This made me look up “whole word reading”, and it just made me irrationally angry. To be fair, English isn’t my native language and I don’t have a recollection of learning how to read, but “whole word learning” sounds insane. But like… Why would you do that if you are using an alphabet?
Comment on Am I going crazy, or has people's spelling gotten awful lately?
pleasestopasking@reddthat.com 5 days ago
I think this is finally being corrected, but for decades kids have been taught “whole word reading” rather than phonics. The basic idea is that instead of learning how to sound out words, they should look at the first letter and guess what they think the word might be based on context/pictures. The proponents of this method claim kids will memorize words as “whole words” and eventually be able to read.
So, they can’t actually read. But they know how to look like they can read.
When you can’t read it’s not enjoyable, so you read less. When you read less you come across fewer words, which you don’t really know how to decode anyway because you were never taught.
Anyway these kids are now adults, and even the ones who are smart still struggle with spelling and reading.
Check out the podcast Sold a Story, really interesting investigation on this topic.
nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 5 days ago
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
Phonics is dogshit and it’s being phased out in favour of whole word reading here.
You should not learn spelling by “sounding out” much of anything, you should learn it through reading text and remembering how words are spelled.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 5 days ago
You might want to look at the latest research. Its not favorable after decades of data from “whole word” reading techniques education.
Thats the concept of “whole word”, yes, but in practice it severely limits vocabulary and comprehension apparently. That real world data tells the tale.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
I’ll have a look, but idk I was taught whole word in two languages and I can write a lot better than I can speak in at least 1.3 of them.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Did you downvote me because I pointed out the latest research doesn’t agree with your position?
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 5 days ago
At average apparent text sizes, you only see ~4 letters clearly at a time, so it’s often enough that you can’t read a whole word at once. From there, there’s so many prefixes, suffixes, conjugations, compounds, and portmanteaus that it doesn’t make sense to just try to memorize the dictionary. What happens when you’re reading a flamboyant author that has tons of theasaraus usage and you come across words you’ve never heard in your life? You use context as best you can, but if there’s familiar roots in the word, you have a better chance of understanding it.
Also
That is a grain spelled “spelt”
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
You can memorize the patterns of each word and eventually you just understand language. Is that not how it’s meant to work?