Page 35 - ELG1911 Nov Issue 467

El•Gazette 467.qxp_El•Gazette 467 23/10/2019 13:10 Page 35

FEATURES & COMMENT
OUT

The second flaw in the English solution is that it
promotes ‘synthetic’ instructional practices for OF THE
phonics. This means students learn individual sounds
for each letter which they then ‘synthesise’ together. BOX
In this approach, word meaning is considered
irrelevant – even a hinderance – to initial instruction
as it may distract students from attending to the
individual letters in words. To mitigate the possibility
that the students are using meaning, context or prior The threat of
exposure to the word, synthetic phonics instruction
involves teaching the children to read ‘nonsense’
words, like ‘flug’ or ‘pob’. becoming
The underlying assumption is that words are simply
strings of sounds to be ‘synthesised’ from left to right,
rather than representations of meaning.
Is ‘awed’ to be sounded out as ‘a – w – e- d’ or ‘ a – obsolete
wed’ or ‘aw – ed’ or ‘awe – d’. And how is it be
written? Why not ‘ord’,’ored’, ‘oard’, ‘oared’ or even
‘oured’ as in ‘poured’? How is ‘wind’ to be read – with As expectations for learning in the language
a short ‘i’ or a long ‘i’? A synthetic approach to
phonics instruction cannot answer these questions. classroom decline, Hana Tichá suggests
Neither can a synthetic approach explain common there is a risk that English teachers will
words with unique sound/letter patterns, like ‘who’ or
‘was’. become redundant
An approach to reading and writing instruction
that eschews meaning seems particularly perverse for
any learner, but for English language learners (ELLs) a These days, English learners can students behind, can you? In
synthetic phonics approach is particularly harmful. be as autonomous as they wish. other words, I’m concerned that
When learning a new language, all words are There are all those mobile apps, most English learners may
potentially nonsense words. English language learners movies, games, songs and books sooner or later consider us
need a focus on word meanings, and to be taught new to help them. So, is there any teachers to be rather obsolete or
– real – vocabulary. It is hard to imagine a more work left for us English unable to meet their needs,
useless practice for ELLs than deliberately teaching teachers? And to what extent particularly at the secondary
them to read nonsense. may this feeling of redundancy level of education.
A third flaw in the English phonics first approach is influence our own attitudes, And, although there will still
that it is exclusionary, and possibly racist. Native- performance and ultimately the be some learners who can’t
speaker accents are privileged. Some allowances are job itself? make do without us – those who
made for regional native English accents. ’Bath’ can What do I mean by this? Here find it challenging to learn
be pronounced with a long ‘a’ or a short ‘a’. But non- in the Czech Republic, for independently or those who see
native regional variances are given a fail. A French example, the expected outcomes the teacher as a door to
accented ‘f’ instead of a ‘th’? Fail. A Greek ‘s’ instead in English no longer match the obtaining certificates and
of a ‘sh’? Fail. A fail even if that child is able to read a knowledge and skills that degrees – it is a rather
book with comprehension in English or French or students can realistically achieve pessimistic prospect.
Greek. The student’s first language competencies, if they are motivated to do their To tackle the problem, we
their English language comprehension all count for best. I believe that, ironically, may need to look closely at (and
nothing – what counts is the pronunciation of anglo- low expectations from the possibly follow) the example of
centric sounds. school system seriously threaten Finland, for instance, where the
Of course, the ultimate flaw in the English plan to the quality of our work. focus is on work across school
improve reading and writing skills is that it isn’t Let me explain this. You may subjects, including English. This
working. The students are not getting better at know about the Golem effect; is something which is already
reading and writing. The phonics ‘jab’ they receive in the phenomenon whereby low applied at some schools here in
the first two years of school simply hasn’t been able to expectations lead to a decrease the Czech Republic. However, it
ward off the dreaded middle years decline in literacy in performance. I simply fear will probably need to become
achievement. They are failing their Year 6 reading that once our students come to more large-scale if we English
tests – despite knowing their sounds. The US may believe there’s not much that we teachers want to keep our jobs
have made the right call on this problem – the middle can actually do for them, as well as find them useful and
years literacy decline is not because basic decoding ultimately, there will indeed be gratifying.
skills are lacking, it is because complex very little we can offer.
comprehension skills are missing. Moreover, every teacher Contact:
probably feels there is an https://hanatichaeltblog.
n Misty Adoniou is an Adjunct Associate Professor in imaginary threshold in teaching wordpress.com/
Language, Literacy and TESOL at the University of a foreign language. Past this
Canberra, and a Principal Fellow at Melbourne Graduate stage, it gets difficult or n Hana Tichá is an EFL teacher
School of Education. She has served as the President of impossible to satisfy everybody based in the Czech Republic. She
two national English teachers associations – TESOL in the class. I mean, you can’t has been teaching English to
Greece, and the Australian Council of TESOL teach C1 language to your best learners of all ages for almost 25
Associations, and from 2015 – 18 was a Director of students and leave the A2 years and still loves her job.
TESOL International, an affiliation of 105 teachers
associations around the globe.
editorial@elgazette.com 35