Tag: synthetic phonics

  • Phonics confuse slow readers

    I love the English language and all its strange little ways – how it is perfectly unsuited to learning to read using an exclusive phonetic system. Take a simple word like Slow. Slow can be pronounced phonetically as Slough, like the town, or Sloe, as in the name of the fruit. If you come from…

  • What is reading for?

    Currently, there is a lively debate about how children should learn to read. It seems to me that both sides of the debate share the same concern – they all agree that children should become fluent readers, able to both read and understand the written word. To me, the debate has come about through the…