Phonics

I grew up in Wirral and have always said ‘bahth’ and ‘grahss’ for bath and grass, rather than the short a sound as in ‘bat’. People who live in the north don’t all speak alike, any more than people in the south do. My grandchildren live in London and they don’t sound like Dot Cotton. In fact, they and I speak in much the same way. I expect there are small regional differences, but nothing very noticeable. RP (for want of a better term) is the same all over the country. It isn’t regional.

Language teachers have long since realised that the so-called Estuary English is gaining ground. It has the intrusive r in words where you and I would never dream of one.

Judging by the BBC people all over Britain are saying "drarw" and "drawring" instead of "draw" and "drawing" now.

I find it ugly ´, but then the Phonetics I was taught in Primary 1 in 1956 talking about sound a as ay or as aah.

Basically, you can correct your grandchildren as much as you like, they will speak as their generation speak, whatever we suggest.

I have mentioned before that my great-aunts went to the chimist to pick up their prescriptions . now you would never hear that and they had been taught the chemist was wrong, or so they said.

If we go back to the bus and butter debate. It does occur to me thatthe Queen says "bas" and "batter".
When I grew up one way of winding my mum up was to speak with the broad accent used by my country cousins. We used to repeat this rhyme- it only works with a Yorkshire accent
"What's the matter?
Pig's in t'water.

I was going to bypass this thread, as having no relevance to me, that is until I had to do some Zoom Jolly Phonics lessons with my DGD this week.

I had forgotten about the variations in pronunciation and that some of the examples caused confusion for our pupils, due to their Glasgow accents.

Well, I didn't expect a comment about my grandchildren's worksheet to expand into such a wide-ranging and interesting conversation. The joy of Gransnet! I have enjoyed all the comments, especially those from experienced early years phonics teachers.

BlueBelle, you made me chuckle by saying that I was out of touch and then proclaiming that you have no accent(!) and that phonics resources cannot have regional variations - both statements demonstrating that it is you who is out of touch! As experts on this thread have stated, resources are chosen according to geographical area. (Fortunately so, as any teacher telling children in the NW that they should pronounce path as parth would be laughed out of school!)

I accept absolutely that my GC (in SE England and NZ) have different accents to me. It all makes for a more interesting world! I was just objecting to putting unnecessary 'r's into words.

I had been thinking along the same lines as you Doodledog, it is interesting that many people are equating a 'posh' accent as a southern one. As we all travel around more for work I think and hope that this opinion is becoming less prevalent.

Sorry, I'll get it right in a minute. I meant in the last line of the third para!

Sorry, mean is in first line of third paragraph.

If your grandchildren live in the south of England, they are almost bound to end up with southern accents. They may retain a tinge of a northern accent if their parents have northern accents.

I know, in Liverpool, people pronounce were, where and wear in the same way which can lead to confusion if their children move to the south and go to school. In spelling tests in the south, were in not pronounced the same as where and wear.

I love different accents.

MaizieD I was teaching phonics way before the Jolly Phonics came out. It was one of the strategies I was taught in a highly structured and comprehensive teaching of reading course provided at my teacher training college in the late 1960s, along with look and say and word recognition. It was the most successful reading programme I ever used. It was of course scorned and condemned by all of those who chose to jump on the current educational bandwagon, be that ita, real reading or phonics. A mixed approach is in my opinion the only way to teach children to read succesfully.
In 2016 adolescents in England had a lower literacy rate than any of these countries www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/which-countries-have-the-best-literacy-and-numeracy-rates/
They also had a lower literacy rate than over 55s.
I have looked at the evidence about current thinking on word recognition and I think it is interesting. What it fails to explain is how children taught word recognition alongside phonics could adequately read words like 'aeroplane' long before they could actually recognise all the phonics involved. It may be some sort of 'trick' but for children learning to read it was an enormously successful trick which boosted their confidence and led them to read with pleasure, using phonics as an aid but not stumbling through every word. There are over 55s out there who learned through such methods.

We are doing split diagraphs (sp) today, along with Wh and W

Rumour is that teachers are preparing for homeschooling up until the Easter break.

trisher
In response to your oh so familiar and unscientific defence of 'whole words' , and the old and erroneous chestnuts about 'phonics' I would suggest that you read 'Reading in the Brain' by Stanislaus Dehane. Not a teacher at all, but a nueroscientist who set out to examine the 'reading mechanism' in the brain.

A bit of familiarity with eye movement research would help, too.

I've been debating 'phonics' for nearly 20 years now and nothing you can say or recommend to read is unfamiliar to me!

according to your theory all children in all schools should now be reading at a really good level, but they aren't, currently a substantial number of people have the literacy level of below 11 years. It is over 20 years since the first phonics programme was introduced into schools, so there should be some evidence of its effect.

Phonics is much older than whole word, you know. Whole word learning was developed in the 19th C for teaching deaf children to read because they couldn't 'hear' the discrete phonemes in words. It's so odd that teachers cling fiercely to its methods!

It is also much longer than 20 years ago that the first phonics programmes were reintroduced in schools. Jolly Phonics was around in the 1980s. However. Just because programmes existed it doesn't mean that they were used. As an ex teacher you should be well aware of that.
And the National Literacy Strategy from the late 90s, which was supposed to inform all teaching of 'literacy,' completely marginalised phonics teaching in favour of whole word/look and say. Any so called 'phonics' in it was completely dire.

Even with the mandating of structured phonics instruction for the teaching of reading by the tories in 2012 the fact that teachers are not properly trained in it, with so few unis doing it properly and so many unis staffed by phonics sceptics and denialists, it's not surprising that materials, such as GG13s 'barth' idiocy are common and that some children still don't get a full and proper understanding of how to read and spell the written word.

When you refer to 'people' having a level of below 11 years you fail to tell me what age group you're referring to. I think it might be better to reserve judgement until the 2012+ generation are being studied, post education...
Most adults below the age of 50 were recipients of the Whole Word, or mixed methods mode of teaching reading. They have a high level of illiteracy.

When in Rome...........

Now this is interesting: I just realised that, although I say baath, not bath, I do not call myself baathsheba, but bathsheba

It’s interesting that so many have commented that southern accents are ‘posh’, and northern ones ‘common’. Why is that?

I also find it very amusing when people claim to have no accent. Everyone has an accent. Received Pronunciation is as much of an accent as Scouse or Brizzle or Brummie.

So long as people can be understood, and children are taught Standard English (not the same thing as Received Pronunciation) I think that accents and dialect should be encouraged, as media saturation is endangering them, and there is a risk of their dying out.

Worse, they could be replaced with ‘incoming’ words from tv, such as the dreaded ‘uni’ which came into English, I believe, from Australian soap operas

GrannyRose15

Mamardoit

MissAdventure

I don't know the difference in pronunciation of whales and Wales.

I know that one is a country and one lives in the sea. They sound the same to me.

Imagine a Scottish person saying whales and you'll perhaps hear the difference. It's not usually so distinct south of the border.

Thank you, GrannyRose15 and LauraNorder, for spreading the word. Now to eradicate the even more slipshod 'Febuary'!

trisher that video was fascinating, thank you. And although I love the sound of the Yorkshire accent, I won't be trying to adopt it anytime soon - chiefly because I'd make a complete ass (arse? ) of myself.

I've read the other responses to my post about your 'bas' and 'batter' and I have to accept that this is how some people hear it, but I can honestly say I have never heard it pronounced thus. Or perhaps my ear is just not attuned to hearing it that way. I only hear the 'u' said with a short, hard sound, but definitely not anything like 'a' to me. I keep trying to hear it that way in my head, and I just cannot.

I'm wondering now if perhaps northerners pronounce 'a' slightly differently from the way I would pronounce it, and the short 'u' therefore sounds to your ears more like your short 'a'. But not mine? Does that make sense? Such an interesting subject!

What I have discovered from this thread is that teachers/academics cannot agree regarding how our children are taught to read and write.

GrannyRose15Phonics only works for some children. In my teaching career I met children who simply couldn't blend- no matter how hard they tried - it was awful watching them trying to do it. I met children who were limited in their reading skills because they simply relied on sounding out words and never progressed and I know there are many other people like my dyslexic son who has short term memory problems who cannot use phonics. Of course phonics has a place, of course if children aren't taught phonics they have problems. But equally if children don't experience and become confident with whole word recognition they will simply be stuck forever sounding out words.

Thank you, grannyRose15.
I understand the difference now.

I have often thought that children learn to read inspite of how they are taught not because of it. The difficulty comes when children fail to make progress in reading. I can assure doubters that a phonics approach works extremely well for these individuals whatever their age. I have spent 18 years teaching phonics to learners with poor reading skills with an enormous degree of success.

Mamardoit

MissAdventure

I don't know the difference in pronunciation of whales and Wales.

I know that one is a country and one lives in the sea. They sound the same to me.

Imagine a Scottish person saying whales and you'll perhaps hear the difference. It's not usually so distinct south of the border.

Even though they have grown up in the north my grandsons still say "grarss" and "barth". It grates on me every time. I blame their other grandma.

On the point about differentiated worksheets, the answer is "yes". Teachers in the south will use the ones with a as (ar) while ones in the north will avoid them. As a phonics teacher myself I must admit that the only sound I have difficulty with is the southern (u) as in cup. For me "cup" has the same sound as "book" and I really have to concentrate when I need to reproduce the southern sound.

MaizieD then according to your theory all children in all schools should now be reading at a really good level, but they aren't, currently a substantial number of people have the literacy level of below 11 years. It is over 20 years since the first phonics programme was introduced into schools, so there should be some evidence of its effect.
But here's a question for you how many times when you are reading do you consciously use phonics? the answer will be of course you don't because competent and confident readers don't. They use a process called whole word recognition - which is scientifically recognised and is similar to Look and say. So you may believe in phonics but by insisting they are the only method to be used you are effectively condemning many children to a lfetime of inadequate literacy. The other question I would ask you is how if none of us understand phonics do we then use the process in advanced reading when we encounter a new word? I certainly don't. I need to look up the word and rely on my dictionary to give me the correct pronunciation.
www.newchapterlearning.net/phonics-vs-whole-word.html

*literature should be literacy

How do you get to Wales in a mini? Up the A5
How do you get two whales in a mini?
With difficulty.

Seriously though I think the difference is in the breath as in where and were.
try
Where were you? In Wales watching whales.