[neverdem]

PING

[merry10]

Thanks for posting this. My 11 year old deaf daughter reads at the second grade level. I contend she can do better with a systemic program but am butting heads with her school.

[Pontiac]

One group of 37 poor readers, ages 6 to 9, received an average of two hours a week of instruction using a systematic, phonics-based curriculum.

Testing showed that in one year the intensive teaching group made up about half the gap between their initial scores and those of a control group of normal readers, while the other students fell further behind.

What a surprise! The old tried and true method of teaching reading Phonics beats out the new method Whole Language.

I wonder how long it will take the teachers union to bury this study.

Of course the New York Slimes writes the article like phonics is a new method. What a crock. Phonics was the only way to teach reading when I was learning to read 37 years ago.

[dasboot]

Humph.

I don't have a college degree, and I retrained my dyslexic, illiterate, public-school-ruined fifth grader to read a college level after one year of intensive study. No fancy phonics programs...just organic 'as-you-read-it-learn-it' phonics...and interesting, addictive books.

I'm no language professor, and I figured it out. What causes these wonks to overlook the obvious and weedle endlessly searching for common sense in statistical studies...while they, at the same time, heal not their "experimental subjects"? Sheesh, these are CHILDREN.

Waddabunchamaroons.

[exhaustedmomma]

I hate to tell the Yale author of this study, but Dr. Samuel T. Orton, a distinguished neurologist, was saying this nearly 60 years agon. Orton-Gillingham multisensory phonics is generally considered the dyslexic standard in teaching reading.

[Porterville]

repeat after me .... midline - it is the key to the world

[RonHolzwarth]

Different people learn in different ways. That is a fact.

Someone just posted: "The old tried and true method of teaching reading Phonics beats out the new method Whole Language."

Well, here is another very unpleasant fact: English is NOT a phonetic language. In some ways it is, but only very vague rules apply, one to remember is this:

I before E,
except after C,
Or as sounded as A,
as in neighbor and weigh,
And never forget,
some words are WEIRD!

Average readers, of course, will probably do best to use phonetics, as their ability to grasp complex concepts is more limited.

The very best and fastest readers do not use phonetics at all, as to them, words do not represent sounds, but rather ideas and concepts. A person will NEVER become a "speed reader" by using phonics, that is another sure and certain fact.

The proponents of phonetics as being "the best" method of teaching reading must wonder, in their dark moments, how in the world Chinese or Japanese characters can ever be read, as there is ABSOLUTELY NO correlation between the words and the appearance of the seven brush strokes that comprise every Chinese hieroglyph.

And, on the other hand, there are the truly phonetic languages, such as German. In German, there are NO exceptions to the rules of phonetics, and there is NO such thing as a "spelling bee", since there is NO memorization involved at all. Every educated German can pronounce any printed word, and also correctly spell any German word, from hearing it pronounced once.

The bottom line is this: There is NO single "best way" to teach reading. The method that should be used for each individual student depends upon what will give the best results - that is, the method that will allow the student to exploit his innate skills to the maximum extent possible.

And I'm not even a teacher - but I think I should have been!

[Spirited]

Bump.