Phonics

LadyHonoriaDedlock
My DC got very teased when moving from the Home Counties to Wales and were told they were Cockneys.

I always thought they spoke quaite naicely.

And don't get me going about people who pronounce 'whales' the same as 'Wales', and 'February' as 'Febuary'...

GGD has developed a Geordie lingo since being in Durham for a number of months. Her siblings laugh as they have a mild Liverpool lilt.

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

My two older DDs have southern accents, my youngest has a West Midlands accent. GCs are Australian, Hampshire/NZ and the youngest Geordie. That’s what comes of us being gypsyish.

In some areas e.g. Liverpool, the difference between the short oo in book, look and the long oo in pool or food is unnoticeable. Does it matter? It’s not the same as cudder or could of which is just wrong.

trisher

GrannyGravy13 fortunately phonics is just one way of teaching reading, the process of which is an incredibly complicated brain function. It is a way upon which some advisers in education became hooked. Much as when I started teaching some people were hooked on the Initial Teaching Alphabet (fortunes were spent on books and equipment for that). It's something that gives children a start in the first steps of reading and it provides a good base for a teaching programme. It has its limitations, but early years are usually OK. It's the later ones where kids start to try and sound out words like cough and through not to mention thorough and brought that you get problems.

Sorry, trisher, but you're information on phonics is out of date and incorrect. This is why teaching students aren't getting properly taught at Uni. Most of the Uni tutors are ex-teachers trained in Whole Language, Look and Say, Balanced Literacy, none of which are really even compatible with phonics instruction and have no scientific evidence to back them. but they cling very closely to what they were taught. It is they who perpetrate the myths and untruths about phonics instruction.

Phonics has no limitations except in the minds of those who don't understand it, or who don't want to understand it. Phonics is what adult skilled readers do when they encounter words they have never seen in print before. It's a lifelong skill.

There are some 250,000 words in the English lexicon. Most of which, about 95%, can be worked out with phonic knowledge. There are, if I recall rightly, 16 of those 'ough' words in the English language. Not really enough to condemn children to not being properly taught the English alphabetic code and how to use it.

Oddly enough, the ITA was the impetus for a refocus on phonics instruction because it used one to one correspondences for the spellings of phonemes and was incredibly easy to learn to read. Of course, the crunch came with moving back to materials written with the conventional alphabet. Phonics as, taught now, works on the same principles. Teach the children the way that the 44 phonemes of English are represented by a letter, or letters and how to use that knowledge to work out what the words 'say'.

ITA only needed to use 44 symbols; using the conventional alphabet means using 26 to represent the 44 sounds and account for the fact that English may have more than one way to spell a phoneme. But teachers familiar with ITA realised that it was more effective to teach children some 160 'sound spellings' than to try to get them to memorise 20 - 30,000 whole words.

It's more complex, but absolutely doable - children do it all the time.

MaizieD You are so right about the change back from ITA to conventional text. For many children, it was yet another barrier to reading.
However, I feel I should send a word of congratulation to the Uni’s where our students come from. They arrive all up to date with the latest phonics teaching and talk knowledgeably about the phases appropriate to the classes they are teaching and the progression through the phases. They are also aware of the ‘difficult’ words that just need to be learnt.

It's a stretched out A. My daughter who moved to London after uni speaks like this now. To us living, in Wales, she sounds really posh. Just spoke to her on the phone and she was just putting her maarsk on to collect GD from school. My son who also moved to London after uni does not speak like this.

MissAdventure

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

Not do I ?

All I can think is that some people would start one of those words with a 'hw' sound, but that would sound awfully pretentious in all the regions I have ever lived in.
It might be something quite different, of course.

Hwell, I'm inclined to agree.

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.

So looking forward to the next two days of online phonics & literature with the GC ?

Me too GG13

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.

*literature should be literacy

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

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.

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.

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.

Thank you, grannyRose15.
I understand the difference now.

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.

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

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!