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Without "fonix," my child was reading at college level in the seventh grade.
Please keep in mind that ANY method will work with some children, and NO method will work with every child. We can all toss anecdotes around about how well our children were reading at which age, but those are pretty useless.
The bottom line is that for a fluent reader, virtually all words have become "sight words." I presume that not many people reading these lines are sounding out the words. However, whether you were explicitly taught phonics rules or not, you know them too. If you did not, you would be totally unable to pronounce a word you had never seen before, let's say "slamthribble." Does anyone have any doubts about how this word is most likely pronounced? No? Then let's not say phonics are useless.
One problem that many children who are taught by the "sight method" alone encounter, is that they are unable to sound out new words. Maybe they look at the first letter or two and guess at the rest of the word. Eventually, most of them do figure out most of the rules for themselves, but that's an inefficient way to learn. And, not having been taught, some never get it. I'm thinking about the girl at my high school named Ammie. Somehow her parents thought that it was fine to pronounce this like "Amy." Apparently they had never been taught and/or never internalized the rule that a vowel in front of a double consonant is short. That's the kind of thing you learn in first grade, with phonics.
...Phonics training is designed to get kids a solid foundation that will allow them to thrive even when they encounter the unfamiliar...
Phonics is yet another failed experiment and should be tossed; "fonix" is outdated and useless. After all, it has to be "unlearned" in the end. I read with my child EVERY day, until my child was reading along with me. There are better ways than some fake alphabet to teach a child to read. It worked for me, and it worked for my child.
I prefer phonics, or a combination of phonics and sight-reading, to pure sight reading. I prefer it because phonics requires critical thinking skills to decode a word, whereas sight reading merely requires memorization. Memorization skills are great, don't get me wrong, but in my experience it is essential for little kids to be introduced to some form of critical thinking skills and pattern analysis in order to start wiring up that part of their brains. This needs to be done in the critical window when children's brains are still making lots of new connections.
Dirt Grinder has a point that phonics does have to be partly un-learned later, but at that later time the child has already benefited from the early workout they got in critical thinking and decoding. Also, it establishes a precedent in their minds for how to learn something complicated - start with a simplified model to familiarize yourself with the basics, and then "un-learn" that model as you learn exceptions and complications to the rule. Newtonian physics comes to mind - children initially learn the Newtonian model because it is easy to comprehend, and then they "un-learn" it as they learn about how Einstein improved and expanded the model. This happens many times in many subjects.
It is also very useful in real life, for example, as an engineer. You start with a simplified prototype, and then you make it more complicated as you address requirements. You do the same in art, music, research sciences, etc.
That said, I taught my first child phonics at home in preschool, and she is now in grade school reading well above grade level. I am now teaching my second child phonics in preschool, and even though he has a learning delay, he is actually picking it up pretty well. Both of my children have immensely enjoyed the process of learning phonics with mommy. Fantastic quality time I will never forget. Do it.
I never had to endure fonix lessons, and I was studying French in the second grade. I guess I'm just smarter than the average bear.
I truly don't see what not studying phonics, and studying French in second grade, have to do with each other. Were you smarter than all the other second graders who hadn't learned phonics and were studying French? Or than a child like mine who did learn phonics, and studied German in the second grade? How do those two things connect?
The fact is, that an English-speaker must either learn phonics rules explicitly, or figure them out on his/her own. Otherwise there would be no ability to decode unknown words. Are there lots of exceptions to phonics rules due to irregularities in English spelling, of course. But if you've never encountered an older child or adult with an underdeveloped ability to decode words trying to read aloud, you may not realize that not everyone deduces even the most basic rules without teaching.
A child reading at college level in the seventh grade (and they are more common than you might think; that is really not a remarkable achievement) could have learned to read with phonics, without phonics, or with a mixture of two methods. You can't conclude that a superior teaching method necessarily led to this result.
Thanks for the advice everyone. I asked my son what they did for reading today, and he told me that the teacher read some books to them and then they split into groups of one K and one 1st grade student. He told me that the 1st grade students do the reading because Kindergartners can't read. I know that's not true, because I was taught with phonics by my mom before I started Kindergarten.
It sounds like knowing both phonics and sight words is a good thing. I'll think about it and talk to his teacher a bit about how he's doing in class. We're so much alike that we tend to frustrate each other, so I may have to bring in the big guns (Nana) to help with the reading.
...Were you smarter than all the other second graders who hadn't learned phonics and were studying French?...
I had started reading books upside-down by the second grade, just because I could.
Fonix isn't for everyone - and it certainly wouldn't have benefited my child or me.
Fonix isn't for everyone - and it certainly wouldn't have benefited my child or me.
Well, you don't know that, because you never did it and apparently don't know much about it. It finally dawned on me that you are persisting in using the spelling "fonix" because you think phonics means teaching children to spell words just the way they sound, thereby instilling incorrect spelling patterns.
That's not what it means.
It's great that your child learned to read just by reading along with you. I take it that you have only one child? As a homeschooling parent, I have the opportunity to talk to and advise many other parents who are teaching their children reading (and other things). It does sometimes happen that a child learns to read this way. But I've met more than one parent who has said, "I read to my first child a lot, and he started reading on his own by the time he was 5. I thought that was all I had to do. I don't understand why my second child" (now perhaps 6 or 7) "hasn't figured out how to read yet. What else do I need to do?"
More children need explicit teaching to learn how to read, than just pick it up by being read to. You had a certain experience which is not everyone's experience, and now you are being not only smug but ignorant by insisting that "your way" is the "best way."
Now, I will say that kids in China learn to read pretty well even without anything resembling phonics. However, it's still harder, and it takes them longer.
Mandarin actually has a system. Characters in children's books in China often have the pinyin along with the characters, and in Taiwan they have Zhuyin. That's has children learn to read there and can read without knowing each and every character.
Both methods work. Phonics works better for some; sight words work better for others. I was taught by sight and by my parents constantly reading to me as I looked at the words. I transferred to a school where the kids were being taught by phonics and I was dumbfounded by what on earth they were doing!
I was way ahead of these struggling phonics kids. So was another kid who transferred into that school.
As a teacher later on, I used mostly sight words but integrated phonics into the process. We did not sound out words and struggle the way I observed those poor kids doing back in elementary school. But I did let them know that "S" makes a ssssssss sound like a snake. Or "B" is the sound in boy. And so on.
I think kids who learn by hearing do better with phonics--you SOUND it out. Kids who learn better by seeing learn better by sight. I am a visual person who likes the visual arts. Maybe that's why I learned just fine by sight without any phonics at all. But I think both methods work and should be adapted to the individual child since every child learns differently.
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I read with my child EVERY day, until my child was reading along with me. There are better ways than some fake alphabet to teach a child to read. It worked for me, and it worked for my child.
