patronising.

"As I understand it, irvine, even Chinese characters have a phonetic element to them."

No, not really. Yes there are 'families' which share elements within the written character, and that can give a clue to pronunciation, but there are enough 'false friends' that it does not really reduce the burden of rote learning (especially when you consider that tone carries meaning, so what sounds alike to a non-native speaker doesn't necessarily seem like that to a native speaker)

Ok, sorry Arkadia, if you feel that way.
I will not comment on your thread or respond to your post any more.
One last time, you seem to be missing a point or stuck on minor detail, that's my thinking, as a fellow foreign parent raising child in second language.

The neuroscientists who have studied thousands of brains will know all about dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, autism, and countless other conditions.
Some people can read maps, others can't.
Some people see colours when they listen to music.
Some people can spell, others can't.
Some people couldn't catch a ball if their life depended on it.
Some people are tone deaf, others have perfect pitch.
Some people are unable to look at a face and interpret the expression.
Yeah, sure, everyone's brain works identically if you say so Norestformrz.

Perhaps you should volunteer for research as you’re sure your brain works differently to the many thousands already examined.

No need, since you seem to know everything already. When you publish your academic paper, it will be fascinating, I'm sure.

The neuroscientists who have studied thousands of brains will know all about dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, autism, and countless other conditions

Of course they do. You really think they are stupid?

Some people can read. Others can't. Those who can read all use the same areas on the left side of the brain to read - the same areas used by children when they sound out and blend. Those who can't read use the visual centres on the right side of the brain when they try to read. Researchers have yet to find people who don't conform to this pattern.

I expect that there are some non-neurotypical people whose brains work differently when they read from the brains of the vast majority.

It would be interesting to see research on that, matching brain scans together with measurement of how successful these people are are at decoding similar words, or unknown words.

However, I wouldn't say that the assertion 'my brain works differently from the vast majority' as generally experimentally reliable evidence, unless there has been a study matching those who assert that they 'read differently' with their brain scans and with their reading ability, and a strong correlation has been found?

X-posted with prh47 - apologies and thanks for the information. Is there a readable research summary?

prh - is the area used to read the same in languages such as Chinese? Or do those who are bilingual readers use different parts of their brain for reading Chinese characters vs characters in phonetic languages?

Cant, I asked similar question last night and got answer from mrz.
But I'd love to read research on that if anyone has any handy links!

cantkeepawayforever - Chinese is written more phonically than people think. In general, individual characters represent single syllables. Monosyllabic words are represented by single characters whereas polysyllabic words generally use multiple characters. However, the short answer is yes - the research available shows that people use the same regions of the brain to read regardless of whether they are reading alphabetic or logographic languages. There are, however, differences in emphasis. In simple terms, if an English reader uses regions A and B with region A being most active, a Chinese reader might use regions A and B with region B being most active.

Thanks! That's really clear and really interesting. Are both a and b completely distinct from the visual centres?

Of course they do. You really think they are stupid? Not them, no.
In fact, they are usually the first to say that there is so much more to learn.
It would be stupid of anyone to believe that scientists have already discovered everything there is to know about the human brain.

Equally, it would be unusual (I might push the boat out and say impossible) for anyone to genuinely understand how their own brain worked - as in, which region of the brain was involved in each process - unless there was some physical reason such as brain injury that meant they KNEW it couldn't be the same as others' brains.

I watched my DS teach himself to read. I could have sworn, as an observer, that he recognised each word. However, later phonics teaching in school revealed that on the contrary, he had actually worked out the phonic code for himself, and decoded and encoded phonetically.

"In general, individual characters represent single syllables. Monosyllabic words are represented by single characters whereas polysyllabic words generally use multiple characters"

Yes, this is true.

Hiwever, no matter how many thousands of characters you have memorised, you would not be able to say one that you had not encountered before. You might guess by context, if you knew all the surrounding ones. But if you didn't, or if the word was not accurately guessable by the content, then you are stuck.

You look it up, nit by sound, but by the number of strokes mpneeded to write the radical (the left side of the character) then the number to write the right hand side. If there is a dictionary organised by transliteration, then that will then lead you to how to say it. But if not, it'll tell you what it means, but nit how it sounds.

Are both a and b completely distinct from the visual centres

Yes. The majority of the work in reading happens in the left side of the brain, whereas the visual centres are on the right side.

It would be stupid of anyone to believe that scientists have already discovered everything there is to know about the human brain

Of course they haven't. But that is not an argument for ignoring clear evidence from brain scans that certain areas of the brain fire up when adults read and that it is always the same areas that fire up when children sound out and blend.

And none of this is an argument for ignoring clear evidence that teaching reading using phonics alone results in a 95%+ success rate compared to an 80% success rate if phonics is mixed with other methods.

meditrina - Agreed. In the logographic languages there are thousands of character to sound mappings to learn. In English there are around 150 phoneme to grapheme mappings. Which is, of course, why children speaking logographic languages have a much smaller reading vocabulary when finishing education than we expect for English-speaking children.

meditrina, you sound like you know a lot about languages.
Do you find it easier to learn other language which uses alphabet than one uses totally different letters/characters?
My ds is learning French and my native, which doesn't use alphabet at the moment. It seems so much easier for him to learn French than my native, despite he has Mum who speaks the language.

I didn't teach him to speak in my native since he was a selective mute, so he only started learning my native recently.

Researchers have discovered that speakers of four highly contrasting languages — Spanish, English, Hebrew and Chinese — show very similar patterns of brain activity during reading and speech, which suggests the underlying network for language processing might be more universal than previously understood.

psychology professor Li Jun-ren (李俊仁) said his team tracked and compared reading and speech perception of native speakers of the four languages using functional magnetic resonance imaging and found mostly identical brain activation.

The finding debunks a myth that Chinese languages were predominantly processed by the right hemisphere, compared with alphabetic languages processed by the left hemisphere, because Chinese was considered a pictorial language and the right hemisphere has been associated with image processing, he added.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-use-same-brain-regions-to-read-alphabetic-and-logographic-languages/

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/eye-movements-and-reading

Additionally, on foreign language, acquisition is more a function of exposure than writing style. It's very difficult for a child to develop fluency in a second (or third) language when their exposure is limited to one parent.

The rule of thumb is that a child needs to spend 30% of their waking time exposed to a language to develop fluency (www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids1.htm). That's hard to achieve in a household with only speaker of the minority language. You'll be particularly challenged by having an older child who may resist your native language.

Irvine, in your case, I suspect either a difference in exposure (knowing more French speakers, access to more French materials, more time spent with French) or a difference in motivation (more interested in French, more rebellious towards a parent speaking an unfamiliar language) contribute to the disparity than writing style.

Thank you Anotheroneishere. That is exactly true. He does wants to learn it, but not enough exposure. Like you say, I am a minority in our house and DH doesn't speak my language.
It makes sense, he knows all the letters and can read basic books, but speaking is not good at all. I need to expose him more.
On the other hand, he watches French cartoons and sings French songs, so definitely exposed more.

May I ask a (vaguely) related question please?

I can understand why synthetic phonics rather than memorisation is the best way to learn to read, because (apart from a few exceptions, and they're probably loan words or anglicised loan words) it can be applied across every word.

But for spelling, is it that people good at phonics read better so get more used to seeing the words so learn the correct graphemes to write them via exposure? I'm just interested because although we do spell phonetically, it isn't always the 'easiest' phonics that are correct.

I suppose what I'm asking is that if somebody is a very good decoder/reader but with a poor memory, would they be a 'bad' speller, as a result of writing the correct sound, but not always with the right letters?