Posted on 02/10/2015 6:30:03 AM PST by C19fan
Johnny in Topeka cant read, but Janne in Helsinki is effortlessly finishing his storybooks. Such a disparity may be expected by now, but the reason might come as a surprise: It probably has much less to do with teaching style and quality than with language. Simply put, written English is great for puns but terrible for learning to read or write. Its like making children from around the world complete an obstacle course to fully participate in society but requiring the English-speaking participants to wear blindfolds.
Adults who have already mastered written English tend to forget about its many quirks. But consider this: English has 205 ways to spell 44 sounds. And not only can the same sounds be represented in different ways, but the same letter or letter combinations can also correspond to different sounds. For example, "cat," "kangaroo," "chrome," and "queue" all start with the same sound, and "eight" and "ate" sound identical. Meanwhile, "it" doesnt sound like the first syllable of "item," for instance, and "cough" doesnt rhyme with either "enough," "through," "furlough" or "bough." Even some identically spelled words, such as "tear," can be pronounced differently and mean different things.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
But due to affirmative action kids today are taught from the book...Hooked on Ebonics.
Really, with improving text-to-speech software, what’s the point to bothering to teach reading anyway?
Yes, the word queue is a French word, that is used by English speakers. We have others. When reading with my 8 yo I make sure I tell her that these words are from another language so she doesn’t try to apply English phonetic rules to them. I also find that Spanish words are making there way into her elementary reading curriculum. I wonder why that is?
Teaching reading English to children involves teaching good phonetic decoding skills and time on task with quality children’s literature. Many of the popular books available have are full of grammatical errors. Spelling and phonics while related have different rules that need to be taught. Schools don’t do it. Most 2nd grade teachers somehow expect that somewhere between 1st and 2nd grade children have magically acquired the ability to read. If you were to look at those children who are successful, you will find a parent or parents teaching reading and writing at home.
and a belittling of the idea of the melting pot... that would hurt diversity too much to tolerate
Yeah. You can be both eager and anxious at the same time but they’re still conflicting emotions.
In fact you need two distinct words to convey the conflict of emotions sometimes. I’m sure astronauts on the launchpad are often both eager and anxious.
I believe the words anxious and anxiety are closely related.
From Orwell's Animal Farm:
"Even when I was young I could not have read what was written there. But it appears to me that that wall looks different. Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?"
For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
Cuz spelin b racis.
Oddly enough, I have.
One.
And he was fairly odd.
I never found out if he had any fellow esperantos with whom to speak it.
It’s a relatively modern meaning of the word “anxious.” It is parallel to the way we might tell someone “worry about this, but not about that.”
I’m poking fun. I do not aspire to meet many Esperantists.
I get so angry with articles like this.
Has the english language changed in the last fifty years?
Why are these folks always making excuses. If the kids worked on their grammar and spelling, life would be a lot easier for them.
Funny how that works.
We should teach spelling, but we survived pretty well without Webster's Dictionary. Spelling used to be more loosey goosey.
Esperanto and its advocates deserve a bit of gentle poking ...
Yep They’re so certain that their there would still be there if their ideas were simply held by those they’re claiming are muddling things up, when it would only generate confusion instead of clarity. Therefore, one can only conclude that obfustication and ambiguity is their goal.
Even that kind of hangs together under phonics (the final eue kind of drags out the initial qu).
When I was a kid I loved exotic words. I would queue up to say queue.
I'll bet he was.
Obfustication! Making things unclear by means of clobbering them with a club.
Yes, it has. It changed in the fifty years before that, and the fifty years before ...
Shakespeare is still readable, as are the King James and Douay-Rheims Bibles, but none of these represent the way we English speakers speak today.
Chaucer is barely recognizable.
Naturally. And from this we can be assured that Luba Vangelova is smarter than anyone who ever lived.
It would be a lot easier just to change the pronunciation to match the spelling.
I was once watching a weather report on Scottish TV, and over there ‘night’ is indeed pronounced ‘night’!
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