[senco-forum] Re Literacy

I blame the Norman French (mucking up and Frencifying our Germanic logical phonetic), William Caxton for regularising at a time of phonetic/language change, attempts then to posh things up by (re)introducing/regularising/standardising Latin based silent letters, etc., early printers from the Low Countries standardising more illogical non-phonetic idiosynchracies. And sheer careless spellings by renowned medieaval writers and printers causing standardising of further spelling/written word maddness and sheer illogicality to the standard written language. And present day traditionalists who believe that our idiosynchratic spellings have some worhtwhile importance, and that to go through the torture of memorising vast illogicalliities, is a test of English moral fibre and discipline which is somehow the mark of an "educated" person. It is sheer madness.
Brendan King   

-----Original Message-----
From: elzo15ns at dsl.pipex.com
To: eddiecarron at btconnect.com; senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Sent: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 1.29PM
Subject: Re: [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.  