Why Phonics Are Not Suitable for Early Stages of Teaching / Learning English

Filed Under (NLP coaching learning difficulties) by NLP-Life-Coach on 01-08-2010

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Phonics in teaching and learning English are a subject of debate. Hence I offer you this poem for a start:

I take it you already know of tough and bough and cough and dough…

Others may stumble, but not you, on hiccough, thorough, slough, and through.

Well done!  And now you wish, perhaps, to learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word that looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead; for goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat, they rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother, not both in bother, broth in brother.

And here is not a match for there, nor dear and fear for bear and pear.

And then there’s dose and rose and lose, just look then up – and goose and choose!

Then cork and work and card and ward and font and front and word and sword.

And do and go, then thwart and cart – come, come!  I’ve hardly made a start!

A dreadful language?  Why, man alive! I mastered it when I was five!

And yet to write it the more I try, I’ll not learn how til the day I die.

Need I say more?  Well, perhaps.

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