Hi! I'm only in my 2nd year of a linguistics major, so I won't pretend to be an expert, but from what I've learned so far I don't think you need to worry about the "sound-it-out" method of teaching. They've apparently tried some other methods, like giving the kids a bunch of words and letting them draw analogies based on how each word is pronounced... you'd think it would be much more efficient to just teach them the individual letter sounds, but like you said, the problem with wacky English is that there's so little consistency in how each letter is pronounced that kids just end up learning a lot by memorization/analogy anyway. But! bottom line, IIRC, is that it's still best to give the kids some basic knowledge of how each individual letter is supposed to sound. So phonics is safe...for now [dun dunnn]. Anyway, sorry for the overenthusiasm, but I find this stuff very cool :-)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2010-01-21 03:06 pm (UTC)But! bottom line, IIRC, is that it's still best to give the kids some basic knowledge of how each individual letter is supposed to sound. So phonics is safe...for now [dun dunnn].
Anyway, sorry for the overenthusiasm, but I find this stuff very cool :-)