Back to the basics

Press, 17 July 1978, Page 12

Back to the basics

Sir, — Your contributor on “Reading difficulties” shows that a degree in education is no help in ensuring that a child will learn to read well. Studying the basics and showing a child, will, though. I have no degree but I taught my children the basics of reading before and after they began schooling. I taught them to print the alphabet letters, to name them and to sound-out phonetic words. Having a good imagination does not stop a child learning to read if he is taught logically. The daughter of mine with the greatest imagination has a B.A. degree in English and has been a Court Theatre and television actress. Putting the alphabet in the toilet would not engender discussion on the letter names or the learning of them. To know any skill thoroughly one must be taught and shown properly and feel the thrill of achievement at each little step. — Yours, etc., (Mrs) JOAN RIDDLE. July 12, 1978.

Sir, — As a person who has grown up in the present education system, the discussions on reading in your paper interest me. My first teacher, my mother, taught me phonetics and gave me the basics for reading, spelling and, now in secondary school, foreign languages. Friends of my own age who have not been taught phonetics now have problems in languages, spelling and unfamiliar English words. It appears to me that instead of being taught a few basic sounds, the child must spend time working them out for himself or herself or else must learn every word in the English language separately. The teacher, too, must go over every word many times instead of applying a more widely useful, and simpler, phonetic system. This costs not only the teacher’s precious time but, also, the pupil’s ability to achieve academically now or in the future. — Yours, etc., CHRYS HORN, Fourth-former. July 12, 1978.