[senco-forum] all of the grapheme/phonemes

I think it needs to be remembered that in the case of English 'phonics' is
only a heuristic to help the learner acquire the 'real' rules.  English is
organized at phonemic and morphophonemic levels not just grapheme phoneme
correspondences.  Rather than allowing/ hoping learners will absorb the
logic from exposure only ( the major flaw in whole language) might it not be
more effective to teach them so that each learner does not have to re invent
the wheel?  My work with incarcerated adults suggests that direct teaching
of the code and rules in the context of words, sentences and 'nonsense'
words is an effective way to do inculcate word recognition skills.  The
trick is to make the learner the teacher.

Philip EP

Philip EP
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eddie Carron" <eddiecarron at btconnect.com>
To: <senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 9:52 PM
Subject: [senco-forum] all of the grapheme/phonemes

I don't specifically teach any of the grapheme/phoneme correspondences. I
simply try to fill the virtually empty sight vocabularies of older poor
readers by proactive priming.   Sight vocab is believed to be able to
contain a few thousand words so even the most conservative estimates of its
capacity would permit all of the grapheme/phoneme correspondences with a few
thousand spaces to spare.   Sight vocab capacity is not a problem. The
problem would appear to be gaining admittance to sight vocabulary.

I am simply trying to structure a set of decoding experiences in such a way
as to increase the likelihood of extending a poor readers sight vocabulary
where this is not happening spontaneously, possibly because of poor short
term memory function. I do not regard it as accidental that WISC or BAS
subtests on poor readers invariably show poor short term memory function.

Sight vocab inevitably consists of the most frequently occuring words and
these must obviously be useful in reading.  The most important outstanding
unknown is what, if any, part does sight vocabulary play in decoding words
not contained in sight vocabulary.  I believe that part to be very
significant and although a long term enthusiast for SP for the initial
teaching of reading, I depart from the fundamentalist SP view that all words
are decoded grapheme by grapheme, every time they are encountered and no
matter how often they are encountered. That seems to me to be an utterly
bizarre idea.

I regard my researches as practical rather than academic or intellectual but
I do ensure  that they always have a reasonable logical basis.

Eddie C.

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