SYNTHETIC PHONICS
DEC 01 2005
This is the most pathetic saga of all in the story of British education. There is no other way you can teach people to read English other than 'synthetic phonics' unless they are surrounded in their everyday life by people who can talk proper English. That does not mean English with any particular accent, but it does mean English where all the vowels are pronounced in a distinct way and all the consonants pronounced in the standard way. But most young people are no longer in such an environment. We now have BBC presenters  who talk of 'Droring' and 'Lore and Order' etc. etc. - and that is presumably due to the fact that they were never taught to read, write or speak using what is now called Synthetic Phonics (but anyhwere else, or at any other time, would be called Common Sense). Nobody can learn English by just picking the language up and then associating it with words except after a fashion that goes steadily downhill from generation to generation till it disappears up its own estuary.

There is no reason why all teaching of English should not revert to being correctly taught immediately. The other ways that people learn words are methods that come later, even though they may be more productive for certain children.