[HN Gopher] At a Loss for Words: A flawed idea is teaching kids ...
___________________________________________________________________
At a Loss for Words: A flawed idea is teaching kids to be poor
readers (2019)
https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
Author : Akronymus
Score : 57 points
Date : 2025-08-02 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apmreports.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apmreports.org)
| bell-cot wrote:
| (2019), and previously on HN (with plenty of comments) a few
| times: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=apmreports.org
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _How a flawed idea is teaching kids to be poor readers (2019)_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41344613 - Aug 2024 (119
| comments)
|
| _Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35599181 - April 2023 (508
| comments)
|
| _Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34011841 - Dec 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor
| readers (2019)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23981447
| - July 2020 (225 comments)
| nottorp wrote:
| Interesting... I was expecting an article about teaching kids to
| read to have ... text ... in it.
| Akronymus wrote:
| https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! I've put that URL at the top, and put the submitted
| URL (https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/) in the
| text up there.
| mrangle wrote:
| Whatever the culture and resources of the parents, the buck stops
| at home.
|
| Gaining the ability to read begins from birth, and by the time
| that kids are school age they should be clamoring for books if
| the parents did their job.
|
| After time-worn basic reading instruction in first grade, it's a
| matter of parents enforcing reading-time at home for school
| mandated reading. Then providing access to the reading material
| that the child desires for their free reading. Whatever it is.
| Book-bound comic strips are an early popular grade-level choice,
| and are fantastic. If a child is behind, then go simpler.
| Everything else is a band-aid or less practical if not
| detrimental in comparison. Some kids need services if they have
| deficits, but that doesn't imply that the standard practice is
| flawed. All top readers came out of this type of early
| progression. So have most middling readers, often just separated
| by the amount of time they've chosen to put in. Or were compelled
| to put in.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| I think that we can demand that our education systems teach our
| kids to read and do math.
|
| Many parents are not academic and can't do a good job in
| passing on academic skills no matter how hard they might try.
| Many other parents would prefer to teach their kids different
| things about how to live a life.
|
| I grew up on a farm, and the start of my journey into tech was
| fixing machinery and building things outside with my father.
| With my kids I want to create a similar experience so they feel
| like they have the power to take things apart, fix them and
| make whatever they want. I don't want to jam them up all
| evening reading and doing times tables.
| Akronymus wrote:
| > I think that we can demand that our education systems teach
| our kids to read and do math.
|
| I've heard many anecdotes of teachers discouraging teaching
| kids those things at home ahead of the curriculum.
| mrangle wrote:
| Those teachers couldn't be more wrong. Though, to clarify I
| am referring to reading and the exposure to it. We'd need
| someone who is informed on the developmental process of
| math skill to comment on "times tables".
| notnullorvoid wrote:
| I'm guessing the advice stems from school being boring
| already and being ahead of your class makes it even more
| boring.
|
| Though reading should be something teachers are equipped
| to handle very wide range of competency.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > We'd need someone who is informed on the developmental
| process of math skill to comment on "times tables".
|
| (I feel somewhat qualified...)
|
| It is a mistake to make the kids memorize the times
| tables _before_ they intuitively understand that
| multiplication is a repeated addition (or visually, that
| multiplication is a rectangle). The right moment to
| memorize comes a few weeks or months _after_ they can
| calculate the result without memorizing. I think it is
| safer to wait, because many parents would be tempted to
| make it prematurely, in order "not to waste time".
|
| Generally: understanding first, memorizing later. If you
| memorize first... many kids won't even try to understand,
| because "they already know it". The problem is, if you
| remember without understanding, there is nothing to
| correct you if you make a mistake. An incorrectly
| remembered fact feels exactly the same way as a correctly
| remembered fact, and you have no alternative way to
| check.
|
| Also, memorizing instead of understanding is a strategy
| that works well in short term and terribly in long term,
| because memorizing a small thing for a few days is easy,
| but then you forget it (kids famously lose a lot of what
| they learned at school over summer holidays), and when
| the memorized things accumulate, it becomes too much and
| you start confusing them. Actual understanding takes more
| time, but it can survive the summer holidays, and already
| understanding many things makes understanding an
| additional thing _easier_.
|
| (But when the day comes to memorize the times tables,
| spaced repetition is your friend.)
| mrangle wrote:
| That sounds sort of noble, perhaps, but that's not how it
| works. Ignoring the fact that there is more than enough time
| in childhood for what you propose, reading, and much else.
|
| Cognitive development is a process, of which language
| development and reading are a major subset. That development
| is always in-process.
|
| The longer that one waits to start children down the path of
| language development skills, the lesser the chance that they
| will be able to fully develop their potential for that skill.
|
| For example if you speak to a child less than you should or
| could, that child's language and overall cognitive
| development will be significantly disadvantaged when compared
| to a child with similar potential but much more attentive
| parents.
|
| Think of a disability where one hears less language, and then
| research developmental outcomes for that group.
|
| The same carries over to reading skill. The earlier that you
| start, and the more that they get, both listening and
| eventually reading themselves, the much higher likelihood
| that they will become an advanced reader.
|
| You aren't jamming them up. You are giving them an immense
| lifelong gift. In addition to attending to a significant
| cognitive need.
|
| And again, plenty of children raised with reading are also
| commonly taught be adept at technical and manual skills. Most
| people would choose a smarter mechanic, who among other
| things has the proficiency to read complex documentation.
|
| Kids want to be read stories at night. Its a major
| developmental need. You should read stories to your kids.
| Then, when they are ready, you should buy them simple books
| like comics. Then age appropriate books as they are ready.
| Content doesn't matter so much. It's mostly the volume of
| reading that matters. Every little bit helps.
| nkrisc wrote:
| You are not "jamming" up your kid by reading to them. Reading
| to them is probably one of the most important things you can
| do to begin their journey towards literacy, and during it.
|
| Connecting the words they hear as you read to what they see
| on the page is an important early step. You don't need any
| academic training - just read to them.
|
| > Many other parents would prefer to teach their kids
| different things about how to live a life.
|
| Reading and writing are probably among _the_ most important
| skills you can teach your child in order for them to fully
| participate in modern societies.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| There's a difference between reading to your kids and
| "enforcing reading-time at home for school mandated
| reading".
|
| I absolutely agree that reading and writing are critical
| skills. In fact, I think they're so critical that we should
| demand that professional educators teach children how to do
| it.
| nkrisc wrote:
| They are so critical I would not solely trust someone
| else to do it, unless you are supremely confident in
| their ability.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My parents read to me when I was very young, but never tried to
| teach me to read. So all I knew of reading was that it was
| something my parents could do. I learned to read in first
| grade, at school. I found it compelling and did it on my own at
| home without much prompting or "enforcing."
|
| That didn't really change until High School, when I found most
| of the standard reading assignments in English class to be
| tedious and hopelessly old-fashioned. If I'd also had trouble
| reading from a technical standpoint at that time, I have no
| idea how I would have gotten through it.
| vincent-manis wrote:
| By contrast, my parents were high school dropouts. When I was
| little, my mum would read to me, with her finger following
| the text. I somehow got the idea, and started to sound out
| the words with her. By kindergarten, I was reading at a Grade
| 2 level. I think there are as many paths to reading as there
| are kids.
|
| The cueing theory seems misguided, in teaching kids to regard
| pictures as the source of information. I'd say that teaching
| kids to read requires a mix of activities, with a heavy dose
| of phonics, but also activities that create a joy of reading,
| by showing interesting people and stories. I can't see how
| cueing helps.
|
| Cueing reminds me of some of the stranger ideas in math
| pedagogy in elementary schools, notably that rather than
| learning algorithms for arithmetic operations, kids should
| invent their own, and maybe have several, which they choose
| from in a specific problem. Of course, some students have
| much more difficulty than others, but there really are some
| basic ideas they must master in order to be competent at
| arithmetic. Allowing a kid to amass a forest of partially
| working techniques and then have to hack through it to solve
| any problem seems ridiculous to me, much like putting a
| student driver in a car, with no training, and telling them
| to try various things to see how to drive to a given point
| without getting killed.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > Allowing a kid to amass a forest of partially working
| techniques and then have to hack through it to solve any
| problem seems ridiculous to me, much like putting a student
| driver in a car, with no training, and telling them to try
| various things to see how to drive to a given point without
| getting killed.
|
| Trying to invent ways to do math operations is not a bad
| idea _per se_... it 's just that at some moment you should
| teach them the universal and efficient algorithm instead.
|
| It's like, if you are learning to program, and try your own
| ways to design the code, and then someone teaches you the
| design patterns. I don't believe that you were harmed by
| trying to program your own way first. You will probably
| appreciate the design patterns more, and maybe understand
| them on a deeper level, now that you have a first-hand
| experience of the problem they were designed to solve. I
| even suspect that without this extra experience, people
| would be more likely to over-engineer their code, e.g. to
| use a complicated design pattern where a simple function
| call would suffice.
|
| Similarly, after trying a few ad-hoc ways to add numbers,
| you will appreciate the standard "put them in a right-
| aligned column, proceed from right to left" algorithm more.
| But you will also notice that you can add 199 and 601
| without putting them in a column first.
|
| The crime of these approaches was failing to teach the kids
| the standard solutions. Experimenting for a while is itself
| OK.
| pstuart wrote:
| We did everything we could to encourage reading with our kids
| (reading to them, book fairs, bookshelves full of kid friendly
| books, etc).
|
| 1 kid has grown into an avid reader, the other two (twins) have
| never embraced it. It's easy (and often appropriate) to blame
| the parents, but sometimes it's on the student to actually want
| to do it.
|
| It makes me sad and I would love to change it. Having video
| games come into the environment (not my choice) certainly did
| not help.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Right, so having bad or incapable parents is just a reason to
| what, toss those kids off a cliff?
| tolerance wrote:
| How dare you hold people to such high expectations for the
| development of the lives that they bring into the world.
| bluesounddirect wrote:
| As the husband of an Orton-Gillingham trained tutor , teachers
| and the industry supporting teachers , not OG ; are very much in
| the business of making money not making kids read . The entire
| economy around "services" like OT , Speech , etc is all about how
| to monetize it, not how do we do the most good for the children.
| mrangle wrote:
| SLP here. I hear you. But the reality is greyer. Yes, it's easy
| for anyone and everyone to see the financial layer of
| developmental services. But virtually 100% of working SLPs care
| about getting clients to their goals, even if that client's
| access to services is determined by insurance.
|
| Money is an inescapable reality for every service in society.
| But most clinics are busy, and so there isn't a real incentive
| to try to slow walk clients. Which would be radically corrupt
| on a number of levels. Even if some backroom financial
| functionary in a clinic were to have that thought on occasion.
| I've never heard it verbalized nor seen any evidence of it
| trickling down from management.
|
| Moreover, most (but not all) clients will be perpetually
| slightly behind if they start behind. Even if they catch up at
| a faster rate, with the help of services. Thereby justifying
| services if the family wants them. But that's not the same as
| clinic level corruption. It's just a fact of cognitive
| development. But there's no better advertisement for a clinic
| or clinician than graduating a client.
|
| Although I can't speak to reading in the following regard, I
| agree that there are sometimes lesser supported therapy methods
| for some delays. This is where the art of picking one's
| therapist is important, as they differ and what they use is
| within their discretion. As is the case across the rehab field.
| bombcar wrote:
| A system can do something without any of its members directly
| intending it. Quite common, actually.
| mrangle wrote:
| "Can do something" is carrying a lot of weight here. I
| explained how it is in practice.
| magicalist wrote:
| The GGP's claim was quite a bit stronger than that, though.
| worik wrote:
| > Money is an inescapable reality for every service in
| society.
|
| Yes
|
| That is a problem
| SoftTalker wrote:
| This seems so weird. When I think about how I learned to read, in
| the 1970s, it was (as best I can remember) first learning the
| letters and the sounds they make. Then starting to read words by
| "sounding them out." I never remember learning about "context" or
| "what word would make sense here" or "what do the pictures show."
| Pictures were just there to make the pages more fun to look at
| for a 7 year old.
|
| Of course after some exposure and repetition you start to
| recognize whole words at a glance. That's just natural, but I
| never remember learning to read by memorizing whole words.
| trhway wrote:
| > in the 1970s, it was (as best I can remember) first learning
| the letters and the sounds they make. Then starting to read
| words by "sounding them out."
|
| USSR, 70s, the same, my older cousin, 5th grader a the time,
| taught me to read that way before my first grade. (It was
| pretty normal to learn to read before starting the school. The
| writing though was taught at school.)
| cyberax wrote:
| That's because the Russian alphabet is phonetic (in one
| direction). So you just need to learn the sounds
| corresponding to the letters and a handful of rules used to
| combine them. After that, you can sound out the words aloud,
| and then it's just a matter of practice.
|
| English is not really phonetic anymore, so this approach
| doesn't quite work well.
|
| But at the same time, English teachers don't want to go the
| full Chinese route. Because if learning letter combinations
| is somehow "colonizing" ( https://time.com/6205084/phonics-
| science-of-reading-teachers... ), grinding through thousands
| of words to memorize their pronunciation is probably
| something like torture and genocide.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Now that you mention it, yes we did learn some combination
| sounds, and rules about when letters are hard, soft, or
| silent etc. And exceptions, such as "ph" sounding like "f"
| but those came later. The first books were like "Dick and
| Jane" with very simple words.
| trhway wrote:
| >English is not really phonetic anymore, so this approach
| doesn't quite work well.
|
| That seems to be one of the main components of Russian
| accent in ESL.
| stavros wrote:
| What do you mean by "in one direction"?
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > English is not really phonetic anymore, so this approach
| doesn't quite work well.
|
| For each letter you can find a way it is pronounced _most
| frequently_ , and then take a subset of English consisting
| of words that follow those rules completely. (For example,
| the word "cat" _is_ pronounced as a concatenation of the
| most frequent way to read "c", the most frequent way to
| read "a", and the most frequent way to read "t".) You learn
| to read these words. Later you start adding exceptions, for
| example you teach how to read "ch", and then you add the
| new words that follow the new rules. Etc, one rule at a
| time. (You leave the worst exceptions for later grades.)
|
| >> This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the
| man telling us what to do
|
| If you feel "colonized" by reality, I guess you can rebel,
| but you shouldn't expect reality to reward you for doing
| so.
| Nevermark wrote:
| > English is not really phonetic anymore, so this approach
| doesn't quite work well.
|
| I presume you mean it's not particularly 1-to-1 spelling
| <--> phonetic.
|
| It is highly phonetic, but it does have alternate mappings
| between individual or adjacent letters and sounds. And
| silent letters or syllables.
|
| But alternate rules are rarely random. There are usually
| many words represented by each rule. And those words often
| have similar overall spellings and phoneme patterns.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Germany, 2010s: We learned the letters with pictures of
| animals, that started with that letter. Also complicated
| words were initially replaced with inline pictures.
| astura wrote:
| >first learning the letters and the sounds they make. Then
| starting to read words by "sounding them out."
|
| This is called "phonics" and was universal until recently. The
| 1980s had commercials advertising "Hooked on Phonics works for
| me." - Hooked on Phonics being a books on tape program to help
| children read.
|
| TFA says phonics was popularized in the 1800s.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| You learn to walk before you learn to run.
|
| This should be obvious, but a surprisingly large number of
| people don't get it. They don't see "running" as the logical
| next step _after_ "walking", but rather as an _alternative_ to
| it. "Why are you teaching my child to walk, when you could
| teach him/her to run _instead_? "
|
| They imagine that the fastest way to get to the advanced
| lessons is to skip the beginner lessons. Yeah, it's a good way
| to get fast to the Lesson 1 in the Advanced textbook... and to
| remain stuck there forever, because you don't know the
| prerequisites.
|
| The article describes what happens when the people who don't
| get it are setting the rules for others to follow.
|
| Someone noticed that the advanced readers read fast (correct),
| sometimes entire sentences at once (kinda correct), and
| concluded that the proper way to teach children is to insist
| that they do it from the start (utterly insanely wrong). You
| should increase your reading speed naturally, as you get lots
| and lots of _practice_ ; not because you skip letters - that's
| actually when we should tell the kids to slow down and read it
| again.
| hkpack wrote:
| Or maybe, listen out, not everyone is stupid and the reality
| is just really complicated?
|
| As an anecdote, my daughter was learning reading in her
| native language in school starting with letters, then
| syllables and had a very hard time moving past that with a
| lot of support from teachers and family.
|
| She started learning to read in English almost 5 years later
| by reading the whole words from the start and outperformed
| her reading and comprehension speed to her native language
| very quickly.
|
| There are huge number of variables in play and common sense
| frequently doesn't work.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| In the 90s I was taught to read via phonics. Context was
| mentioned further down the road as a tool to reach for when one
| understands all but one word in a sentence, in which case
| context can be used to infer the meaning of the myster word
| sometimes (but not always).
|
| I can't imagine not having a functional knowledge of phonics.
| That must make long unfamiliar words daunting and reading
| overall more scary than it needs to be.
| giardini wrote:
| I learned phonics and became an excellent reader without
| hesitation. Later, some morons in the education system created
| "better" reading techniques, f*cking up my younger brothers and
| sisters.
|
| Glad to see a return to phonics.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| While the data on phonics suggests it works well, I feel like I
| may have benefited from an alternative method (my school taught
| phonics growing up).
|
| I personally do not think I am all the special, but I from what
| I remember, I believe many of my issues with phonics were:
|
| 1. The inconsistency of the English language makes it so
| phonics is limited after a certain number of words, and then
| memorization and context must be used. For example, take words
| like cough, rough, through, though, etc. or words like read,
| lead, wound, etc. Not to mention all the silent letters we have
| too. If I am not mistaken, most languages do not have Spelling
| Bee contests because how clearly the language phonics map to
| spelling, e.g., German.
|
| 2. This is purely a hypothesis on my part, but I wonder if
| certain accents of English are better suited for phonics than
| other English accents? I grew up in the Southeast, USA. People
| slur words, drop off endings, contract words n >= 2 words, and
| even mispronounce words all. For example, the words "ten" and
| "tin" or "pen" and "pin" are not typically pronounced
| differently where I am from.
|
| 3. If you are like me and had speech problems, then phonics are
| substantially harder. It's hard to sound out the words when
| one's mouth cannot produce the proper sounds.
|
| I do not doubt the other alternative methods are worse than
| phonics, and perhaps I am ignorant, but this debate also seems
| to be predominately an English only issue. Mandarin Chinese
| does not have phonics instruction to my knowledge, and they can
| read just fine. So, perhaps English is just a difficult
| language to read and pronounce correctly -- even for native
| speakers?
| didibus wrote:
| I'm curious what's the difference between "observational science"
| and "cognitive science"?
|
| I assume it means the former is just one person theorizing from
| his personal experience as a teacher? That's what we call
| "observational science"?
|
| Where as the cognitive labs, they tried to setup some experiments
| and did some double blind? Or was it more looking at brain
| activation?
| Nevermark wrote:
| Observational: watch kids, come up with correlations in
| behavior, then with controls identify causation.
|
| Cognitive: watch kids, but pay attention to details and pair
| them with models of relevant psychological/cognitive models.
| Ideally, the models help explain the details, or the details
| help update the models.
|
| Cognitive models have much more explanatory and prediction
| power. But are not much help, no help, or misleading, wherever
| there are no good models yet.
|
| Given cognition is nowhere near a complete model, more a (not
| entirely consistent) patchwork of a great variety of models,
| both approaches remain important.
| didibus wrote:
| So in this case, both can corroborate their findings because
| both demonstrate success in learning to read?
|
| Since you said both look at controls to assess that they're
| better than random ?
|
| But from the article, it seems to imply there hasn't been
| controls applied to the three cues system. Therefore it would
| have always remained just some children become good readers
| with this methods, so it probably works.
|
| And what I'm not able to gather is, how much better are the
| controls applied by the cognitive one?
| chrisgd wrote:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sold-a-story/id1649580...
|
| A link to the multi episode podcast this article is the basis of.
| Incredible reporting
| camgunz wrote:
| APM keeps pushing phonics, but the UK tried it and it's been a
| disaster: reading ability craters after a couple years. It's not
| the solution.
|
| https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.10...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jan/19/focus-on-p...
| fn-mote wrote:
| Education is a system that resists change.
|
| Any time you research an educational innovation, part of the
| work is to measure to what extent the implementation is
| faithful to the intent. Education research is not like physics
| research.
|
| I absolutely apply that understanding when I read research
| about major changes in the way reading is taught.
|
| I actually think the only way to be confident is to do some
| kind of primary research yourself. Otherwise, tread lightly and
| skeptically.
| naasking wrote:
| Calling it a disaster seems like an exaggeration, the article
| literally says UK's PISA scores for reading have not changed.
| In fact, the experts cited in the article don't even seem to
| suggest moving away from phonics, but to give teachers more
| leeway adapt to what their students seem to respond to.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| The UK phonics data shows mixed results with plateaus rather
| than "cratering" - the second link you shared actually
| indicates the issue is over-focusing on phonics alone rather
| than combining it with comprehension strategies.
| IanCal wrote:
| My kids have been taught phonics here in the uk along with
| comprehension and it's been great. I can clearly see how each
| has developed - and materials have things like basic
| comprehension of just picture stories to teach it without
| relying on reading for those who are struggling with the
| words.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I have a 5 year old daughter who learnt to read through the
| phonics system. I was initially fairly skeptical but actually I
| think it's great. It's just explicitly teaching the
| pronunciation heuristics that we all learn implicitly.
|
| They have a pretty good way of testing too - they show a list
| of 40 real words and made up words ("alien words") and the kids
| have to pronounce them. They only include words that closely
| follow the normal English pronunciation heuristics and are
| unambiguous. E.g. "glot" and "bime" would be ok but "sough" and
| "gow" would not.
|
| > Critics say phonics training only helps children to do well
| in phonics tests - they learn how to pronounce words presented
| to them in a list rather than understand what they read - and
| does nothing to encourage a love of reading.
|
| If this is the best criticism of it then.. that's pretty dumb.
| The entire point is to learn how to pronounce words. It isn't
| intended to teach them to _understand_ words - they can already
| do that. And it isn 't meant to instill a love of reading.
| That's basically innate.
|
| I'm not too surprised it makes no difference to overall reading
| levels. It's not really _that_ different to the previous method
| of teaching reading, and a very large component of reading
| ability is innate... But to say it 's been a disaster is
| absolutely ridiculous.
| luckydata wrote:
| As an immigrant to the USA teaching in this country is a mess.
| Teachers apply a lot of semi scientific mumbo jumbo to justify a
| completely inadequate amount of work required from students to
| learn.
|
| I know it's not popular to say it but my son learns anything I
| teach him, he might not enjoy the process very much but he never
| forgot anything I taught him because I make him work. His
| teachers don't make him do anything with the results you can
| imagine. If you point it out they say if they did parents would
| complain.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > I know it's not popular to say it but my son learns anything
| I teach him
|
| 1. Remember that you are looking at an experiment with n=1.
|
| 2. It sounds like you think the key to education is coercion.
| ("His teachers don't make him do anything...".) That's a grim
| world, too.
|
| Also, I hope you are looking at your home country's educational
| system with clear eyes.
|
| Not to say I disagree that the US educatonal system is a mess.
| If you stopped at your second sentence I would entirely agree.
|
| As you went on, I started to wonder if you had an experience
| teaching your child something that was difficult for them. It's
| not just _forgetting_ that makes learning difficult.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| I am dyslectic (as my username suggest), and i was taught the
| method phonetics in school (in Sweden, not the us), and
| transitioned naturally to whole word (which i suspect is the
| intention in that method).
|
| I initially struggled to pick up reading, as phonetics is a very
| difficult method if i cannot tell the letters apart half the
| time. Once my reading speed started to pick up, it was thanks to
| dismissing phonetics entirely and reading by whole word, but that
| leap took time.
|
| Talking with others in adulthood, i seem to rely more on whole
| word than is typical. Others get tricked up by incorrect letters
| in words, yet i match the word anyway if it has the right shape.
| The below sentences read to me equally.
|
| - I am unbothered by spelling mistakes to a much higher degree
| than others
|
| - l ma unloethsred bs sqellnig mitsakes la a mucb hgiher degeee
| thna ahters
|
| Another issue i encountered is finding reading fun. My parents
| read a lot for me to make me like stories (which is commonly
| given as advice to get children reading), but this backfired. My
| comprehension and appreciation of stories were years ahead of my
| capacity to read them. Being barely able to get thru "harry
| potter and the philosophers stone", but preferring "The Lord of
| the Rings".
|
| I now work in a field where reading highly technical text is a
| major part of my day. Peculiarly, my lower reading speed from my
| inability to skip properly (something i struggle with because of
| aforementioned dyslexia) seems to raise my reading comprehension.
| I many times found details or explanations others don't because
| they skimmed over important words or phrasings in highly
| information-dense text.
|
| ---
|
| I really think foreign words should be read phonetically. Taking
| the first letter and guessing is an insane way to teach to kids
| to me. I could imagine they don't pick up new words since they
| learn to guess words they know instead. Using contexts may become
| important later as we learn to skim-read, but i don't think we
| should teach kids to guess anything as they first start to learn.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| I remember my first music (note reading) lesson. We got a paper
| with sentences, and the teacher replaced each word with either
| 'titi' or 'ta' and we had to repeat it. Our homework for that
| week was an A4 paper full of words and sentences, and we had to
| replace them with 'titi' or 'ta' as made sense from context. I
| somehow managed to get a good grade, but it confused the hell out
| of me, and made me think of giving up music as too hard. I
| remember it bothering me the whole week.
|
| The second lesson, the teacher says: 'Now we have to learn some
| hard words. The 'ti' is called a quarter note, and the ta is a
| half note'. Finally, the whole thing started to make sense to me.
| Then the teacher says: 'But don't try to understand that, these
| are very hard words for adults, just memorize them and do what
| makes sense from context.' Trough that lesson, the teacher kept
| stressing that same message: Too hard, adult words, do what makes
| sense instead and use the hard words only to impress the
| outsiders.
|
| I've kept a deep distrust for teachers telling me to do what
| makes sense in context. I've always kept asking for the actual
| rules and correct words instead, however complicated they were.
| It happened a few times later in life too, like my economy
| teacher giving 'debit' and 'credit' guidelines based on vibes
| without telling they should be balanced, with subtraction being
| complicated math according to her.
| djtango wrote:
| My first piano teacher was very artsy and whimsical, she and I
| simply were never able to establish any connection as I have
| always been a very logical learner. I suffered under her for
| almost 10 years as a child while she tried to teach music to me
| in the way that made sense to her.
|
| My latest piano teacher was a professor and specialised in the
| pedagogy of music so he was more than equipped to deal with an
| overthinking logical type music student like myself.
|
| Learning music and an instrument can and should be quite
| intuitive. And as performing is quite expressive, music can
| attract people that stereotypical creative type who just wants
| to play and feel music. But the study of music theory and
| classical music are quite rigorous subjects and they can be
| attractive to logical thinkers who thrive learning all the
| nomenclature. But knowing the nomenclature is not strictly
| necessary to play music and so you have this disconnect between
| the very diverse spectrum of people drawn to music.
|
| In fact, there is a certain inescapable intuitiveness to music
| and the professor taught me to really learn to via feeling and
| establish feedback loops that always come back to the sound and
| my own motor sensations (did you achieve the sound you want
| while playing freely?). You can't really logic things like that
| and if anything it's more like a sport than something you can
| science when every person's body and dimensions are different.
|
| I am now having singing classes and singing is even more
| mindbending than piano has ever been
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I try to make sure there's always age appropriate modern books
| around for kids to pick up and read. If they like one, and it's a
| series, then I rapidly buy the remaining books in the series.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _That 's how good readers instantly know the difference between
| "house" and "horse," for example._
|
| I like how this sentence itself is an example where the MSV
| system falls flat: Neither graphic, nor syntactic nor semantic
| cues would help here to decide whether "house" or "horse" comes
| first in the sentence.
| appease7727 wrote:
| Did we collectively forget that most written languages directly
| encode the _sounds_ of the spoken language?
|
| Your brain tokenizes sounds into words. A beginner reader has to
| parse text into sounds and then into the token. An advanced
| reader can skip the middle step and parse text into tokens. But
| you still have to know how to parse text into sounds, there's no
| way around it.
|
| It'd be like giving someone a French texbook, only instruct them
| in English, don't even mention the different sounds, and somehow
| expect them to learn conversational spoken French. It's nonsense.
| rudimentary_phy wrote:
| I feel this way about most teaching research, but it's likely a
| sign that I'm starting to get old. Many instructors at my local
| university have shifted to the "flipped classroom" approach, and
| the students just don't feel as confident at the conclusion of a
| class (this is my highly subjective take). I feel like we have
| too many methods that try to sneak around the hard parts, or the
| parts that people might initially find boring, as well as
| eliminated much of the independent struggle to learn. Educators
| are more likely to choose this path because it avoids having to
| deal with the pain of that initial start (it's probably often
| done unconsciously). Of course, happier students also signals to
| our brains that we are more successful at the same time. A
| vicious cycle.
|
| For me: I've found that constantly moving towards more difficult
| things that you aren't quite prepared for is the most effective
| route. The foundational work I require to accomplish the task is
| the first thing that gets solidified for me, even if, in my
| opinion, I'm awful at it when I start. This is one of my
| criticisms of the modern educational institution and their focus
| on grades: it discourages this sort of exploration, since it will
| negatively impact your future (especially if you are the only one
| doing it). I've always thought that if you are getting an A+ on
| everything you do, you're wasting most of your time.
|
| /{End of Rant}
| cwillu wrote:
| Avoiding frustration in learning is like avoiding resistance in
| weight lifting: it certaining makes it easier, at the cost of
| entirely eliminating the benefit. Frustration is what a
| learning brain feels like.
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