Thursday, January 2, 2020

Phonics


An educational therapist commented as follows after reading my article on phonological awareness at

“I am not quite sure what your criticism of structured literacy instruction is--is your criticism with phonics, or with poorly done phonics?”
What I have been saying since I started my blog is that the sounds of letters are taught wrongly in most schools around the world therefore resulting in kids shutting down from learning to read.
Below is the episode aired by Baby TV around the world. This is definitely not the way to teach sounds of letters. Consonants should not have extraneous sounds added. I have complained to Baby TV to no avail.

Please listen to the YouTube video below.

Here is a list of the consonants in the video taught wrongly.

B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, N, P, Q, R, V, Y, Z

The above is one of two reasons about 20% of the kids around the world shut down from learning to read. A majority of these kids are wrongly classified as dyslexic.

They are unable to match the sounds to the words taught. They then disengage from learning to read.
Here are a few examples of the words made by the above letters.

If the sound of the letter B is Buh/ber, then how do you pronounce the word bat?

Is it ber-at? (Buh-at.)

Cat, is it Cuh-at? (cur-at)

Hat, is it Ha-at?

In the next few articles, I shall post some videos on what students in the US complained about the sounds of letters.

2 comments:

flos said...

I agree. That is not phonics. The pure sounds should be taught (as per Orton Gillingham).

Luqman Michel said...

Thank you flos. Finally, someone who dares to write what she thinks is right.

It is the wrong teaching of pronunciation of phonemes that results in many kids seeking intervention.