About Those Phonograms...

In my last post, I mention how reading didn't come easily for my daughter. What I didn't mention, was that teaching reading didn't come easily to me either. I was a voracious reader as a child, and I just assumed, wrongly so, that my daughter would just naturally take after me. She loved to be read to, and I spent many days, cuddled with her on the couch, reading through countless books. She memorized several stories line by line, and often begged me to read her favorite books over and over again. I was thrilled that she loved books so much, and was certain that she would enjoy reading all on her own just as much. Of course, as per my last post, that just wasn't the case.

I went through several reading and phonics books, and I can't really say what eventually worked. I'm sort of leaning toward it just having been due to her readiness, but I may be wrong. We used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and that was a bust. I know it works for many children, but I kept getting annoyed with their orthographic method. Perhaps that was just my hang-up, but we dropped it after a while. Next came Phonics Pathways. I liked it. It was traditional, and straightforward, but my daughter found it boring. Then we tried Reading Reflex. That worked much better! I was getting warm! All the while, I had been "hearing" about the Spalding method, but reviews out there describing the method as difficult to wade through, really intimidated me and I kept passing it up. Eventually however, I built up the nerve to try, particularly when I found a helpful companion program called Reading Works. Thanks to that program, and the consistent hand-holding it offered, I was able to wade through the Writing Road to Reading (Spalding). The program made sense to me, and my daughter was progressing.

In working through the phonograms, I was finally cognizant about just how difficult the English language can be to learn. In this post, I'm referring specifically to English language reading, but spelling is also a stumbling point for many. Take the phonogram OUGH for instance--bough, though, through, rough, bought, cough! None of these is pronounced the same way! While I pronounced them properly, with nary a thought to their differences, seeing them listed all together like that really made me a lot more able to understand my daughter's confusion. I realized that it would take some work, and I ceased pressuring my daughter to understand something which was quite illogical to her at the time.

All of the above has reminded me of an episode of I Love Lucy, in which Ricky aptly illustrates what he regards as the "problem" with the English language. I quite agree with him.