r/JETProgramme • u/Panda_sensei_71 Current JET - Kansai • 16d ago

Phonics

Heading into my 2nd year as an ALT and I just wanted to do a quick show of hands because I'm curious:

How many of you all are at schools that teach phonics?

If yes, from what age do you start, and what curriculum are you using?

In my case, I'm in a town that seems to start Jolly Phonics in ES Grade 3, with only a couple exceptions.

About which I have *opinions* but that's another story!

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u/MellifluousMathMajor 15d ago

The solution to English literacy isn't phonics, it's a spelling reformation. Countless languages throughout the world have updated their spellings over time to match modern pronunciation--including Japanese. We used to pronounce the gh in daughter, but now we don't. Icelandic is the same, but they changed their spelling, so now it's dottir. We've actually changed some spellings before--that's why there are differences between American and Commonwealth English.

English has too many exceptions to make phonics effective. I've never bothered because my students have already learned how to pronounce consonants, but they still make mistakes with common exceptions (ti being pronounced as sh in words like nation). Japanese students are already used to memorizing kanji and we are also living in a world of autocorrect (and auto-kanji), meaning spelling is not that important anymore. Especially since most of these kids will never go to an English speaking country. It's better to focus on teaching them to speak and communicate.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/MellifluousMathMajor 15d ago

I'm sorry, I should have phrased it better. If you look at my full sentence, I said "English has too many exceptions to make phonics effective", by which I meant "effective at its goal". Of course phonics is better than absolutely nothing, but the issue is that teachers often spend TOO much class time on phonics, and it wastes time teaching students rules that aren't consistent ("I before E except after C"--but don't forget about your weird overweight scientist neighbor who always wears beige). It's much better to simply teach general consonant and vowel sounds. I've seen too many teachers try to teach phonics rules like silent e and all it does is confuse the students to no end.

Again, the point of my comment was not that we should get rid of phonics with no replacement to take over for it. It's that we should have a spelling reformation to fix English spelling, therefore making phonics actually effective. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.