[senco-forum] Re Literacy

Actually, Eddie, the early manuscripts (including Elizabethan plays)  in 
English are written as they were spoken- rigid spelling conventions came 
later. I spent an interesting junior honours English year considering what 
could be deduced about the pronunciation of the language then.

So they wrote in true synthetic phonics, it seems.

Elizabeth

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eddie Carron" <eddiecarron at btconnect.com>
To: <senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 12:11 AM
Subject: [senco-forum] Re Literacy

It is tempting to wonder how Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, Daniel Defoe, 
Walter Scott, Robert Burns etc etc etc managed to become the greatest 
literary giants in the world in spite it being most unlikely that they were 
taught by synthetic phonics but the answer is of course, that they were 
probably part of the 80% or so, who self-evidently managed to become 
literary Gods without it.

 Once again, I strongly support the use of synthetic phonics and I know that 
a number of very productive resources exist which are based on SP principles 
but unlike the fundamentalists, I would reserve their use for those who need 
them. Any notion which supports the imposition on all children of a teaching 
strategy which is known to be unnecessary for the vast majority of them, is 
in my view, seriously flawed and we have surely had our fill of illogical 
philosophies already. Can we not just for once, go with commonsense?.

Eddie C. 