To teach or not to teach - Phonics

One of my first students, a girl refused to say the word fox despite being repeatedly asked to repeat after me. I have written about this in my article dated17th February 2010. Dyslexic children shut down when something illogical is taught to them.

My student refused to say the word fox as she had learnt from her former tuition teacher that the phoneme for fox is “Fur/Fer”. As such, to her, the word fox cannot be sounded out the way I had sounded it out. If the alphabet ‘F’ carried the sound fer/fur then this word ‘fox’ must be sounded out as ‘fur-ox’. As such she had refused to say it the way I had pronounced it.

Now, I would have expected this kind of wrong teaching of phonemes in countries where English is taught as a second language. However, I just found out that it is rampant in US and UK too. No wonder the rate of illiteracy in these countries is on the increase.

I have friends on face book who keep advocating teaching of phonics but do not know what phonics is all about. Dyslexic children will shut down if phonics is taught in the wrong way. Please listen to the sound tracks here to hear how alphabets are mispronounced. This is in a web site which supposedly teaches “Phonics to beat dyslexia.”

The reader gives the phoneme of the word ‘blue’ as “ beh leh oo”. The dyslexic child will surely be confused and definitely shut down.

For a start the phoneme for the alphabets ‘b’ and ‘l’ are wrong. Secondly, here the alphabets ‘bl’ is a consonant blend and has one phoneme/sound and not two.

You may read the proper pronunciation as read by the teacher at Phonics International. 

Also do listen to the phonemes of individual alphabets and the consonant blend of ‘bl’ as pronounced accurately by Genki phonics.

 Phonics as taught by Genki Phonics

If phonics is not taught correctly to dyslexic children then you can be assured that illiteracy rate in UK and US will continue rising.

I do hope my readers will ensure that phonics is being taught properly. There is no point on insisting on phonics if phonics is not taught properly in the first place.Check on schools teaching "so called Phonics" to make sure they are teaching it properly.

Your comments will be highly appreciated.