lirazel | (no subject)

I recently listened to a (very interesting, recommended) 6-episode podcast called Sold a Story about why so many USAmerican kids (and Kiwi kids, too, apparently!) can't read. Long story short: a lady from New Zealand came up with this theory that kids don't learn by sounding out the words but by paying attention to context and stuff like this ("three-cueing"). Her ideas took off and schools stopped teaching phonics. There's a big publisher and some superstar reading pedagogy authors who have made an empire from teaching this weird theory despite the fact that neuroscience is very clear that, actually, yes kids do indeed learn phonetically. This is accompanied by a theory that if you just give kids books on topics they're interested in, they will learn to read automatically? I guess? The idea is to make them "passionate" readers but not actually, you know, worry about whether they understand the mechanics of reading. Which, as a lifelong passionate reader, seems wrong-headed.

It's a depressing story (mostly because it appears that upper and upper-middle class families have papered over this problem by hiring private tutors, while poorer and working class kids just suffer), but what I kept getting hung up on was that this has to be an English-language problem, right? The root of this thing has to come down to the fact that English has such weird and quirky spelling for so many words. A language like, say, Spanish that uses an alphabet or syllabic system for phonetic spelling--in which you always, always know how to pronounce the word just by looking at it--could never give rise to such a theory, right?

So the fact that this took off in the Anglophone world has got to be just another manifestation of the way that Anglocentrism bites us in the butt--if any of these people had looked at how kids learn to read Korean or whatever, they would have realized that their theory can't be right?

Or am I missing something?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I will never get used to Tipp and Schifffahrt, it looks wrong. Why, oh why.

But either way, German is relatively easy, and also was before. But things like hier can ne tricky, because unless the pronounciation is super exaggerated, it could easily be hir. Is it is Eumel or Oimel or Oymel? Is it Ei or Ai? It could be ain Ai im Ayerbecher!

The point is, it's stupid to let kids write the way they hear it, because it depends so much on how something is pronounced. On top of that, we're a country with strong dialects, and I don't even want to imagine what children write like in Bavaria or Saxony when not taught how things are written correctly. I understand why they're later frustrated by reading because they can't sound out the words in their head or writing because it's all wrong and then get bad marks for orthography in secondary school.

But things like hier can ne tricky, because unless the pronounciation is super exaggerated, it could easily be hir. Is it is Eumel or Oimel or Oymel? Is it Ei or Ai? It could be ain Ai im Ayerbecher!

Oh no, what have you done?!?! I don't hear the difference between i and ie, or ei and ai but it just looks so, so wrong.

I didn't even think about dialects! Omg, that would be unreadable.

😂😂

Sorry, sorry.

But this is exactly my point, it looks wrong to you because you learned how to spell! You intuitively know what is correct, because your primary school teacher taught you how and probably had you keep a book where you write down every new word you learned. (Ah, nostalgia....) And then you wrote Diktate where those words were also used.

But the point is, you learned them correctly the first time around and you never convinced yourself that you were right and it is an Ei is an ai (not capitalized, because you can't heart that).

But I agree, it breaks my mind also a little. I don't even have children and never wanted children and I get mad on behalf of every child out there.

But the point is, you learned them correctly the first time around and you never convinced yourself that you were right and it is an Ei is an ai (not capitalized, because you can't heart that).

It's truly awful to think of kids having to unlearn things they learned because they learned them incorrectly. Those poor kids! They deserve better!

But this is exactly my point, it looks wrong to you because you learned how to spell!
Yeah, I know. But it's good that I can do that now. Communication depends on shared rules.

I'm so sorry for all the school children out there. This way of teaching will make life so much more difficult for them in the future.