Keep up the good fight Jennifer.

Over 30 years ago when my two daughters were starting school I asked the teachers how they were taught to read. When I was told we use a variety a methods I went out and bought the Hay-Wingo books and taught both of them to read. They were easily the best readers in their class.

Now they are using ABC Reading Eggs for their children. Re education experts just remember the fish rots from the head and look who is running the NSW DOE.

Well written well researched authoritative article and impossible to fault!
I learned to read with the aid of phonetics and decode with the aid of a dictionary.
That included phonetic pronunciation, pro-nun-see-eh-shone!
Alan B.

If you can recite this without stumbling, the you can truly read well.

THE CHAOS

by Dr. Gerard Nolst Trenité
(Netherlands, 1870-1946)

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Cont.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Cont.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!

David

Well done David. Hear, hair and here. Well said, said Fred. Although a blur Sir, examples as few might, that english is a polyglot. Originating from various languages and roots, including, sanskrit,, latin, greek, italian, german and french, with a few gaelic words thrown in for good measure.

Nonetheless, what phonics is and remains, is a teaching tool that helps students learn to read. And successful decoding is assisted by a comprehensive dictionary, with phonetic soundings included!

Well, I just don't know.
This pseudo-words business, my curiosity got the better of me and I just had to go and investigate - who exactly came up with that rubbish?

Its one thing to teach sounds like 'at' as in 'The fat cat shat on the mat' (again); but teaching kids the wrong words, saying 'they don't know any better in Grade 1', words like 'bam' goos' 'zack' 'plock', these are bloody comic book words out of Batman fight scenes.
Are you teaching kids reading with comic books now?

Holy crap, I'm not sure if this saga is getting better or worse.
Think I'm gonna go with worse, since I'm maybe not sure which planet I'm on.
Comic book words? Really?
http://www.lcp.co.uk/phonics-screening-pseudo-words

Seems like laziness on the part of idiot teachers who's own reading skills never got past comic book stage, or perhaps that's how those teachers themselves learned to read?
(comic books come after you actually learn to read, when it should be picked up on that those pseudo words are in fact pseudo words)

All I know is this, go back 30yrs ago, and more or less every single kid learned how to do it, good enough to get by.
I could say that kids aren't sitting around reading choose your own adventures anymore like we did as kids, and are on gaming consoles and youtube instead.

But sureley gaming consoles and computers provide opportunity to read as well, so I can't help thinking that a big part of it is teachers curriculum.

I'd say the blind leading the blind, but it's more like the illiterate leading the illiterate.
Comic Books!!

I wonder whether theres a point a person gets to in life where they reach a pinnacle, where the world is just so full of crap that nothing surprises you anymore.
Teaching kids to read using comic book words, maybe this is it for me and it's all downhill from here..

How on earth did we ever give up on things that worked to embrace things that didn't work?
I thought as a society of intelligent civilised people we were supposed to only give up tried and true ways of doing things in favor of new ways ONLY if they were proven to be better.

What the hell happened?
How did it all come to this?

As human beings it seems to me that we don't actually do this at all.
There may be a bigger problem here than kids having difficulty learning to read, in that we've become so pathetic we've lost the ability to teach it.