Cna yuo raed tihs?

[five bellies]

Not only did I understand it I though I had written it One thing that I did think Odd It was a lot easer to read than Text speak Wich drives me mad,

[corydoras]

Not only did I understand it I though I had written it One thing that I did think Odd It was a lot easer to read than Text speak Wich drives me mad,

Not one poster has voted no yet, which is interesting.

[Ken L]

Looks like someone agrees with Cory.

 

"A POLITICIAN from Manchester called Gramha Sitnerg has caused a bit of a fuss by claiming that dyslexia is a myth invented by education chiefs to cover up poor teaching.

 

Well said, that man! At last some common sense creeping into the public arena. (Although as Mr Sitnerg is a Labour MP, don't expect to hear from him again. Lord Dracula of Hartlepool has probably already been round to administer punishment. And that's if Alistair Campbell didn't get there first to kick his door down at six o’clock the next morning.)

 

But before he's silenced, let's listen: Dyslexia, he says, is a cruel fiction that should be consigned to the dustbin of history.

 

The education establishment, rather than admit that their eclectic and incomplete methods for instruction are at fault, have invented a brain disorder called dyslexia. To label children as dyslexic because they're confused by poor teaching methods is wicked.

 

If dyslexia really existed then countries as diverse as Nicaragua and South Korea would not have been able to achieve literacy rates of nearly 100 per cent. There can be no rational reason why this brain disorder is of epidemic proportions in Britain but does not appear in South Korea or Nicaragua.

 

And you've got to say that there's not much to argue with there. How come this blight apparently occurs in the back streets of Salford and Moss Side but not in the much poorer back streets of Seoul and Managua?

 

All I know is that when I was at school, we didn't have dyslexia. We just had thick kids and lazy kids. (And polio and whooping cough and diphtheria and rickets, but enough of that.)

 

Now no-one wants to victimise children who are simply lacking in the brain department, but giving them soft excuses for under-performing isn’t the answer. They need help, proper help - and that, according to many experts, is the synthetic phonics method of teaching which, in one area of Scotland, has wiped out so-called dyslexia.

 

But wait, what's this? It appears that there are currently 35,500 kids receiving disability allowance for being dyslexic, at an annual cost to the taxpayer of £78.4 million. So it's not only a great excuse for not doing any work, but it pays a wage as well? Splendid stuff. It's enough to make a tac lugah."

Edited January 21, 2009 by Ken L

[Peggy Burke]

French Primary School children don't sit in little groups and huddles, they sit in rows, facing the front and paying attention, as I did. They learn to read with phonics the way I did. They came home with spelling to learn for homework, not Elastoplast tins full of words to learn as they did ihere. Another thing is that in France children are taught to write 'joined up writing', with a fountain pen from the age of six. Pencils are frowned upon, they are for art, not for writing.

 

One final point. Why o why did we ever stop teaching our children grammar? When I was growing up in Scotland we used to do grammar for one session ever week. When I left Primary school I knew what nouns, pro-nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, articles, conjunctions, prepositions and so on were. I could also take dictation and correct punctuation in texts. Why did we stop doing this? It is little wonder that so many British school children struggle to learn a second language when the have no comprehension of the structure of their own.

 

An interesting reply Corydoras and there are some points that, as a Primary Specialist who has spent most of her career teaching 5/6 year olds, I would comment on.

 

French children are able to learn to ready purely with phonics because French is a phoniically regular language. I speak French and have been very involved in the introduction of French and German into Primary Schools in Kent The teaching of a second language is now a statutory requirement in England for all children from the age of 7 and many schools are now teaching French, or in some schools Spanish or German, to children from the age of 5. German is also a phonically regular language. Once you've learnt the sound a letter string makes it remains the same no matter what word it appears in. If only this were true in English eg cough, bough, enough etc

 

As I mentioned in my previous post different people use different skills when learning to read. We all have different learning styles, aural, visual and kinaesthetic and it's therefore important that this is recognised when teaching both children and adults. There was a period when the main method for teaching children to read was 'Look and Say' and this was very much the time of the 'elastoplast' tin. This was fine for children with good visual memories and also worked well when a word had a clearly defined shape. Most children would learn to read the word 'aeroplane' very easily because for a start they could attach a visual image to it and also the word itself is shaped like an aeroplane. Just write it down and then drawn a line around the shape of the word and you'll see what I mean. However when asked to memorise a word like 'is' or 'on' many children stumbled because there was no visual image to attach to it and the word does not have a particular shape. This is another reason that we don't introduce children to words written in capital letters. They all have the same height and therefore no easily memorable shape. This is where a knowledge of phonics is valuable. However try applying phonics to the word 'yacht"!!

 

Cursive joined script is also now taught in many infants schools in UK. Certainly in the primary school that I worked in for the last 16 years of my career this was the case. Pens aren't introduced in the infant classes but I personlly don't think that really matters. What is important is that children learn to develop a legible, fluent handwriting style. It always seemed crazy that we taught children to write one way, ie print, and then 2 or 3 years later promptly taught them something completely different.

 

As regards schools having stopped teaching grammar there was certainly a time in the late 60s and 70s when it wasn't taught well in Primary schools in England. However this is certainly not the case now. Parts of speech, nouns, verbs etc, plus tenses, punctuation and literary devices such as alliteration, hyperbole, ellipsis etc are all taught as part of the Literacy Strategy and introduced at the appropriate age.

 

To reply to your comment about British children being taught in groups and huddles, this has certainly not been the case in my experience. Certainly children do work for some of their time in groups. Very often these groups are made up of children who are working at the same level in a particular subject and they have spent part of the lesson being taught as a whole class focussed on the teacher and whiteboard (most schools in UK now have interactive computer controlled boards). They are then set tasks in their groups at their appropriate level to reinforce what they have been taught in the session and these groups are led by the class teacher or teaching assistant providing further focussed teaching.

 

It would be interesting to hear others views on this subject.

Edited January 21, 2009 by Peggy Burke

[corydoras]

Sorry folks my Firefox just had a fit of rabies or something. False post I'll try to improve. I've not even had a beer so I can't blame that even

Edited January 21, 2009 by corydoras

[Peggy Burke]

I come from West Dunbartonshire. No dislexics on the books in the whole county.

 

Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty with a physical cause. Unfortunately too many people have jumped on the band wagon and labelled themselves dyslexic when in fact they've either not applied themselves at school or have been the victims of poor teaching.

 

Dyslexia affects the ability to read, write and spell and also in some cases maths skills. It also has a tremendous negative effect on self-esteem.

 

This link to the Glasgow Dyslexia Centre may be of interest

 

http://www.dyslexiatreatment.com/famous-people-dyslexia.php

Edited January 21, 2009 by Peggy Burke

[corydoras]

Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty with a physical cause. Unfortunately too many people have jumped on the band wagon and labelled themselves dyslexic when in fact they've either not applied themselves at school or have been the victims of poor teaching.

 

Dyslexia affects the ability to read, write and spell and also in some cases maths skills. It also has a tremendous negative effect on self-esteem.

 

This link to the Glasgow Dyslexia Centre may be of interest

 

http://www.dyslexiatreatment.com/famous-people-dyslexia.php

Peggy

I totally messed that last post up. It wasn't meant to be a reply to your post at all. I accidentally hit the back button or something. Ill start again.

[corydoras]

Ok I've restarted Firefox so I'll try again. French has its share of non phonetic words too. Most French words have a silent letter at the end much like our lamb and comb but there are many that don't, those have to be learned by rote.

 

There is a huge raft of words that end in om and on those just have to be learned too, and they have their exceptions. I can remember the nights of agony spent with my young son trying to memorise them all bit it was good practise for me too. Tout de digrammes ou trigrammes : eu / ou / eau / ain / ch / gn have to be learned by heart and at least our kids are spared that hellish book Le Bescherelle.

 

Usually when asked to do this sort of thing I can remember scores of examples. The only one that is springing forth at the moment is the word "l'oie " which as you know is the French word for a goose and it is hardly phonetic. There is also corps, temps, homme, compter, sept, vingt, paix, voix. Weird ones like un enfant petit / un petit enfant. There are loads of exceptions. Strangely most native French speakers that I know who have learned English don't have a problem with our 'ough' words, they just learn them by rote until they get them right, just like they do with the exceptions in French. The two English words that really get them are 'angry' and 'hungry' because they sound the same to them. I know what they mean because in French a lot of the vowels all sound like 'oo' to me. My kids collapse when I say we are of to Super-U to do the shopping. "Nous vais a Super-U pour faire de courses", I can never get that one just right.

 

My late father-in-law had a rather rude example of three French word that sound the same, but are written differently. It went something like this. "Il y a trois 'quand' dans le langue Francais, Caen, le ville où j'habite, quand, quand il se passe quelque chose, et toi qui et vachment con"

 

I won't even mention the kids in the Nord Pas De Calais who have to learn two languages. Standard French for school and Ch'ti in the street and in the home. In French we say 'moi et toi', you and me. In Ch'ti we say "mi et ti". (sounds like 'me et tea')

 

Parlez-vous Ch’ti?

 

Ch’ti - standard French (English)

 

dracher - pleuvoir (to rain)

à tout rate - a ce soir (see you this evening)

à dé - à demain (tomorrow).

Mi, ch’fais toudis à m’mote - Je fait tout à ma manière (I do everything in my own way)

keuche - chaussette (sock)

Ch’ti qui est mie contint i’a qu’à v’nir ém vir - Celui qui n’est pas content n’a qu’à venir me voir (anyone who is unhappy only has to come and see me)

Bienvenue à s’baraque -bienvenue à la maison (welcome home/to the house)

[corydoras]

Here is the dyslexia link I was trying to post.

 

http://www.dyslexia-teacher.com/t152.html

FWIW, Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire is my home town.

 

One other thing about French schools, but his goes for all levels Primary, Secondary and Higher (Bac).

 

If your not up to it, you don't go up a class at the end of the year you "redoubler". It's not seen as 'being held back' as it would be here, the attitude of most French parents is that if you "redoubler", you "redoubler". there is no stigma attached to it.

[Ken L]

Most children would learn to read the word 'aeroplane' very easily because for a start they could attach a visual image to it and also the word itself is shaped like an aeroplane. Just write it down and then drawn a line around the shape of the word and you'll see what I mean.

 

I'm sure Peggy was a good teacher and is only illustrating a point but I'm also sure that I'm not alone in finding the above a very worrying statement from anyone in the teaching profession.