Sold A Story - How adult politics created an American illiteracy epidemic

[DocWatts]

Thought I might share this podcast series, about a disastrous social experiment that's contributed to an illiteracy crisis in the United States,

The podcast traces out how American educators were sold a story about a now-discredited paradigm about how people learn to read and write, called 'whole word comprehension'.

Advocates of whole world comprension claimed that phonics (learning how to decode printed words by sounding them out) was outdated and unnecessary, and that kids learn to read through contextual clues alone. This is a well meaning assumption that's utterly incorrect.

What wasn't understood was that whole word comprension isn't actually teaching kids how to read - it's how functionally illiterate people muddle their way through sentences. The podcast traces out how something as seemingly apolitical as basic reading and writing got politicized, and how well intentioned people working from bad information were training kids throughout the country to be functionally illiterate.

Sold A Story Podcast:
https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
 

 

Edited Sunday at 01:24 PM by DocWatts

[Hardkill]

That's good to know.

I'd like to see how much of a change this will make many years from now.

[Leo Gura]

Yeah, I saw that recently.

People are getting so lazy they are too lazy to learn to read.

They are still teaching English wrong. The right way to learn English is to memorize every single word the way Chinese memorize their kanji.

English words are just kanji made of letters.

Memorize 5,000 words and you will know English.

You can't sound out English words because English spelling is nonsensical.

Edited Sunday at 04:03 AM by Leo Gura

[Thought Art]

When I read what you wrote it seems like you are contradicting yourself. Just to be clear are your saying that sounding words out is the wrong way to teach kids to read? Because I think I have a unique perspective on this. I recall learning to spell words out in school. I also recall really struggling to learn to read until about grade 4 I could barely read anything at all. This was until I began receiving 1 on 1 tutoring my mother began paying for for me. What actually made the big difference for me was learning a phonetic library, which I think is counter to what you and Leo are saying.

What ultimately helped me learn to read, and HIGHLY accelerated my reading in a short period of time (I was assessed in grade 6 to have a grade 12 reading level) was that I learned to read words sounding them out and learning a very detailed phonetic alphabet which included mouth shapes etc on these little cards with associated sounds and the letters. This highly, highly accelerated my ability to read and write English and has left with me a very strong intuition on how to spell and read English words that simply memorizing would never do.

@Leo Gura My direct experience shows what you are saying to be wrong. There are very consistent phonetic rules in English that make sounding out words the right way to go. However, I noticed very stark differences in teaching this in the class room vs how I learned it in my 1 on 1 tutoring. How it is taught in the classroom I recall didn't not provide the phonetic library I was showed in my tutoring sessions. There phonetic system that exists in English, but not in languages like Chinese. So you are really wrong on that.  After receiving this tutoring I also no longer had to practice for spelling tests and essentially aced them but cause I knew how to spell every single word based on it's sound and phonetics. 

Now that I am older I don't have explicit memory of these phonetic cards etc... but a highly attuned intuition. I do not memorize words in English I sound them out. Every single one even as I write this. 

Edited Sunday at 01:15 PM by Thought Art

[Thought Art]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Yeah, I saw that recently.

People are getting so lazy they are too lazy to learn to read.

They are still teaching English wrong. The right way to learn English is to memorize every single word the way Chinese memorize their kanji.

English words are just kanji made of letters.

Memorize 5,000 words and you will know English.

You can't sound out English words because English spelling is nonsensical.

This is the dumbest thing I've ever read you say. 

However, I acknowledge it's your second language and you learned it in the US education system. But, what you have said here and how limited your understanding of English is pretty amazing. 

Edited Sunday at 01:27 PM by Thought Art

[DocWatts]

@Thought Art To clarify:

The now-discredited paradigm called 'Whole Word Comprehension' claimed that phonics was outdated and unnecessary.

This assumption by advocates of Whole World Compression was incorrect. 

The science of reading shows that phonics is absolutely indispensable for learning how to read.

Hope that clears things up. I'll go back and edit the OG post to make that more clear 

[Thought Art]

@DocWatts Yes, my tutor taught me this. Thank you for clarifying. My tutoring in phonetics was one of the best things my mother ever did for me. I'll always be grateful for that. I wouldn't be able to read without it. 

The consequences of a lot of people (including Leo apparently) not knowing how to read and write English properly is pretty scary. Of course, they can write properly, but they don't really understand how the words make the sounds they make! What the fuck. It really blows my mind to think how many different ways there could be of grasping a language. 

Edited Sunday at 01:28 PM by Thought Art

[Thought Art]

It's weird though, I can't seem to find the system of symbols with a basic google search. I would like to remember the system I learned in my tutoring as it was a specific one.

Edit: I asked what system it was to my sister's boyfiend because he apparently learned the same one but it doesn't look that familiar but this could be it here. Lindamood Phenome Sequencing https://ganderpublishing.com/pages/program/lips

Edited Sunday at 01:35 PM by Thought Art

[DocWatts]

1 minute ago, Thought Art said:

@DocWatts Yes, my tutor taught me this. Thank you for clarifying. My tutoring in phonetics was one of the best things my mother ever did for me. I'll always be grateful for that. I wouldn't be able to read without it. 

Yes! And the podcast goes into that.

One reason why it took so long for it to become evident that whole word comprension wasn't working is that many parents were quietly getting their kids private phonics tutoring because the public school system had failed to teach their child how to read.

And just to be clear, your parents absolutely did the right thing - no shade at parents for making the right decision for their child amid a larger systemic failure.

[Elliott]

@Thought Art what do you really mean by sounding out the words to read though, if you sound out a word you then realize what word it is? Isn't this more about speaking rather than reading?

Edited Sunday at 02:14 PM by Elliott

[Nemra]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Memorize 5,000 words and you will know English.

I don't think that's enough.

Exploring phonetics and listening to or examining how and when those words are used is very helpful.

Furthermore, from my observation, understanding the etymology of the words is also important.

[Elliott]

1 minute ago, Nemra said:

I don't think that's enough.

Exploring phonetics and listening to or examining how and when those words are used is very helpful.

Furthermore, from my observation, understanding the etymology of the words is also important.

Phonetics helps you understand what a word means?

[Thought Art]

5 minutes ago, Elliott said:

@Thought Art what do you really mean by sounding out the words to read though, if you sound out a word you then realize what word it is?

When I sound it out I know how to spell it I mean. I mean sounding out the words to spell. Also to read, yeah. Because I know what the letters and combination of letters sounds like I can read and write through spelling things out.

I sound out the words to read and spell. Instead of memorizing words, I know what the letters and combination of letters sounds like. I have a literacy of not just sentences of words, but the sentence structure WITHIN the words.

Edited Sunday at 02:17 PM by Thought Art

[Thought Art]

1 minute ago, Elliott said:

Phonetics helps you understand what a word means?

Yes, at a deeper level phonetics also helps with understanding the meaning of words too.

[Elliott]

Just now, Thought Art said:

When I sound it out I know how to spell it I mean. I mean sounding out the words to spell. Also to read, yeah. Because I know what the letters and combination of letters sounds like I can read and write through spelling things out.

So,(I don't understand yet) it's more like converting what you know audibly already, to reading?

[Elliott]

2 minutes ago, Thought Art said:

Yes, at a deeper level phonetics also helps with understanding the meaning of words too.

Do you have any examples in mind? This does not sound right to me.

[DocWatts]

10 minutes ago, Nemra said:

I don't think that's enough.

Exploring phonetics and listening to or examining how and when those words are used is very helpful.

Furthermore, from my observation, understanding the etymology of the words is also important.

English is a phonetic language - phonics is how you decode words, including words you've never encountered before. You do this by sounding them out, connecting them to the spoken language.

Whole word comprension is how people who can't decode words use contextual clues to guess at the meaning of an unfamiliar word. This works okay when the text is very, very simple and there are pictures in the book to tell you what the story is about - but it falls apart very quickly as what you're reading gets more complex.

Edited Sunday at 02:24 PM by DocWatts

[Thought Art]

@Elliott For example,

Let's say I am reading a book and I see a word I have never seen before. I can read it perfectly because I know what the combination of letters does in English. So I can read it and then know what word it is, and probably what it means basically.

[Elliott]

Just now, Thought Art said:

@Elliott For example,

Let's say I am reading a book and I see a word I have never seen before. I can read it perfectly because I know what the combination of letters does in English. So I can read it and then know what word it is, and probably what it means basically.

Have any words, for example?

[Elliott]

3 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

 

 it falls apart very quickly as what you're reading gets even slightly more complex.

Can you give an example sentence or paragraph?