Question from: The root cause of children being unable to read - Part 1
Why can't we find out the kids who can't read at grade level by the end of grade 1?
Your answers to these questions will be the beginning of a constructive discussion.
This lie that kids who cannot read like most kids in a class cannot be detected by the end of grade one is ludicrous.
This lie was propagated by those with a vested interest. Every other educator repeats it as if it is the Gospel truth. Would any teacher here tell us why kids who can’t read like most kids in a class can’t be determined by the end of grade 1?
If I were a researcher or someone interested in collaborating as Ethan says, I would ask: ‘Luqman, what did you discover in your research? Why can kids read in Malay and Hanyu Pinyin but not in English? All the three languages use the same Latin letters, don’t they?’
Let us see if he comes up with anything in my book that he disagrees with.
I have more than 1,500 views of my blog posts per day and yet no one asks me questions. How do we move forward if we don’t clarify matters?
Firstly, Malay uses what is called ‘suku kata’ which are syllables. So, a child has no problems with phonemes and phonics.
More importantly, Malay has only one sound for each letter except for the letter ‘e’ which represents two sounds.
Letters representing more than one sound is the second reason why many kids shut down/ disengage from learning to read in English. Most teachers do not tell kids that almost all letters in English represent more than one sound. I have explained this in detail in my book Shut Down Kids.
Pinyin is a syllabic language. There are only 408 syllables unlike English which has more than 10,000 syllables.
Once a kid is familiar with the 408 syllables, he can read anything in Pinyin accurately. One may make mistakes in pronunciation when reading Chinese characters but never when reading anything in Pinyin.
For a kid to read well in English:
i. Teach him the correct pronunciation of all letters
ii. Get him to rote memorise the High-Frequency Words.
iii. Inform him that all letters represent more than one sound. Point it out to him when you arrive at a letter representing a different sound from the ones he has learned.
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