Synthetic Phonics

A few weeks ago, I had a surprise email from a school in Estonia. One of the things I have been involved with over the years, is Jolly Phonics. It's a really useful and child friendly scheme for teaching synthetic phonics to children, so that they learn to read and spell accurately. Anyway, as a result of the email and the discussions that followed, I'm going to Estonia to deliver some Jolly Phonics training. So I've been preparing materials. It's handy for a little girl that I teach, that some of the new materials I've been making are just what she needs. Here is an example:

The English language can appear quite tricky because there are so many different ways of writing each sound. That's why it must be taught systematically and rigorously. Whilst teaching the more advanced phonetic code is more challenging, that's the bit I enjoy the most. I love working with children to investigate and find patterns and rules (and then all the exceptions).

Zooming ahead!

I've got a busy few weeks ahead, what with a trip to Estonia, Neil starting his new job and the onset of study... so I thought it would be good to get ahead a bit. I've managed to do all the reading and activities for Part 1 of my course (7 parts in all) and although it's all quite theoryish at the moment, I have found it really interesting.

This first module is in applied linguistics, which is basically about investigating real-world problems where language is a central issue (Brumfit 1995). That seems to cover quite a large area. There's obviously the side connected to English as a second/foreign language, which I love thinking about. I think there are other angles that interest me too though. I'm trying to work out whether the argument for/against synthetic phonics fits in here - it depends whether learning to read/write is classed as a problem worthy of investigation or not. Also, earlier in the week I got a proofreading job from Finland, which brought up some of the very complex issues involved in language translation.

At the end of the module, I have to conduct my own research and I'm already pondering what area that might be in. The emergence of Finnglish in bilingual Finns is a strong area of interest. There's something ever so beautiful about the Finnish language and I still love to study it when I can. The reality is though, that we're unlikely to ever move back there, so from a work perspective, there's no reason to research it. Synthetic phonics, however, is likely to form part of my future work life, in one way or another. Teaching English as a second language - I love it but the pay is really quite bad.  So who knows? It's a good job I've got all year to formulate my thoughts and come up with a research proposal.