Prompt 6 - The Phonics Debate
What I think I know: It provides a strong connection between spoken word, reading printed word and spelling using the sounds of words. Confirmed: It was confirmed that printed words - graphemes are linked to spoken word - phonemes when students are explicitly taught their realtionship. It provides the skills they need to decode what they see on the page, to make meaning - therefore, the skills to read. Meaning canât come at first sight of a word because the English language is not inherently meaningful - until the known spoken word is matched to the printed word through a system to decode it. Misconceptions: That a phonics program is a stand alone program for reading and the only way to learn to read a text and make meaning. Those against phonics will argue that meaning is made before reading occurs and experience/opportunities to make meaning is what students need before successful reading. Although, regardless, there will always be a relationship between phoneme and grapheme that produces meaning. New Learning A new way to percieve it - Before phonemes are matched to graphemes: letters, words and grammer are just squiggles and lines, until they are systematically matched to the spoken word. They provide the code to the sound of the spoken English language. Wonderings I wonder why anyone would be against phonics, because Iâve seen it first hand and it literally empowers children with the skills to read, or atleast attempt to read and make meaning from text without constant guidance. While I wonder why someone would feel students wouldnât gain meaning from learning to decode the English language, afterall, the language is spoken first, so students need to associate their spoken language to the written code to derive meaning.Â
