I read Dr Seuss to my son when he was a toddler. Now he's 20 and kicking butt in college.
If whole-word really didn’t work, the Japanese and Chinese languages would have collapsed long ago, as both cannot be read phonetically.
Phonics isn’t for everyone. Early readers...and I mean early. Like 2 year olds and under often can’t handle the abstraction of phonics. Better to teach whole words, which they can abstract, and let them learn the patterns of phonics by seeing a sufficient quantity of whole words. The arrogant tone of the article implies that the author knows best. Author doesn’t know enough to even know how much they don’t know.
When my daughter was in second grade she was diagnosed with a learning issue. She had a spatial memory issue that meant she could not do “sight” reading. So they put her in a special program where she was tutored every day in...wait for it...Phonics.
She is in graduate school now. Her reading scores were off the charts through high school. Phonics has always been the best way to learn reading.
This really shows the evils of govt bureaucracy. Bad ideas live forever and all attempts to change for the better are fought tooth and nail.
Good article Bruce. I thank the Good Lord above I was taught phonics instead of the “meme of the week” system of learning to read.
Just in time for the educrats to screw up math instruction with Common Core methods.
Not much point in having a phonetic language if you don’t teach it that way.
Speed readers do not read with phonics, rather they read by image interpretation. The word “apple” is NOT sounded out but rather the image of the word “apple” is triggered by the letters “apple”.
Reading phonetically slows a person’s reading ability down to their speech rate - about 100 to 150 words per min. Speed readers routinely process text at 600 words per min.
BTW, I took a speed reading course in College as a “gimmie” 3 English credits. one of the most practical courses I ever took. Cut my reading load in half.
I learned to read by phonics when JFK was in the White House. The name of our phonics book was “Breaking the Sound Barrier”, written by a nun.
I read Dr Seuss to my son when he was a toddler. Now he's 20 and kicking butt in college.
I was taught phonics early. I was two to three reading levels above my class throughout school. In junior high I took a speed reading course and hit 720 wpm. For many years I read at least a book a day. I usually had a stack of books so if I grew tired of one, I could switch to another.
I don’t understand the phenomenon, but no matter the reading speed, my eye always stops dead when I encounter a misspelled word.
The apparent disagreement about how to teach reading is really cover for a disagreement about whether to teach reading.
Yeah they taught my daughter to read using phonics and totally screwed her up on spelling! Funny how we ll had no problem learning to read when we were growing up and teachers believed their job was to educate not indoctrinate!
85 years? I was taught phonics all through grade school in the 50s-early 60s. By the time my kids were in grade school in the 80s phonics had gone.