problems with phonic programs

The article I posted previously talked about these differences so I will only draw attention to a few. To read the whole article, click here.

I am quoting from the article, which was written by Wanda Sanseri:



1. Problem One: Whole Word Instruction (sight words would fall in this category)
"English needs to be taught by component parts rather than by a whole-word approach...

The first step in teaching any language is to isolate the most basic components used to make up that language. In English we have 500,000 words. Trying to learn each word one at a time will restrict the student... How many ways do we have to spell the basic sounds of English? (70) We call the letter or letters that represent the sounds of English, phonograms.

The next step is to learn the rules that govern the use of these symbols. How many rules do we have in English? (28) With a working knowledge of the 70 phonogram plus 28 spelling rules(our 98 cards), we can phonetically explain 99% of the most commonly used words in the language and at least 87% of all the words in our dictionary. Does it sound unbelievable that the language with the most voluminous vocabulary can be reduced to 98 key components? It seems more incredible that such valuable information has been kept as a secret from the people in high places."


Here is another article to show how Spell to Write and Read compares with other programs. I really encourage you to read it. It is important to learn what's available and the differences between them - it's for your child's benefit!

Tonya