Posted on 12/16/2011 4:49:36 PM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
Fake reading theory is the slave trade of our era. Conscience demands that it be opposed.
A hundred books, perhaps two hundred, have been written on the reading wars. Finally those millions of words come down to a few dozen. English is a phonetic language and must be learned phonetically. Whole Word, the opposing theory, is a mirage, without merit.
The great sophistry of the 20th century was to create the illusion that Whole Word could actually work or, one step lower, that there was a legitimate choice between the two approaches to reading, as there is between fahrenheit and centigrade temperatures. The sophists urge even today: let’s use both.
Please don’t. In truth, there’s no debate, no choice. Whole Word is a lie.
One architect of Whole Word casually stated that most people could memorize “fifty to a hundred thousand” sight-words. Not true. In fact, only people with photographic memories could memorize even 20,000 sight-words. Ordinary people have trouble reaching 1,000. Many children cannot reach 100 sight-words. Virtually no one actually reads with sight-words.
Fortunately, most students finally see the phonics inside the sight-words and learn to read in a normal phonetic way. Unfortunately, the students who don’t see the phonics (the sounds) usually remain illiterate. They also become damaged and deeply unhappy. Many end up on Ritalin.
It’s important to say decisively that Whole Word is a fake, a scam, a hoax, I would even say a crime. The people promoting it are too smart not to know what they’re doing. That is my reluctant conclusion....
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(Excerpt) Read more at rightsidenews.com ...
Right, I use phonetics only when I come across an unfamiliar word.
I also agree with you that as an adult, I certainly don't sound out words (except still with Hebrew and Russian, and some rare English words). I sight read (english, latin, french and spanish) now, with decades of practice.
But I learned to read right after I graduated from diapers, my mother teaching me with an ancient phonetics reader.
Phonetics was my foundation.
/johnny
My mother taught me to read. It’s lucky for me, as the schools I attended used the whole-word method.
“My girls are avid readers now as well - in two languages - I’m convinced it is instilling the love of reading that drives the capability - not the method”
You are correct.
I started with the phonetics, but once my mind “clicked” - I couldn’t stop. I loved it and devoured books.
The phonetic approach gets left behind quickly - IMHO
I’m curious about this. Are you saying that by, say, second or third grade, you didn’t know that “ball” started with a b- or buh- sound?
If you did, then you were reading phonetically.
If you didn’t and went on to memorize a large vocabulary of sight-words that you didn’t sound out, you have a very fine memory. A rare memory.
Trouble is, most kids don’t. What are we to do with them?
All the phonics experts say they teach 99+% of kids to read in first grade.
I'm single and no-one complains about the books, but I've been cutting down the paper books to art books, out of print technical stuff, my 1800s/early 1900s books, and a few dog-eared favorites... I expect that when I get done, I'll easily have less than 3000 paper books on hand.
E-books, though... I have those, lotz of those. Stored several ways, and I have a spare e-book reader in a Faraday bag from TechProtect, just in case we get some bad EMP from the sun or something.
In the last 5 years or so, I've read probably 95% of the books in electronic format. PDF, e-book, whatever.
/johnny
Designer asked; “Are there schools that still try to teach sight reading? I thought most schools had returned to phonics. No?”
Here is a wonderfully stark summation by phonics guru Don Potter:
“The situation across the nation is dramatically worse that anyone can possibly imagine. When I ask the teachers why they teach sight-words, they inevitably tell me because their students are going to be assessed on them. They are totally unaware that sight-words are positively harmful. They consider sight-words part of a good reading program that includes some phonics, not realizing that sight-words create a reflex that interferes with phonics instruction. Sight-words are an obstacle to reading, not an aid.”
These saccades or eye movements are not smooth but occur in a jerky fashion and are involuntary. And we are completely unaware of them so our eyes might be jumping ahead to the next word and priming our expectations of what meaning to assign to that word.
Sometimes the kids just don't pick it up ~ but that's because they are missing all that other stuff about "stuff" so they have nothing to reference the signal to.
Some kids just read spontaneously. This is all meaningless stuff to them.
Yep! The teachers who agree to use whole word reading are either evil or stupid.
My guess is that the “educators” at the university level are evil.
oh - hadn’t thought about those - umm - I’ll have to recalculate... :-9
So?...How do you reform evil? Hm?
The place to start is to call it what it is: Evil!
That’s right, I didn’t think of it as sounds. One day in the car, at age 4, I read a word on a billboard. I brought a book to my mother and asked her to teach me to read. The first word was “look”. She said the word, I read the word. I was off and running.
I was like him, saw things in pictures; still do.
Your post is fallacious. English is a phonetic language, and is best taught that way.
And that is the whole point. A child needs to know the fundamentals to know how to read. English is not pictographic. Yes, in time, a good reader reads "whole words", but one has to start with baby steps.
I still remember to this day when the concept of reading suddenly clicked in my brain. I learned by sounding out the letters of the words. Heaven help me if someone had dictated I learn by the "whole word" method. I likely would never have made the hurdle.
Actually, hieroglyphics are phonetic based and not pictographic. It's what made their initial translation impossible as they look like little pictures so people assumed they represented an object and not a sound. That wonderful Rosetta Stone provided the key and the insight on how to read hieroglyphs.
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