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Phonics-centric reading is the next big scandal waiting to happen. Teaching reading in England may have been less successful since adapting the synthetic phoni

Phonics-centric reading is the next big scandal waiting to happen. Teaching reading in England may have been less successful since adapting the synthetic phonics approach rather than more. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jan/19/focus-on-phonics-to-teach-reading-is-failing-children-says-landmark-study https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jan/19/focus-on-p... The number of downvotes shows that it may still take a few years for people to understand that phonics is not the be all end all solution that it is currently made out to be.

mandmandam 4y ago
Is "synthetic phonics" not a rather narrow subset of "phonics-centric reading"? In any case, the issue in the linked article seems to be a classic case of Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Which is to say, phonics is very important, and a great tool in a balanced approach to learning to read for fun and profit... However, it's not so great to focus on phonics as a lonely and narrow target in a national reading programme, or to justify Departmental failures.
- camelite 4y ago
  The unstated goal of the phonics test with the nonsense words is to make it impossible for teachers to cheat by having students rote-learn a bunch of high-frequency words. They can only pass by actually learning the grapheme-phoneme correspondances. It's a good thing.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    But there is no sense in which that's a skill required for effective reading. English spelling and pronunciation have too many random corners for it to be anything other than a distracting academic exercise. Recognising a bunch of high-frequency words is very much the foundation of reading. Historically reading was taught by learning words with some very basic rules for pronunciation. It worked pretty well for a long time. But the pronunciation of non-trivial words - and some trivial words - has to be heard to be learned. For example: it's not unusual for bookish people to mispronounce obscure words because they've never heard them. They know what the words mean, but the correct pronunciation just can't be worked out from the spelling. The only way to learn it is to hear someone saying it.
    - Izkata 4y ago
      Except that's wrong - there are rules to English pronunciation that work like 99% of the time. It's why most people would pronounce "ghoti" something like "go tee" or "go tie" instead of "fish". Just because there are exceptions doesn't mean the rules are nonexistent. We're just rarely or never explicitly taught these rules.
  - darkerside 4y ago
    As a parent with kids who struggled (actually, performed average) on these nonsense word tests, I do think that is bullshit. If you somehow manage to cheat and get your kids to recognize all the high frequency words they need to be fluent, congratulations, you have taught them to read. Let's keep kids' achievement measures out of the cynical distrust of our teaching staff. Edit: Yes, I am biased. And, TheOtherHobbes made better and clearer points than me in my sister comment.
camelite 4y ago
https://www.pedagogynongrata.com/a-response-to https://www.pedagogynongrata.com/a-response-to
- oxfordmale 4y ago
  It clearly is still a controversial opinion to hold that phonics is not the "end all be all" it has been made out to be. Despite challenging the statistics in the original paper, it doesn't provide evidence that phonics actually is better than the teaching techniques prior to that.
mattmcknight 4y ago
No way. That is absolute bullshit. You can tell, because they cite exactly zero studies showing some other way is better. They are looking at scores over time with no control, which can be decreasing for any other reason. Phonics based reading instruction is response to the massive scandal that already happened in the US where they tried the whole language approach, balanced instruction, three cueing, and the like with no evidence of positive impacts on literacy. Even the founder of the three cueing method accepted it is a failure. Teachers and education researchers with new books to sell don't want to accept that the boring way works better, especially for students with less support at home (where parents often use phonics to teach kids at age 2 or 3). Someone like Lucy Calkins is potentially responsible for 25% of the illiteracy in the US. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/phonics-not-whole-word-best-teaching-reading/591127/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/phonics-no... https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/is-this-the-end-of-three-cueing/2020/12 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/is-this-the-end-of-... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/education/learning/schools-teaching-reading-phonics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/education/learning/school... https://localnewsmatters.org/2022/03/13/richmond-school-finds-success-after-overhauling-its-reading-program/ https://localnewsmatters.org/2022/03/13/richmond-school-find...
- oxfordmale 4y ago
  The UCL researchers are among 250 signatories to a letter which has been sent to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, calling on the government to allow for a wider range of approaches to teaching reading, which would allow teachers to use their own judgment about which is best for their pupils. It doesn't say phonics doesn't work, it suggests phonics is only effective for a subgroup of pupils. Everyone has their own learning strategy and phonics doesn't appear to work for everyone.
  - zaphar 4y ago
    There is pretty strong evidence[0] [1] [2] that phonics is a critical part of learning to read for everyone no matter who they are or what their personality is. It's not the only piece of the puzzle but if you leave it out you will handicap the student intended to or not. Without phonics when you encounter a new word you can't pronounce it. If you can't pronounce it you can't use it in conversation. You can't use it in your mental processing. If you aren't taught it you may pick up the rules of thumb eventually but you'll have done so the long hard way. You might be justifiably angry that no one showed you or your child the easy way. 1: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Advantages-of-the-Phonics-Method-for-Early-Audina-Ma%E2%80%99muroh/133e8ed931ce4dfdd38fbc106bf302324ecec0ff https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Advantages-of-the-... 2: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ameliorating-Early-Reading-Failure-by-Integrating-Hatcher-Hulme/ec9eecf3d343859876082a37d9bb34cd2d0c0b5d https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ameliorating-Early-Rea... 3: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-effect-of-phonics-instruction-on-the-reading-of-Connelly-Johnston/94b3118a1106596f83c70471c18d5555073f391a https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-effect-of-phonics-...
anon291 4y ago
I am shocked this comment exists, when the counter-example is literally written into it. English uses the latin alphabet which is a phonetic alphabet. It's why english readers can also 'read' Spanish without understanding any of the words. Anyone who says otherwise should be promptly ignored.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  To be fair, English pronunciation is not as regular as Spanish. Spanish is a purely phonetic language, while English is phonetic but irregular.
  - anon291 4y ago
    People keep saying this, and I agree english is more complicated, but it is otherwise regular. The vast majority of English words are regular, and for those that are not regular, sounding them out incorrectly in context with the other words quickly disabuses you of any incorrect reading. My mom was a public school teacher in a poor district, and the main problem with her kids learning to read is that they did not actually know English. This would make it much more difficult to figure out how to read properly, since they'd never be able to correct 'wrong' pronunciations. I believe a lot of focus on reading is mis-placed when the children cannot speak English properly. Better to focus on diction and vocabulary.
    - benlivengood 4y ago
      English is context-sensitive phonetic, Spanish and other Latin languages are regular phonetic. Just look at "are"; its pronunciation of "a" depends on a following consonant and following vowel. Otherwise the "a" would be pronounced like "add". There are over a dozen context-sensitive rules like that, and thousands of common words that are purely exceptions, e.g. "read" and "learning" having different pronunciations of "ea", and hence are not phonetic. They are whole-word pronunciations learned by rote or immersion.
    - vehemenz 4y ago
      You're probably right that for pedagogical purposes, English reading can be taught the same way as Spanish because they are both based on phonetic alphabets. I don't disagree that knowing English (and knowing things in general, along with vocabulary) are essential to learning to read. Big picture, irregular pronunciation in English might encourage educators to use different strategies for learning the outlier words or for reinforcement. It could still be optimal to learn with this additional instruction, even if it's a secondary concern for rudimentary learners.
DonaldFisk 4y ago
It's been successful in Scotland: https://www.pearson.com/uk/educators/schools/making-an-impact/research-summaries/clackmannanshire-report.html https://www.pearson.com/uk/educators/schools/making-an-impac... This article compares Scotland with England: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/jan/19/phonics-child-literacy https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/jan/19/phonics-ch... One thing I've never seen addressed is the difference in accents between Scotland on the one hand, and England and Wales on the other. Scottish pronunciation of Standard English is in general closer to English spelling (e.g. "good" and "food" rhyme, and "r" is always pronounced).

mandmandam 4y ago

Is "synthetic phonics" not a rather narrow subset of "phonics-centric reading"? In any case, the issue in the linked article seems to be a classic case of Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Which is to say, phonics is very important, and a great tool in a balanced approach to learning to read for fun and profit... However, it's not so great to focus on phonics as a lonely and narrow target in a national reading programme, or to justify Departmental failures.

camelite 4y ago
The unstated goal of the phonics test with the nonsense words is to make it impossible for teachers to cheat by having students rote-learn a bunch of high-frequency words. They can only pass by actually learning the grapheme-phoneme correspondances. It's a good thing.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  But there is no sense in which that's a skill required for effective reading. English spelling and pronunciation have too many random corners for it to be anything other than a distracting academic exercise. Recognising a bunch of high-frequency words is very much the foundation of reading. Historically reading was taught by learning words with some very basic rules for pronunciation. It worked pretty well for a long time. But the pronunciation of non-trivial words - and some trivial words - has to be heard to be learned. For example: it's not unusual for bookish people to mispronounce obscure words because they've never heard them. They know what the words mean, but the correct pronunciation just can't be worked out from the spelling. The only way to learn it is to hear someone saying it.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    Except that's wrong - there are rules to English pronunciation that work like 99% of the time. It's why most people would pronounce "ghoti" something like "go tee" or "go tie" instead of "fish". Just because there are exceptions doesn't mean the rules are nonexistent. We're just rarely or never explicitly taught these rules.
- darkerside 4y ago
  As a parent with kids who struggled (actually, performed average) on these nonsense word tests, I do think that is bullshit. If you somehow manage to cheat and get your kids to recognize all the high frequency words they need to be fluent, congratulations, you have taught them to read. Let's keep kids' achievement measures out of the cynical distrust of our teaching staff. Edit: Yes, I am biased. And, TheOtherHobbes made better and clearer points than me in my sister comment.

camelite 4y ago

https://www.pedagogynongrata.com/a-response-to https://www.pedagogynongrata.com/a-response-to

oxfordmale 4y ago
It clearly is still a controversial opinion to hold that phonics is not the "end all be all" it has been made out to be. Despite challenging the statistics in the original paper, it doesn't provide evidence that phonics actually is better than the teaching techniques prior to that.

mattmcknight 4y ago

No way. That is absolute bullshit. You can tell, because they cite exactly zero studies showing some other way is better. They are looking at scores over time with no control, which can be decreasing for any other reason. Phonics based reading instruction is response to the massive scandal that already happened in the US where they tried the whole language approach, balanced instruction, three cueing, and the like with no evidence of positive impacts on literacy. Even the founder of the three cueing method accepted it is a failure. Teachers and education researchers with new books to sell don't want to accept that the boring way works better, especially for students with less support at home (where parents often use phonics to teach kids at age 2 or 3). Someone like Lucy Calkins is potentially responsible for 25% of the illiteracy in the US. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/phonics-not-whole-word-best-teaching-reading/591127/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/phonics-no... https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/is-this-the-end-of-three-cueing/2020/12 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/is-this-the-end-of-... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/education/learning/schools-teaching-reading-phonics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/education/learning/school... https://localnewsmatters.org/2022/03/13/richmond-school-finds-success-after-overhauling-its-reading-program/ https://localnewsmatters.org/2022/03/13/richmond-school-find...

oxfordmale 4y ago
The UCL researchers are among 250 signatories to a letter which has been sent to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, calling on the government to allow for a wider range of approaches to teaching reading, which would allow teachers to use their own judgment about which is best for their pupils. It doesn't say phonics doesn't work, it suggests phonics is only effective for a subgroup of pupils. Everyone has their own learning strategy and phonics doesn't appear to work for everyone.
- zaphar 4y ago
  There is pretty strong evidence[0] [1] [2] that phonics is a critical part of learning to read for everyone no matter who they are or what their personality is. It's not the only piece of the puzzle but if you leave it out you will handicap the student intended to or not. Without phonics when you encounter a new word you can't pronounce it. If you can't pronounce it you can't use it in conversation. You can't use it in your mental processing. If you aren't taught it you may pick up the rules of thumb eventually but you'll have done so the long hard way. You might be justifiably angry that no one showed you or your child the easy way. 1: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Advantages-of-the-Phonics-Method-for-Early-Audina-Ma%E2%80%99muroh/133e8ed931ce4dfdd38fbc106bf302324ecec0ff https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Advantages-of-the-... 2: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ameliorating-Early-Reading-Failure-by-Integrating-Hatcher-Hulme/ec9eecf3d343859876082a37d9bb34cd2d0c0b5d https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ameliorating-Early-Rea... 3: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-effect-of-phonics-instruction-on-the-reading-of-Connelly-Johnston/94b3118a1106596f83c70471c18d5555073f391a https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-effect-of-phonics-...

anon291 4y ago

I am shocked this comment exists, when the counter-example is literally written into it. English uses the latin alphabet which is a phonetic alphabet. It's why english readers can also 'read' Spanish without understanding any of the words. Anyone who says otherwise should be promptly ignored.

vehemenz 4y ago
To be fair, English pronunciation is not as regular as Spanish. Spanish is a purely phonetic language, while English is phonetic but irregular.
- anon291 4y ago
  People keep saying this, and I agree english is more complicated, but it is otherwise regular. The vast majority of English words are regular, and for those that are not regular, sounding them out incorrectly in context with the other words quickly disabuses you of any incorrect reading. My mom was a public school teacher in a poor district, and the main problem with her kids learning to read is that they did not actually know English. This would make it much more difficult to figure out how to read properly, since they'd never be able to correct 'wrong' pronunciations. I believe a lot of focus on reading is mis-placed when the children cannot speak English properly. Better to focus on diction and vocabulary.
  - benlivengood 4y ago
    English is context-sensitive phonetic, Spanish and other Latin languages are regular phonetic. Just look at "are"; its pronunciation of "a" depends on a following consonant and following vowel. Otherwise the "a" would be pronounced like "add". There are over a dozen context-sensitive rules like that, and thousands of common words that are purely exceptions, e.g. "read" and "learning" having different pronunciations of "ea", and hence are not phonetic. They are whole-word pronunciations learned by rote or immersion.
  - vehemenz 4y ago
    You're probably right that for pedagogical purposes, English reading can be taught the same way as Spanish because they are both based on phonetic alphabets. I don't disagree that knowing English (and knowing things in general, along with vocabulary) are essential to learning to read. Big picture, irregular pronunciation in English might encourage educators to use different strategies for learning the outlier words or for reinforcement. It could still be optimal to learn with this additional instruction, even if it's a secondary concern for rudimentary learners.

DonaldFisk 4y ago

It's been successful in Scotland: https://www.pearson.com/uk/educators/schools/making-an-impact/research-summaries/clackmannanshire-report.html https://www.pearson.com/uk/educators/schools/making-an-impac... This article compares Scotland with England: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/jan/19/phonics-child-literacy https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/jan/19/phonics-ch... One thing I've never seen addressed is the difference in accents between Scotland on the one hand, and England and Wales on the other. Scottish pronunciation of Standard English is in general closer to English spelling (e.g. "good" and "food" rhyme, and "r" is always pronounced).