[eal-bilingual] phonics and context

I have a student right now who is the extreme result of non-phonics teaching.? He is from China and has been taught English in China.?? He is 17 and has a reading age of about 12.? 

He demonstrates a few things - firstly just how simple it would be if English was as regular as phonetics - surely all these discussions about the worthiness of phonics is simply a result of our coding system being very complex, so that very often context or look-and-say are simply easier and faster routes to reading, especially for native speakers.? Secondly, he shows what a pickle you are in as an EAL student (with little recourse to context and cueing) if you are not aware of the sound-symbol relationship of English.

He has learnt phonetics parallel to English as a total look-and-say language (like Chinese).?? So when he gets a new word in English he writes alongside it the phonetic transcription of the word and pronounces it perfectly.??? However, if he meets that word in a text he won't remember the sound, but will recognise the spelling and, perhaps, remember the meaning.??

His speech is very difficult to understand as he can't remember how to say many of the words he has learnt and even if he can remember the spelling, it doesn't help.?? Commonly, when he can't remember how to say a word, he spells it out - e.g. recently he was using the word 'sand' in conversation and I couldn't understand what he was saying so he spelt it out for me S-A-N-D.? Incidentally, he has a very good memory for spellings which he has been taught kinesthetically by repetition of spelling words out with his finger on the table or palm of his hand.

When I told him that generally you can look at a word and know how to say it in English, he was genuinely astonished, and is naturally eager to learn this mysterious connection!? 

Cathy

-----Original Message-----
From: John Bald <johnbald at talktalk.net>
BCC: cathyallen65 at aol.com
Sent: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 6.06am
Subject: Re: [eal-bilingual] phonics and context

Gordon Ward and Clara Rizzi's posts indicate what I hope is growing agreement on this issue. Phonics is not language. It is a way of introducing children to the alphabetic system in order to learn to read and spell. In our first language, we have several years of hearing and using it, slowly at first, before we learn to read. In a new language, particularly if we go straight into a school, we hit the spoken and written language at the same time, and need to make sense of it. This takes time, and there is more than one factor involved.?
?
I used Ruth Miskin's ditties recently with a six year old native English speaker who had become completely confused by guessing techniques used in his school, and got an immediate improvement in his behaviour as well as his reading. Sue Palmer, who has watched me teach, says I use a kind of "systematic empathy" to match up the teaching to what children need to learn, and to make sure thay understand and are comfortable with the material. This kind of approach needs to run through all of the work. We are not programming computers, but teaching people, and we need to teach them what they need to learn, and in a way that enables them to learn. Phonics is a key part of the mix, rather than one reading teaching method among others, because of the alphabetic basis of English writing. This is true despite the irregularity in spelling that cuts down its efficiency. It is not the whole story, which includes, tenses, idioms, pronunciation, the chunks of language we need to survive, small words such as articles that give language cohesion and make it easier for listeners to process.?
?
John Bald ?

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