This post is in response to a Tweet by Lucky Girl.
LuckyGirlLinguist @GinaCookeLEX Oct 18 Replying to @luqmanmichel @jeffrey_bowers and 4 others.
“You're betraying your ignorance. There is no such thing as the correct pronunciation of phonemes. Phonemes are abstract psychological categories, not pronounced phonetic units. Phone memes are pronounced differently in different words and different dialects, and that's normal.” (Lucky Girl Linguist)
Jeffrey, why don’t you do the research yourself with my guidance? Get a few teachers around the US or around the world to teach kids in grades 1 to 3 who are unable to read. Ensure they do not have acuity problems. That is, they do not have sharpness or keenness of thought, vision, or hearing.
The first part on Orthographic on Joan Sedita's blog post may be found here.
How does orthographic mapping develop?
The following are extracts from the blog post found here and my comments.
Three intersecting skills must be in place to enable orthographic mapping (Ehri, 2014; Kilpatrick, 2015):
Highly proficient phonological and phonemic awareness
Automatic letter-sound correspondence knowledge
The ability to accurately and quickly decode a word by identifying its sounds letter by letter, and blending those sounds to read the word.
Here is a tweet by Jeffrey Bowers and my response.
I have responded a number of times, and would be interested in any empirical evidence for your claims. (Jeffrey Bowers). 9.10.2021.
Luqman Michel @luqmanmichel Replying to @jeffrey_bowers and @KevinWheldall
Do you want empirical evidence to support that consonants should not be taught with extraneous sounds?
You responded once and when I retorted you did not answer.
I suggest you hold a Zoom meeting so that I may educate you on why phonics is not working as it should.
Let us put to rest once and for all this debate between you and Jennifer/Kevin.
On September 22nd, Jeffrey Bowers twitted the following:
@jeffrey_bowers Replying to @annephillipswa @dmounty14 and 19 others
What do you make if the fact that reading outcomes in England have not improved in over a decade of legally mandated phonics? No one seems to address the Elephant in the room.
Dr. Sam Bommarito @DoctorSam7 Sep 22
Yes this! By the way if England 10+ years of mandated phonics it hasn’t had an impact why on earth are we in the process of trying to mandate it United States. Time to look at all the data before making decisions.
Her profile says: Education researcher, writer, host of Literacy Fellows Podcast, Assoc. prof. of literacy education.
Here is a link posted on Twitter by Dr. Rachael Gabriel.
I had commented on her post as follows:
This is a continuation of my zoom meeting with my learned friend from the US. You may read the first part here.
He said that if we teach whole words (referring to me teaching my students the Dolch words) by rote memory then the kids will have to memorise thousands of words. I was shocked that this learned man would say such an idiotic thing. I am beginning to wonder if he too is paid by the people with a vested interest to say such a stupid thing.
On 2.10.21 I had a zoom meeting with a twitter/ email friend from the US.
He was agreeable with most of the things I said but said that my definition of decoding/reading was wrong. He said that decoding included comprehension.
I met Alanna Maurin on 23.12.2020 on Twitter and started sharing with her what I had learned from my students who were unable to read when they came to me for tuition.
She was distraught and at her wit’s end as her son was unable to read and was willing to try anything.
Please read the previous 2 blog posts for a complete understanding of this post.
December 23rd 2020.
Luqman Michel:
Your son has no acuity problems - right?
Let us start this with a simple exercise - just for me to see what his problem may be.
Write the letters on a book and ask him for the letter sounds from A to Z.
Record it and then send it to me and we can go on from there.
Here is our chat which is self-explanatory. It started on December 23rd 2020 and ended on January 30th 2021.
Her profile on Twitter says:
Australian Teacher. Highly Accomplished. Passion for literacy. Master Reading and Literacy. Mother of 4 boys. Out-of-field secondary science. Joined (Twitter) December 2020
The following are extracts from a blog post found here.
Every word has three forms – its sounds (phonemes), its orthography (spelling), and its meaning. Orthographic mapping is the process that all successful readers use to become fluent readers. Through orthographic mapping, students use the oral language processing part of their brain to map (connect) the sounds of words they already know (the phonemes) to the letters in a word (the spellings). They then permanently store the connected sounds and letters of words (along with their meaning) as instantly recognizable words, described as “sight vocabulary” or “sight words”. (Internet)
With orthographic mapping of a word, the letters we see with our eyes and the sounds we hear in that word get processed together as a sight word and are stored together in the brain. This is not the same as memorizing just the way a word looks. It is also important to remember that orthographic mapping is a mental process used to store and remember words. It is not a skill, teaching technique, or activity you can do with students (Kilpatrick, 2019). What can be taught are phonemic awareness and phonics skills which enable orthographic mapping.
Is Phonological Awareness Deficit the cause of kids being unable to read?
Phonological awareness is the foundation for learning to read. Read more here.
It’s the ability to recognize and work with sounds in spoken language.
The following tweets were exchanged on Twitter. I followed it without commenting as it sounded like kids fighting with one another. It reminded me of the Indian prince who caught a three legged rabbit and insisted that all rabbits are 3 legged.
Here are the tweets and my comments.
What a bad habit many people from the Anglo sphere seem to possess?
Many on Social Media delete discussions and comments when they are unable to respond to questions.
All the discussion with Bethany Lee (Beth Any) on her Facebook were deleted all of a sudden.
