Analytic phonics och Synthetic phonics

David Holman skriver om att lära sig läsa: http://davidholman.net/2012/02/26/att-lara-sig-lasa/

Det handlar om en studie där man jämfört analytic phonics med synthetic phonics: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/36496/0023582.pdf

En tidningsartikel som sammanfattar: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23389856-boys-do-better-than-girls-when-taught-under-traditional-reading-methods.do

Jag tar mig friheten att från rapporten citera två längre stycken om hur respektive metod går till.

“In analytic phonics, the predominant method in the UK, letter sounds are taught after reading has already begun, children initially learning to read some words by sight, often in the context of meaningful text. However, we have found that the analytic phonics component of the reading programme in Scotland was generally taught in a separate lesson devoted to word study (Watson, 1998). In order to teach the letter sounds whole words sharing a common initial letter sound are presented to children, e.g. ‘milk’, ‘man’, ‘mother’ (Harris and Smith, 1976). Attention is drawn to the /m/ sound heard at the beginning of the words. When all of the letter sounds have been taught in this way, attention is then drawn to letters at the ends of words, then in the middle, in consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. Therefore children learn about letter sounds in the context of whole words. At this stage, which can be at the end of the first year at school, children may also be taught to sound and blend CVC words, e.g. /c/ /a/ /t/ -> cat, but this is not a feature of all analytic phonics schemes, although it used to be in Scotland. After mastering consonant-vowel-consonant words, children are taught about vowel and consonant digraphs and shown word families of similarly spelt words, e.g. ‘cake’, ‘bake’, ‘make’, ‘lake’; ‘coat’, ‘boat’, ‘float’ etc. These spelling patterns used to be learnt by rote, with children chanting the words in unison in class, although this approach is not used now. Phonic readers also used to be widely available, some of which used very stilted text to reinforce phonic spelling patterns.”

“This led us to look at synthetic phonics, which is a very accelerated form of phonics that does not begin by establishing an initial sight vocabulary. With this approach, before children are introduced to books, they are taught letter sounds. After the first few of these have been taught they are shown how these sounds can be blended together to build up word (Feitelson, 1988). For example, when taught the letter sounds /t/ /p/ /a/ and /s/ the children can build up the words ‘tap’, ‘pat’, ‘pats’, ‘taps’, ‘a tap’ etc. The children are not told the pronunciation of the new word by the teacher either before it is constructed with magnetic letters or indeed afterwards; the children sound each letter in turn and then synthesise the sounds together in order to generate the pronunciation of the word. Thus the children construct the pronunciation for themselves. Most of the letter sound correspondences, including the consonant and vowel digraphs, can be taught in the space of a few months at the start of their first year at school. This means that the children can read many of the unfamiliar words they meet in text for themselves, without the assistance of the teacher. By contrast in analytic phonics, whole words are presented and pronounced by the teacher, and the children’s attention is only subsequently drawn to the information given by letter sound correspondences. Typically in Scotland with the analytic phonics approach, it would not be until the third term of the first year at school that children would be made aware of the importance of letter sound correspondences in all positions of words, whereas in synthetic phonics this is done at the start of the year. The full analytic phonics scheme is usually not completed until the end of the third year at school.”

Och det har alltså varit flera undersökningar som kommit fram till att synthetic phonics är bättre för både flickor och pojkar, men att skillnaden är störst för pojkarna.

“Up until the 1970s a mixture of synthetic and analytic phonics was used for teaching reading in British schools. From that time forward phonics was abandoned in some state primary schools to be replaced by the ”whole word recognition” method sometimes called ”look and say”. In the following years the average reading age (i.e. the level of reading ability) of children in primary schools fell and the standard expectation for children of various ages was adjusted downward. Although there were a few proponents of phonic methods the major lobbying bodies such as the Institute of Education disdained early attention to the alphabetic code in favor of taking clues from the context of the text (such as illustrations).”

Hur tänker egentligen de där människorna, som lobbar för underlägsen pedagogik? Antagligen visste de inte att den var underlägsen, men de brydde sig inte heller, de drev igenom den utan att mäta eller reagera på att den är betydligt sämre. Varför?

Det sista citatet är från Wikipedia, där det även framgår att det här är en fråga där det har börjat röra på sig! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_phonics