Has anyone taught any phonics to their child and if so how did you go about it, when did you do so (or if you are planning to, when will you start) and if you are not going to then why not? Perhaps babies automatically learn phonics when they know a large quantity of words.
Just interested in what people's views are on this. I am still in the very early stages of teaching my baby to read, but do wonder about this sometimes. I feel that Little Reader can also be used to teach phonics quite easily if people wanted to use it for that.
I am quoting what a teacher's view on sight learning and phonics
"If I were you, I would ditch the flashcards except for those English sight-words which do not readily conform to phonics rules such as 'sew', 'two', 'women' and 'many'. There is a finite limit to visual memory (approximately 2,000 words for most children), so although you might experience initial success I suspect you are setting your child up for disappointment later on when the visual memory limit is reached.
I have taught both normal and disabled children. I have often encountered 'super readers' at the age of five or six taught using flash cards who flounder by the age of eight because they never cracked the sound-based code of English."
"It does not surprise me if a visual reading system aims for 2,000 words. As I said, that is about the upper limit. Perhaps the hope is that the child will then intuitively understand that English words are not pictograms (in contrast to Chinese for instance) but rather contain a sound-based code. In many children, this happens and they proceed to become fluent readers. Unfortunately, for many children, it doesn't. The latter children do not progress easily and do not develop a wider vocabulary and fluent reading ability; many of these are then classified as dyslexic and have learning problems when in fact this reflects poor and wrong teaching method.
Many visual reading systems heavily emphasis about 100 to 200 key words. These are the words which represent something like 70% of children's simple text, for example 'and', 'the', 'here', 'she' etc. Many parents get overexcited when they see their child reading with these sight words. There will come a point though when books become more complex and beyond the scope of mere sight words. If the child has not cracked the sound-based code, then reading difficulties will arise.
I mentioned 'super readers' as young children taught an extensive sight vocabulary. As I further mentioned, such children flounder by eight years old or so if they do not pick up the sound-based code. A lot of research suggests that children taught substantially by sight words (using flash cards etc) develop the habit of believing that English words are pictograms and so have great difficulty breaking out of the habit. So in terms of reading ability, no they do not have an advantage over children taught properly that English letters have a correspondence with sound.
There are several 'enrichment centres' in Singapore which teach reading via sight words. Parents get so excited to see junior at five or six 'reading' so well. What the advertisements do not tell you is how junior progresses at eight or nine. It is now almost incontrovertible in the reading research literature that the benefits from phonics training are significantly longer lasting than other methods.
It should not be forgotten that the aim of reading is comprehension. Much research shows that fluency in reading via phonics training enhances comprehension. Sight readers do not develop the same automaticity in deciphering text as phonics readers and so comprehension is impaired.
In my own teaching, I regularly come across childen from Chinese-speaking households who have learnt English the same way as they have learnt Chinese: rote memorisation via flash cards. These children really struggle to appreciate the difference between Chinese and English and rarely proceed to become proficient English readers.
If you take functional MRI scans of a child reading in Chinese and English, you will see that different areas of the brain light up when they use the respective languages. Reading in Chinese is much more intense, that is it uses much more of the brain and consumes significantly more energy. From a physiological point of view, this is inefficient. How that translates to thinking skills is a more open question. "
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