If you want to know why so many Australian (and English) academics are so strongly opposed to a Phonics Screening Check, which really is a fig leaf for their hostility to phonics teaching itself, it is that, at bottom, they don’t understand the relationship between the sounds of the language and the writing system itself.… Continue reading The know-nothing world of the academic opposition to phonics
A question that arises which proponents of phonics have to keep coming back to challenge over and over again is whether the writing system is truly phonic. Many words, it is alleged, contain ‘unphonetic spellings’. A moment’s pause for reflection will persuade any right-thinking person that this is baloney. As I never tire of reminding anyone who… Continue reading The English writing system
In The World’s Writing Systems, Peter Daniels begins the book with the declaration that ‘[h]umankind is defined by language; but civilization is defined by writing’. Of course, as he makes clear later in the book, ‘civilization’ can mean a number of things. However, in terms of writing systems – ‘and this is the sense taken… Continue reading The World’s Writing Systems
