Phonics taught at Kindies here??

[carang]

yep... fully agree. i teach a VERY little bit of phonics in a playgroup. i don't take children in the "phonics" class until they are at least 3.5 yrs old.

[BonnieChan]

my girl is 3.5 yrs old now and I just let her to join a phonics class which will be started in mid of this month. Is it too early for her?

She loves to learn Chinese words but has not much interest in learning English (she has not yet recognized all the alphabets)...

[carang]

i think that she should be ok, if the phonics is taught in a fun and interesting way by a native speaker.

otherwise, you will be wasting your money.

[bekyboo44]

It is important that the teacher knows and understands the phonics programme they are implementing....and it is also important that they are able to prononuce the phenomes properly.....this is not something a native teacher necessarily knows!!

For phonics to really work you have to do it everyday, and constantly reinforce it....so if you know what programme your daughters class will be using it's good to have it at home too, so you can help her out. However you must make sure you can also prononuce the phenomes correctly.

[carang]

"prononuce the phenomes"

it would depend on where the native speaker is from, wouldn't it?

[bekyboo44]

What I meant was be able to say the letter sounds properly.....they should be said the same way regardless of accent....e.g. a lot of people over stress the sound, when a lot of them should be almost whispered....it's difficult to explain this by writing!

[jools]

My college lecturer used to call it adding the 'schwar'. What she meant was, lets take the sound 's', if you add the schwar, then actually say 'su'. When you say 'su' you can hear two phonemes 's' and 'u'. This can cause great confusion especially when using phonics for spelling, which is why you have to make sure you pronounce the phonemes correctly.

[carang]

except that the "r" sound is different in the UK than it is in Canada.... that DOES matter what accent you have.

i found it amusing that the british teacher pronounced the words "stalk" and "stork" exactly alike, when to me, a canadian, they sound very different.