Hooked on phonics?

I do like Kim’s idea for some word superlatives, though idioms could be fun to list too, as Zinna’s Slate article does.

But I wanted to post on ELL (English Language Learning, formerly known as ESL or English as a Second Language) and phonics because I’ve gotten really into phonology and language acquisition over the past month (through tutoring as well as chatting with some of my ELL second grade campers at Recky’s). I actually got some old phonics textbooks out of my second grader teacher (you never know where you can find excellent resources… ask around).

So I guess what triggered this was thinking about the different pronunciation of “woman” versus “women” in English. The only semantic difference is that one word is singular and the other is plural. Woman is made plural by changing the –an to –en (as in “man” to “men”), and making plurals this way in a language is kind of strange to begin with (if I were a second grader, I’d be asking, “Wait, aren’t you supposed to just add –s to a word to make it plural?”). Even stranger is the accompanying change in the pronunciation of the first syllable (from WUH-man to WIH-men… or something like that; “Wait, the letter ‘o’ doesn’t make that sound!”). I was wondering how an English Language Learner comes to master such bizarre changes of pronunciation like that in English, since there are so many bizarre cases like that out there. (It’s like the Stanley Fish thing we talked about… “ghoti” could realistically be another spelling of the word “fish,” if we use the way “gh” is said in “cough” (/f/), the way “o” is said in “women” (/I/ or a short “i” sound), and the way “ti” is said in the word “intuition” (/š/ or “sh”).)

This brings us to the issue of phonics as an area of an instruction, for native speakers as well as learners—which is a huge debacle in education now. Phonics involves teaching children to associate English letters with certain sounds, as well as to put letters together making sound blends (like “ch” and “tr”). So in essence, it seeks to teach which letters produce each phoneme, which in turn helps children to understand the composition of words, so that they can eventually begin to decode unknown words (based on letter/sound correlation). There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that this is a very effective way of teaching young children to read (almost counterintuitively, because we know English has SO MANY exceptions where the resulting pronunciation of a word seems completely nonsensical given the way it’s spelled). Regardless, it seems most every major study has come to the conclusion that phonics IS in fact very effective (Wikipedia gives a nice summary under the “phonics” entry… the information seems correct since I’ve also read it from journals The Reading Teacher and American Educator). Yet for some reason a strong opposition remains (not sure what their argument is…considered too juvenile for students, maybe? Or perhaps for the same reasons we don’t teach grammar (an equally un-sexy subject) anymore… wait, I can’t think of any good reasons for not teaching grammar). Apparently it’s even bitterly opposed within our school district (I get the sense Mrs. McDonough is running the “Underground Railroad” of phonics programs with Mrs. Fox at Stillman. The other three schools do not teach phonics). Maybe this isn’t a problem if our schools ultimately produce competent readers… but oftentimes they don’t—and as a nation we lag behind many other industrialized countries in reading level of students. Why don’t we use the time-tested, research-backed tools we have available to help our kids to become better readers?

With regard to phonics and ELL, apparently there is also a place in the classroom for phonics instruction in the student’s native language, because if a student develops phonemic awareness in one language (Spanish for example, given 80% of ELLs in the U.S. use Spanish as their primary language), she can transfer phonemic awareness from one language to another, according to an article in The Reading Teacher (“Conciencia Fonémica en Español (Phonemic Awareness in Spanish)” by Hallie Kay Yopp & Lilia Stapleton, February 2008). “Encouraging English-language learners to build phonemic awareness in their native language leads to gains in their English reading skills.” The abstract can be found here. If you want an actual copy, let me know. ELL is actually the most interesting thing in the world. I wish I had paid more attention to it while we were still in school (CSI internship?).

And then there’s the most elusive aspect of ELL and second language acquisition in general—the question of the accent! For those of us who went to the Swarthmore conference on sign language acquisition, we’ll remember how Deborah Chen-Pichler talked about having an “accent” (in the form of hand shape) as an M2 (mode 2) learner of ASL. As with any other language, it seems as though if one learns it after a certain point in her childhood, one is forever doomed to speak it with a foreign accent (with rare Alon Harish-type exceptions). This seems to correspond with the whole critical period idea… at some point we stop absorbing language like little sponges, and acquisition becomes a difficult, draining, conscious process (as most of us know through our high school studies)… though apparently there have been all sorts of recent challenges to the critical period hypothesis (según Maestra Giblin). I should really look into that and post for y’all (also, an unrelated thought—but can we please revive the second person plural pronoun? It’s so necessary!).

In any case, se supone que most every ELL student who learns after a certain age will have some accent, even if he speaks perfect English otherwise. Yet I’ve noticed that some of my kids who are still within the “critical period” and often speak English at home still have accents. In particular, I have an Israeli girl who speaks to her parents in a mix of English and Hebrew, and she speaks normal English, but with a very think Hebrew accent! Meanwhile, I have two twins brothers who speak almost exclusively Hebrew at home, and they have no accent at all. Why? I think the problem is that the girl learned English from her parents, who speak it well but likely with a very heavy accent. Meanwhile, since the twin brothers learned English exclusively outside the home, they didn’t retain an accent (since they’re still young enough to completely learn a another language without an accent). I was talking to my second grade teacher about this, who was telling me how her Korean kids who come in with no knowledge of English end up speaking better sometimes than Israeli kids who learned English at home. Of course that doesn’t always happen, since I know plenty of people who grew up in bilingual households speak without an accent. But I thought this was worth reporting since more than one person has noticed this among Tenafly kids.

In conclusion, let's storm the Board of Education and demand changes in the reading curriculum. Then we can teach phonics to ELLs in underprivileged school districts. I'm down!

--Amy