4 ms·

I sometimes wonder if we need a better phonics. Doing it by letters feels crude, it requires a big gestalt moment when the kid puts the sounds together, and ove

I sometimes wonder if we need a better phonics. Doing it by letters feels crude, it requires a big gestalt moment when the kid puts the sounds together, and overemphasizes our very malleable vowels. Something based more on syllables would seem better to me. Consider a simple work like “back”: kids sound out buh-ah-kuh which is a completely crazy version of the real word. You can’t say a B without a vowel, but instead of using the actual vowel (a) consonants usually get an “uh” added to them. Learning syllables means learning maybe 5-10 times as many sounds, but then it’s also easy to add “ing” and “sh” and all the many combinations of letters that can’t be individually decoded. The second problem is the kid has to pick out those letter combinations even though words are just a stream of letters. I wonder if it would be supportive to write the words in multiple colors to show the internal structure? I feel like this must all exist already in some curriculum...?

teilo 7y ago
This is already being done. In fact, that's central to almost any phonics course. Phonics isn't about letters in isolation. It's about letters in context. You start with the basic sounds, and quickly move onto letter pairings / groupings and how they effect the sound. To use your example, the -ack suffix is shown with a whole bunch of words on a single card to make the idea plain: back, sack, pack, black, tack, etc. So what you suggest is quite common in home and private school curriculums.
SPascareli13 7y ago
Some languages are more based on syllables than English, like Portuguese for example. When I was first learning English, being a portuguese speaker, I thought it would be easy to learn english, I just had to know the english syllables and translate words syllable by syllable. To my dismay, not only that doesn't work, english barely has a concept of syllables that makes any sense. So I wonder if languages that are have more phonetic writing like Korean for example, have better readers than other languages.
rossriley 7y ago
Modern phonics teaching introduces digraphs and trigraphs at an early stage of the process, so children learn to recognise these. My partner is a specialist phonics teacher and places a dot underneath each digraph, trigraph or individual letter sound so that they can quickly recognise the components. So boil will have a dot under b, one under o-i and one under the l. They can then spot that oi is a digraph; in the early stages they do this by saying out loud, an o and a i make 'oy'
- ascorbic 7y ago
  They also learn "split digraphs" like "a_e", so they know the different between e.g. "fat" and "fate". I was amazed by how quickly my kids picked this stuff up when they started school (at 5). They were both reading and writing full sentences before the end of the first term. Phonics is a great system.
DanBC 7y ago
> You can’t say a B without a vowel, but instead of using the actual vowel (a) consonants usually get an “uh” added to them. Sure, but you can do better than a long buh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwTkcfKRj00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwTkcfKRj00 Note that this short-b sound is only introductory. Children soon move past that to pairs with the other letters.
ebalit 7y ago
In french, the phonics method is called "syllabic". It's also called "B.A. BA" as it is generally the first pair that is learned. "B.A BA" is also used as synonymous of the basics knowledge of any domain, equivalent to "101" in english. It seems to me that reading with syllabic is the first time we learn how to solve a problem by decomposing it into many simpler subproblems. This seems like a great teaching in addition to being able to read.
taneq 7y ago
> Consider a simple work like “back”: kids sound out buh-ah-kuh which is a completely crazy version of the real word. It doesn't sound the same but there's a clear pathway from "buh-ah-kuh" to "buahkuh" to "back", and it's one you can follow from arbitrary words. Sesame Street was teaching kids to sound out words like this back in the 80s. Has everyone in the U.S. education system forgotten these guys? https://youtu.be/chHz3bo3f1U https://youtu.be/chHz3bo3f1U

teilo 7y ago

This is already being done. In fact, that's central to almost any phonics course. Phonics isn't about letters in isolation. It's about letters in context. You start with the basic sounds, and quickly move onto letter pairings / groupings and how they effect the sound. To use your example, the -ack suffix is shown with a whole bunch of words on a single card to make the idea plain: back, sack, pack, black, tack, etc. So what you suggest is quite common in home and private school curriculums.

SPascareli13 7y ago

Some languages are more based on syllables than English, like Portuguese for example. When I was first learning English, being a portuguese speaker, I thought it would be easy to learn english, I just had to know the english syllables and translate words syllable by syllable. To my dismay, not only that doesn't work, english barely has a concept of syllables that makes any sense. So I wonder if languages that are have more phonetic writing like Korean for example, have better readers than other languages.

rossriley 7y ago

Modern phonics teaching introduces digraphs and trigraphs at an early stage of the process, so children learn to recognise these. My partner is a specialist phonics teacher and places a dot underneath each digraph, trigraph or individual letter sound so that they can quickly recognise the components. So boil will have a dot under b, one under o-i and one under the l. They can then spot that oi is a digraph; in the early stages they do this by saying out loud, an o and a i make 'oy'

ascorbic 7y ago
They also learn "split digraphs" like "a_e", so they know the different between e.g. "fat" and "fate". I was amazed by how quickly my kids picked this stuff up when they started school (at 5). They were both reading and writing full sentences before the end of the first term. Phonics is a great system.

DanBC 7y ago

> You can’t say a B without a vowel, but instead of using the actual vowel (a) consonants usually get an “uh” added to them. Sure, but you can do better than a long buh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwTkcfKRj00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwTkcfKRj00 Note that this short-b sound is only introductory. Children soon move past that to pairs with the other letters.

ebalit 7y ago

In french, the phonics method is called "syllabic". It's also called "B.A. BA" as it is generally the first pair that is learned. "B.A BA" is also used as synonymous of the basics knowledge of any domain, equivalent to "101" in english. It seems to me that reading with syllabic is the first time we learn how to solve a problem by decomposing it into many simpler subproblems. This seems like a great teaching in addition to being able to read.

taneq 7y ago

> Consider a simple work like “back”: kids sound out buh-ah-kuh which is a completely crazy version of the real word. It doesn't sound the same but there's a clear pathway from "buh-ah-kuh" to "buahkuh" to "back", and it's one you can follow from arbitrary words. Sesame Street was teaching kids to sound out words like this back in the 80s. Has everyone in the U.S. education system forgotten these guys? https://youtu.be/chHz3bo3f1U https://youtu.be/chHz3bo3f1U