I figured that if it originated in New Zealand it probably made it to Australia as well. Yikes.
(I was better off as I read so voraciously that I'd somehow learnt to spell by osmosis)
Oh same.
I would say that in my own family's case, the decision to pay for private tutoring came only after literally years of my mother ringing up the school to complain and coming in for meetings with teachers (I believe she took it all the way to the principal) to complain about this, and got nowhere.
From the people they interviewed in the podcast, this sounds like a very, very common situation.
children in those countries don't have to have spelling tests in the classroom, and the idea of American-style spelling bees is absurd because (apart from loanwords) there's no ambiguity in spelling.
Right! My brother-in-law thinks it's wild!
I remember a friend from Iceland saying that in his school, they weren't just taught phonetics, they were taught the International Phonetic Alphabet, because it was considered important to know a universal way to represent phonemes, since such phonemes can be spelt in various ways if you use e.g. the Latin alphabet.
I think this would be a great think for everyone to learn! But only after everyone's learned to read in their own native language first, obviously.
no subject
(I was better off as I read so voraciously that I'd somehow learnt to spell by osmosis)
Oh same.
I would say that in my own family's case, the decision to pay for private tutoring came only after literally years of my mother ringing up the school to complain and coming in for meetings with teachers (I believe she took it all the way to the principal) to complain about this, and got nowhere.
From the people they interviewed in the podcast, this sounds like a very, very common situation.
children in those countries don't have to have spelling tests in the classroom, and the idea of American-style spelling bees is absurd because (apart from loanwords) there's no ambiguity in spelling.
Right! My brother-in-law thinks it's wild!
I remember a friend from Iceland saying that in his school, they weren't just taught phonetics, they were taught the International Phonetic Alphabet, because it was considered important to know a universal way to represent phonemes, since such phonemes can be spelt in various ways if you use e.g. the Latin alphabet.
I think this would be a great think for everyone to learn! But only after everyone's learned to read in their own native language first, obviously.