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The
Purpose of the Superphonics
Home Tutor Course
The
traditional route to learning to read with phonics
is lengthy. There are many phonetic rules along
with endless repetition as the learning process
proceeds. The process is often slowed for those
who have difficulty in the application of sounds
to read words. These students require an unbearable
number of hours of tutoring when one considers
that the purpose is to get the student up to
an independent study level using the dictionary
as his main tutor.
Adults
are frequently the most difficult to teach to
read independently as they have often been taught
to sight-read. Sight-read habits inhibit observation
of the true fundamentals having only to do with
speech sounds. They often have a very hard time
with this and require extensive one-on-one tutoring.
Superphonics
prepares the student for easier learning of phonics
and gets him reading before learning the rules.
He learns simple blending and then the speech
sounds in the dictionary pronunciation key. With
a little practice, he can get on with studying
and looking up the words he cannot pronounce
just as he would any other new or uncertain definition.
Speed picks up and soon he is flowing nicely.
The
step up to pronunciation of words in the dictionary
from that of learning the dictionary key sounds
is however a difficult jump for most students.
Few take the sounds and move right on to sounding
out words with little or no help. Getting through
the pronunciation of one word can be as time
consuming as mastering the various meanings,
and with far more frustration.
What
we have done in Superphonics is stripped traditional
phonics down to its bare simplicities, which
hold the very foundation of reading. When one
looks fully at the fact that reading is simply
the application of speech sounds in code form
so that communication can be accomplished in
the absence of spoken words, it becomes clear
that there are conceptual steps earlier than
simply learning the code or symbols representing
those sounds. To simply learn the letters and
sounds does not give the student a concept of
reading. A comparison to this might be in learning
about computers. If one were first taught that
computers are based on numerical codes, clearing
the word 'code' would not give him data he can
think with or apply to using a computer. Explaining
what each code represented would not get him
in action on the computer. He is still sitting
in so far inapplicable information even though
he has learned the letters and sounds.
One
would first get the student oriented as to the
use of the computer. He would turn it on, move
it around a bit and become a little oriented
before being taught symbols and codes. Because
concepts of application come into existence prior
to codes or symbols that will then represent
them, it is obvious that the maker of the code
himself had to have first understood how they
were to be applied. The developer of the code
obviously based his representations on some application,
which he must have mastered in order to create
their codes. Would he then start with teaching
the codes or would he take the student through
the basics that provided understanding and application
based upon his own journey to understanding?
Reading
is so simple to a literate individual that the
ABCs seem to be the first step in reading. The
alphabet however, is simply a code and is purely
memorized. The sounds are memorized. One is not
able to think with them or apply them until he
has gotten the concept of putting them together
to somehow read words. This basic is fully and
consistently missed in traditional phonics.
There
is a tremendous amount of memorization without
understanding to be done before one is able to
think with and apply the letters and sounds to
reading. It's like starting the climb of a mountain
without knowing how to use the safety equipment
and tools. The hardest part is getting to the
Reading is understanding the use of the symbols
(codes) assigned to speech sounds.
As
a generality, we do not take much notice of how
speech sounds are made as we learn to speak.
We mimic complete words, which are single entities,
as far as we've observed. They are not, however,
single entities; they are the combinations of
individual speech sounds. It is very difficult
to sound out a word when we have not even had
our attention put to this fact in regard to our
own speech. Therefore, the correct starting point
is to observe and fully master how words are
made in our own speech. This is an extremely
swift process and because the student has conceptual
understanding from the very beginning, he is
much brighter as he moves through it. When the
ABCs are then introduced, he will immediately
understand the concept and application of these
symbols and will be able to get on with reading.
For
the purpose of getting the student reading as
soon as possible, we can then bypass the phonetic
rules, which are not based on one, but on many
different languages. If we provide the student
with one standard symbol for each sound, rather
than several possibilities for that sound, we
give him a constant by which to get on with reading.
The dictionary pronunciation key provides this
standard. Later he can learn the phonetic rules
by reading and drilling independently by way
of correctly prepared workbooks. In this way,
he can read before learning traditional phonics;
otherwise he would have to work through the long
arduous process before he can get onto the Study
Course.
With
your Superphonics Course, common problems with
blending (sounding out words), are resolved before
they ever get the chance to show themselves because
the problems only appear when there are missing
steps. Follow the steps in this course.
Superphonics
is licensed by Applied Scholastics™ International.
Applied Scholastics and the Applied Scholastics
logo are Service and Trademarks owned by the
Association for Better Living and Education and
are used with its permission.
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