I’m 35, I didn’t have ‘phonics classes’. I learned to read by reading with my grandfather. We did learn grammar, though. If you don’t waste kids’ lives teaching them the alphabet, as if it’s the greatest story ever told, then they have time to learn actual stuff.[/quote]
Alphabet and phonics are different, though. Teaching kids the alphabet is a huge waste of time. The only thing they’ll really need it for is to know how to say the letter names (not even match them up with the letter itself) or put things in alphabetical order, both of which come later.
I’m 35, I didn’t have ‘phonics classes’. I learned to read by reading with my grandfather. We did learn grammar, though. If you don’t waste kids’ lives teaching them the alphabet, as if it’s the greatest story ever told, then they have time to learn actual stuff.[/quote]
Alphabet and phonics are different, though. Teaching kids the alphabet is a huge waste of time. The only thing they’ll really need it for is to know how to say the letter names (not even match them up with the letter itself) or put things in alphabetical order, both of which come later.[/quote]
Yes, I understand the distinction. Phonics, for elementary aged EFL-ers is crap, as they can’t speak English. Kindy and elementary school EFL is a racket.
My point being that when children learn to read, they can already speak a first language incredibly fluently. Teaching elementary school kids phonics based reading in another language is a waste of their time (they’ll pick it up easily when / if they need to, once they speak English). You see this kind of approach in Chinese as a foreign language, also. Daily character writing tests when the students can’t even order coffee (although adult second language learning isn’t that related).
100s of hours of Taiwanese childhood pissed away on /æ/ [apple], and customer-led babysitter education, instead of child-centred, research-led programs .
It makes me angry, because my friends are wasting money on this stuff for their kids.
Anyway, you probably disagree, and I have no wish to be disrespectful to you, or start a discussion.
I’m not so sure, bc. Synthetic phonics (Nu Labour term if ever there was one) has been introduced across primary schools in the UK to deal with low literacy levels. Are you suggesting that the politicians might not know what they are doing? Or, even worse, that parents might need to play a greater role in the education of their children?
[quote=“Buttercup”]My point being that when children learn to read, they can already speak a first language incredibly fluently. Teaching elementary school kids phonics based reading in another language is a waste of their time (they’ll pick it up easily when / if they need to, once they speak English). You see this kind of approach in Chinese as a foreign language, also. Daily character writing tests when the students can’t even order coffee (although adult second language learning isn’t that related).
100s of hours of Taiwanese childhood pissed away on /æ/ [apple], and customer-led babysitter education, instead of child-centred, research-led programs .
It makes me angry, because my friends are wasting money on this stuff for their kids.
Anyway, you probably disagree, and I have no wish to be disrespectful to you, or start a discussion.[/quote]
Trust me, there are quite a few people I hold high respect for their opinions with teaching. You’re one of them, so I hope whatever I say is not taken disrespectfully, though I don’t always agree with it.
Phonics for younger children, if properly done, is highly successful. It is actually more beneficial since the younger children (before 6) are in their sensitive period for language, both written and oral, where they have explosions in language. If done properly, children naturally begin reading if it’s properly in their environment and presented correctly.
Before they speak any English is just time-wasting. If students can’t fit synthetic phonics onto an existing phonological / morphemic framework (as first language kids can), it’s a recipe for Chinglish error. Just leave the whole reading thing until later. It makes absolutely no sense, for the child, at least, to be learning ‘English phonics’ before she’s even literate in her own language(s). Wouldn’t you rather they were learning to draw, or making friends, or gaining the cognitive skills necessary to write foreign languages, in the 100s of hours it will take them to learn this skill which is not remotely difficult for an 11 year old, but is hugely complex for a six year old? Why not gift them that 100s of hours to develop themselves, instead of turning them into little anqingban freaks?
Low literacy levels in Labour Britain. It’s due to the infotainment spoonfeeding culture sold as CALL / IWB / preparing students for the modern tech culture, checklist teaching to test-ism, and huge immigration while all but culling ESL support staff which has a negative effect on both indigenous and immigrant kids.
You have to keep in mind what the point of phonics is – it’s to let students decode a written form and change it into an aural form. If they do not already have the aural form of the language in their brains, it doesn’t do any good to learn the phonics in terms of helping them to read. And reading should be the recognition of the written form of language that is already in the brain.
This is why I emphasize separating language acquisition from literacy training in second/foreign language teaching. If you try to force reading before there is any language in the student’s brain ready to go, they are not reading, they’re decoding, and that is not the behavior we want to encourage. Anyone who sat through a traditionally-taught group Chinese class and was able to count ahead to figure out which sentence would be “theirs” (and then quickly looked up all the unknowns and wrote them in next to the characters so as to be able to “perform” on command) knows how little use that really is.
As should spelling. The assumption I don’t understand with this is that the students do not know any of the language. Maybe we’re talking about completely different ideas. What, exactly, are you seeing happen in ESL classes?
Children won’t ‘learn to read by reading’ if they don’t read. Not many Taiwanese children read English books outside of the classroom, and the ones that do probably don’t need to attend an English buxiban. Even the parents who can communicate in English don’t seem to be willing to help their children. ‘I’m scared of teaching them Chinglish’ or ‘My children won’t let me help them’ seem to be the main excuses.
Therefore, there has to be some bottom-up instruction. When that occurs, and how much of the limited lesson time it takes up, is of course open to debate. But surely you have to agree that it happens at some stage?
It’s all part of the core problem with buxiban teaching. Regardless of how good the teacher and how wonderfully cutting-edge her or his methods are, 3 or 4 hours a week of rich input are unlikely to cut it unless the students recognise a need to learn and become autonomous learners.
[quote=“tomthorne”]Children won’t ‘learn to read by reading’ if they don’t read. Not many Taiwanese children read English books outside of the classroom, and the ones that do probably don’t need to attend an English buxiban. Even the parents who can communicate in English don’t seem to be willing to help their children. ‘I’m scared of teaching them Chinglish’ or ‘My children won’t let me help them’ seem to be the main excuses.
[/quote]
They’re better off not trying to teach their own children. Every child I met in Taiwan whose parents had tried to teach him English was scared of the language and refused to even try. They wouldn’t open their mouth, they were so afraid of making a mistake. I spent more time trying to make them less nervous about English than I did actually teaching them. One girl told me, after about two years of private classes, that she wasn’t scared of English anymore.
I wouldn’t use the word ‘teaching’, bababa. What isn’t happening at home is parents reading to children. If that isn’t happening then how are children going to learn to read in a naturalistic way? I hear so many teachers talking about learning a second language in the same way as learning a first language, and I do agree with many of their points. However, the processes that occur during first language acquisition simply aren’t occuring during second language acquisition in Taiwan.
Our topic is starting to split from grammar to phonics and I’m wondering if splitting this into another thread might draw more discussion.
[quote=“tomthorne”]I wouldn’t use the word ‘teaching’, bababa. What isn’t happening at home is parents reading to children. If that isn’t happening then how are children going to learn to read in a naturalistic way? I hear so many teachers talking about learning a second language in the same way as learning a first language, and I do agree with many of their points. However, the processes that occur during first language acquisition simply aren’t occuring during second language acquisition in Taiwan.
Basically, zero input at home.[/quote]
Even then, there are several huge problems with how reading tends to be taught in the schools here. I’ve worked in a handful of “Kindergartens” (I use the term VERY loosely here) and have not seen:
–Activities that build concentration (which is required for reading).
–Activities that build attention to detail.
–Allowing of inventive spelling.
–Motor-building activities (both fine and gross motor).
–Sensorial-based materials so the child can experience the letters is more than a visual way.
I’ve also seen a dependence on workbooks, worksheets, and a lot of bullshit curriculum ideas designed more to confuse the students and provide pretty pictures than to teach anything.
So we basically have students who cannot focus, cannot properly hold a pencil, and cannot pay attention to details and we’re trying to run them through a curriculum of crap that simply will not work at all on any student…anywhere!
Add to the fact that there are no story books in most of the kindergartens or, even if there are, they’re really crappy books without much story to them.
So yes…teaching phonics the Taiwanese way is a waste of time and money.
Gosh, I hope I haven’t come across as criticising Taiwanese parenting skills. That’s not what I meant at all. In many ways I consider their views on parenting to be superior to those in the UK.
What I mean is with an absence of English input at home (for mainly logistical reasons) the teacher needs to teach skills to enable students to get round this problem. Phonics is one of those skills.
However, I agree that phonics isn’t that important. When it comes to ‘good things’ to do in the very limited teaching time we have with kids, it’s near the bottom of my list along with grammar. On the other hand to suggest that phonics is of no use is also wrong. Like with pretty much everything to do with teaching, best practice lies somewhere in the middle.
As ironlady says, teach them English. Give them an aural framework, then teach them to decode. Mishmashing it all together is not good. What I’m saying is that phonics for EFL 5 year-olds is daft.
I disagree just because of what I’ve seen. I would not imagine depriving students of learning to read at the age where they love it and it’s natural for them. Reading without the framework is pointless, but they already have the framework by the time you start this…right?
Phonics, for elementary aged EFL-ers is crap, as 