Sunday, January 27, 2008 ;
3:33 PM
Again on the topic of phonics and learning to read.
There are some good books in Spore and Msia too. Just that I didn't mention them because I don't have access to them here and thus did not have the chance to review them. Lye Kuan (teck's wife) had introduced me to some good ones.
Any one out there with the knowledge, help me with this one?
How do you teach a kid who is learning to read, who has just learnt all the sounds of consonants from A to Z using the BBC or Zoophonics this?
Ok, so he has learnt that the sound of "C" is "ke" as in CAR.
Now he sees the word CHAIR in books. So I explain, (without any background in phonics, so I am not sure if what I say is right...) that when 'c' is paired with 'h', as in "ch" then you pronounce it as "che" as in CHAIR or CHAIN or my maiden surname CHEW.
Then when he sees the word CHARACTER, how am I going to explain that now "ch" is pronounced as "ke".
And then, he writes to his godsister CHARLENE. Now, how do I explain the "ch" is pronounced as "sher".
For now, I told him, we just read as widely as possible, so that we can figure out all the exceptions, cos there are just too many exceptions in learning a language! :-)
Then what's the point in learning how how the letter sounds? (I guess he is referring to "phonics"). I say, it is a good guide, a good first step, general guideline, then for all the other words in English that have other origins, we just have to remember how different they are as we go along.... :-)
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
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