[Zoot]

Driving home last night I was listening to the Chris Evans show on radio 2, and at about 5.15 every night they have a 'what did you do for the first time today' feature where they speak to a child about what they did that day. Well last night they spoke to a 7 year old girl and she said she wrote her name in joined up handwriting for the first time. Chris asked her how she spelt her name and she went on to spell it in 'phonetic sounds' and not letters, ie- "Ru, Eh, Bu, Eh, Cu, Cu, Ah". When Mr Evans asked her what letters they were she sounded confused.

Is this how kids are taught now? I genuinely have no idea. I can see how it would help with their speech and spelling, but wouldn't they be taught proper letters in conjunction with it too?

[Munki Bhoy]

Works well in sensible languages. Sadly English is not one them. Ph = f. If you say so. I can see the class now...

"Okay class, how do you spell Rudolph as in the Red Nosed Reindeer?"

*Blank faces*

"Sound it out..."

"R... oooooooooo... ddd... ooo...lll...ffff"

Spelling Reindeer with an a as well probably.

[MK Chris]

In my first school, the headteacher (well... the only teacher) before we were taught to pronounce letters as capitals ('ay', 'bee' and so on) taught us that rather than saying the lower case as 'puh' for 'P', it would be short and punchy, literally just pronouncing the 'p' sound. If that makes any sense at all. We soon moved on to capitals though and all through my schooling, I was always the best or one of the best at spelling and grammar. Having said that though, it was the only thing I was the best at.

[Boboff]

I have a 7 year old, who struggles with reading and writing, and this system, although not perfect encourages them to learn sounds, and how you can spell those sounds with different letter combinations, rather than actually learning letters in themselves. The letters form part of the sounds, and are learned in that way.

You learn to spell using syllables rather than letters.

The sound of the letter and the actual writing of the letter are performed at the same time, and I am sure the girl was just a little bit in awe of the radio.

so instead of O L I V E R, you would sound Oo, Luh, ehh, vv, Eah, Rr, or something. The main reason for it, is the English Language is basically daft in its construction.


It does make it hard to teach them at home, as I would say 90% of parents have not got a clue how to teach it properly.

[Nicola_Red]

How bizarre. I can sort of see how it might help. I learned my alphabet before I started school - in fact I learned it from Sesame St, which is why I said "zee" instead of "zed", and got in trouble for it. I s'pose in a phonetic system it would have been more like "zuh".

[Latina]

I learned my alphabet before I started school - in fact I learned it from Sesame St, which is why I said "zee" instead of "zed", and got in trouble for it. I s'pose in a phonetic system it would have been more like "zuh".

My best friend did that too. In fact, I guess many kids must have.

[Zoot]

It makes more sense for it to be zee instead of zed to me considering we have b, c, d etc as bee, cee and dee not bed, ced and ded.

That reminds me of this -

[Bonanzoid]

When I was in Spain I heard they were using a similar, seemingly useless system. As some people will know, the letter 'v' in Spanish is often said as a 'b' sound. So, now in Spanish primary schools they don't mark the children down if they spell a word with a 'b' where there should be a 'b'. I know this isn't a British example, but it is another EU country that employs a bizarre system.