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

[Elliott]

2 hours ago, Lyubov said:

 It’s why I can read Spanish well (using English phonetics since they share the same alphabet) but can’t speak nor understand a damn thing said to me or if I read out loud people will not understand shit I say since all my pronunciation will be wrong.

Phonetics would be pronouncing and speaking the language correctly and applying that to reading. English and Spanish are nowhere near the same phonetics.

Pronounce this in Spanish; Jaimaica, Jose, Juan.... correctly like an H is phonetics. Reading it with the H sound is phonetics. You're admitting you don't need phonetics to read(understand writing, nothing to do with speaking or hearing others)

 

'Whole Word Method' does teach phonetics at the beginning, the issue in this thread is that people want a lot more focus on phonetics than what we've had. You have to learn phonetics to speak and hear a new word, that's what speaking is. Phonetics is thought to "decode" written language through the sounds of that language.

Edited December 17, 2025 by Elliott