What is phonics for?

[ShannonCC]

Forgive my ignorance here :LOL Is it just for teaching reading?

I thought it was just for learning to read but I keep seeing so many homeschoolers concerned with teaching phonics, it's beginning to make me wonder if it's thought to be some important subject all on it's own or something.

[eilonwy]

It's a method for teaching reading, wherin one emphasizes the sounds made by individual letters, followed by digraphs, groups of letters, and (finally) words. It's very important to people who aren't really into whole-word or whole-language methods. There's nothing else, though.

[alegna]

Some also claim that it's important for spelling, though according to my school records, phonics was why I was a BAD speller :LOL

-Angela

[hopeland]

yep thats about it....it helps a bit with spelling but then you have to learn all those other rules...like i before e etc. lol

[Marsupialmom]

What is Phonics?
http://www.nrrf.org/whatisphonics.html

Please read the link that leads you to Explicit or Implicit Phonics.

Many phonics programs are incomplete/vague on some rules.

Http://www.welltrainedmind.com/wholelanguage.php

People that teach phonics have found "comprehension" just comes. http://www.nrrf.org/hiskes11-03.htm

[applejuice]

Yes, phonics was probably not taught to you when you went to school. It goes in and out of fashion.

It works for many students, but not for all, but it is worth using for all.

[LeftField]

I always read/wrote above grade-level and simultaneously flunked phonics. I remember getting in trouble over this in the 4th grade and struggling to understand why I had to learn phonics. I hated it as much as math, b/c it didn't make lots of sense to me. nak. I was talking about this to dh the other night when he sheepishly admitted he didn't know the phonics rules (he is a strong reader though). We were both unable to remember sounding words out, except for new, long ones.

So, I'm going to venture slightly OT for a moment and ask if anyone knows how people learn to read using whole words and if there are curric on whole word reading? We unschool, so I'm not going to teach my son to read. But I find it curious that he has memorized some whole words and how one would make that next logical step to using it to decode new words. The whole thing is like a mystery to me. After my discussion with my dh, we are wondering if one approach is more natural than the other or if there's a genetic component. If we both were whole word readers, then maybe both our kids will be? I'm pretty impressed that people learn how to read. People are amazing, aren't they?

Anyway, with the phonics curric, I wonder if people consider that perhaps their child's brain will not naturally prefer that method of learning.

[ShannonCC]

Ok, thanks I guess I do know what phonics is :LOL I just thought there was something more I was missing since it seems very important to many of the homeschoolers I know.

I don't know the phonics rules either :LOL I do remember being taught them as an adult when I was tutoring adult reading, but I don't think we learned them as kids (and I've since forgotten all the rules I was taught since I don't tutor anymore ) I always thought being able to sound out words comes from being able to read, not the other way around.

[momof3sweeties]

Can you read this?

Olny srmat poelpe can. cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty
uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid,
aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer
in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is
taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be
a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is
bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the
wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuho slpeling was ipmorantt!
if you can raed tihs psas it on !!

[ShannonCC]

I got that in email a few times (different variations). Cracks me up

[LeftField]

Wow, that's amazing. I read that with the same speed I would normally read. So basically, whether you know phonics or not, a fluent reader files known words in a mental database. And then, with the help of context, the brain no longer needs all the letters. That's so cool.

[ShannonCC]

Is it context or something else? Maybe both. There was one word in there I had trouble with, then I realized it was a typo. The only word that *doesn't* have the first and last letters right! (in "awlyas tghuho slpeling was ipmorantt" the word "tghuho" should have a "t" at the end).

[LeftField]

Originally Posted by ShannonCC

Is it context or something else? Maybe both. There was one word in there I had trouble with, then I realized it was a typo. The only word that *doesn't* have the first and last letters right! (in "awlyas tghuho slpeling was ipmorantt" the word "tghuho" should have a "t" at the end).

Great catch!
I had a hard time with "couldn't", because there was no apostrophe.

[Attila the Honey]

Do you think whether you learn reading by phonics or not has a bearing on how easily you can read it? I breezed through it as quickly as if it was written normally, but dh struggled and he is an avid reader.

That was interesting, thanks!

[momof3sweeties]

I had a problem when I got the e-mail with aulaclty.

I truly think the more your read the better speller you will become.

The other day my 7yo was frustrated with spelling basic. Why doesn't it end with k or ck...How do you know? he asked me.....If there is a rule for that I don't remember it! I just told him as he reads and writes more he will make the connections and know where the letters go and what letters to use for sounds in certain words. But our language is confusing, even to adults. My son was so upset the other day he wrote something about having to weight. I told him it was w-a-i-t. He said nope he learned to spell weight and that was how it was...then I had to explain different meaning of the same word have also different spellings. Like to, too, two. As adults we take it for granted, but for kids this is all new and frustrating!

I just remember seeing someone wearing a classic t-shirt "hukd on fonix wrkd 4 me!"

Makes ya wonder!!

[SagMom]

Originally Posted by Attila the Honey

Do you think whether you learn reading by phonics or not has a bearing on how easily you can read it? I breezed through it as quickly as if it was written normally, but dh struggled and he is an avid reader.

That was interesting, thanks!

I was wondering the same thing! I struggled with it at first--looking at each word and trying to puzzle it out. Once I realized that only the first and last letter mattered, I breezed through the rest of the paragraph. (I learned to read with "Dick and Jane" but then phonics became all the rage and there was YEARS of that!)

[eilonwy]

Originally Posted by Attila the Honey

Do you think whether you learn reading by phonics or not has a bearing on how easily you can read it? I breezed through it as quickly as if it was written normally, but dh struggled and he is an avid reader.

That was interesting, thanks!

Yes and no. I learned to read phonetically and I didn't have much trouble reading that, but it's absolutely beside the point: Fluent readers do not read the same way that beginning readers do! To say that when *you* read, you just look at the first and last letters of familiar words is justification for not teaching a child phonics is not a sound argument. Ask a non-fluent (emergent, beginning, whatever the heck they call them in your neck of the woods) reader to read that same paragraph. They won't be able to figure it out.

The arguments that I've heard against phonics are *all* based on the way that fluent readers read. They've got nothing to do with teaching the skill of reading. Of course I don't look at familiar words and sound them out every time, but if I hadn't learned to initially, I think that it would have had a huge impact on the way that I speak. Every single person I know who is moderately intelligent and learned to read whole words has what I call a "reading vocabulary;" a whole bunch of words which they can define and understand, but which they cannot pronounce correctly. When they have to use these words in conversation for some reason, they invariably mispronounce them. It's difficult for them to learn the correct pronunciation, because they learned the word while reading it and the "sound" that they've formed in their mind for that word is incorrect-- they have to reprogram themselves.

My best friend is one of these people. He's got a very extensive reading vocabulary, but he taught himself to read whole words and never heard his reading words in conversation (he's a heck of a lot smarter than his parents). Not only did he have a difficult time pronouncing words like "proletariat," but he was one of those people who said "Calvary" instead of "cavalry" and often transposed letters in his speech. Every single whole-word reader I've ever met has done this to some degree; my friend's case is a bit more extreme than most because a) he read *a lot* and b) he read things which were way beyond the people around him (there was never any discussion opportunity). I guess the point that I'm making is that the method you choose for teaching your children to read today will have a discernable effect in the future, despite the fact that all fluent readers read by looking at words and not sounding them out.

[LeftField]

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I rarely mispronounce words and I'm positive I was a whole-word reader. nak, Same for my dh. I think that one way or another must be more intuitive to different people.

[ShannonCC]

I'm not arguing for or against phonics or anything else. We didn't use anything actually We are unschoolers and my dd learned to read without formal instruction (phonics or otherwise). I've heard her sound out new words just fine I also don't think phonics was taught when I was that age (early 70's) and I can sound out words too. But then, if everyone could sound out every word, we wouldn't need pronunciations in dictionaries either

I don't think anyone was trying to say that passage was proof of phonics or whole word or anything. I thought it was just supposed to be wicked cool !

[Dar]

Originally Posted by eilonwy

Every single person I know who is moderately intelligent and learned to read whole words has what I call a "reading vocabulary;" a whole bunch of words which they can define and understand, but which they cannot pronounce correctly.

I don't. And the vast majority of the adults I teach (GRE prep) were taught to read with phonics, and they frequently mispronounce words that they've never heard spoken before.

My experience has been that fluent readers do know the "rules" of phonics, but they've learned them intuitively, without having been explicitly taught. This is how kids being taught through whole language naturally pick up phonics, as well. After seeing 3 or 5 or 10 words that start with "s", kids figure out (again, often unconsciously) that the "s" repreents the sound /s/. We do this all of the time - kids figure out that the green light means go and the red means stop, for example, just by being in cars that stop at the reds and go on the greens. No one has to tell them. Once kids have a "bank" of 50 or 100 words, they can pull lots of connections out and intuit lots of phnetic rules. If this wasn't happening, kids could never read a word they'd never seen before if they hadn't been taught phonics - and yet plenty of kids become fluent readers after being told what only a very few words are.

Teaching explicit phonics to non-readers, IMO, is putting the cart before the horse. The informatio is without context; it's functionally meaningless until they can read. And boring... and not necessary, clearly, or we wouldn't be able to point to so many fluent readers who never had a lick of explicit phonics instruction.

Dar