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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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He couldn't spell his name the same twice in a row!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In reply to:
I would love to hear comments from others on how they learned to read and spell correctly
To be honest I don't really remember, but from what my parents have since told me, I must have been under the impression I was reading Chinese. Apparently, while all the other kids were spelling out words b-a-t = bat, c-a-t = cat, I was remembering the shape of each word as a whole and didn't catch on to the fact that the letters could help with new words for quite some time. For what it's worth apart from the occasional single word utterance I didn't talk until I was nearly three, when I started talking in whole sentences. I was not going to do it until I knew I could do it properly. I didn't come out with "Thank you madam, the agony has sensibly abated" but I'm sure it's only because the occasion never arose.
Bingley
Bingley
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addict
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addict
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Bikermom wrote: So does that mean Hebrew uses many consonants and few vowel sounds?
I don't know about Hebrew, but in Literary Modern (standard) Arabic only the consonant sounds are normally written for any word. Of course there are three vowel sounds /a/, /i/, /u/, but they are only written into words when they are part of the "three-letter" word-root, or lengthened through grammatical changes. The regular vowel forms, which are part of any Arabic word, can be signalled by little written marks either above or beneath the consonant that they follow, but this is optional. To make matters more complicated, the vowel-structure of a word helps you determine its form and function, so it carries important grammatical and lexical information.
Needless to say, reading Arabic correctly with no vowels available requires a good amount of proficiency in the language. The extreme regularity of Arabic grammatical rules means that once you know them, you cannot mistake one word for another, and you know perfectly what vowels it contains along with the visible consonants. Until you reach that level of skill, it is all a rather hit-and-miss affair.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I would love to hear comments from others on how they learned to read and spell correctlyI learned initially "at my mother's knee", as the saying goes, back in the 1940s. She read aloud to me as often as she could, (as the bombs rained down on London, I'm tempted to say!  ) and I looked at the book as she read, absorbing what the words looked like -'whole word' technique. When I went to school, reading was taught by a mixture of "Ah for apple" (phonics) and reading aloud to the teacher at her desk on a one-to-one basis. By the time I was seven, there wasn't much that I couldn't attempt with a significantly high chance of getting it right. It was noticeable that the children from what we, euphemistically, called "poorer homes" where the chances of there being books or parents who would (could?) read aloud from them was very low, were the ones who lagged behind in learning to read. Of course, with a class of thirty-four and using one-to-one techniques, there is an almost irresistible temptation for the teacher to concentrate on those who perform well. Writing was also taught to me intially (how else?  ) by my Mother. She would write words out on a slate, which I would copy on to paper - usually as "thank-you" letters at Christmas and Birthday time. At school, we were required to copy out lists of words from the blackboard and learn how to write them properly in time for the weekly spelling test on Friday morning. There was intense competition to get them all right, as the teacher would give a reward of a sweet to those who succeeded (looking back on it, this was a remarkable devotion to the cause of learning, as sweets were on ration at that time - hence the great competition to win them!) In various forms, spelling lessons, quizzes and tests continued until I was about twleve. After that, like wow, I lost marks if I miss-spelt words (the only reason that this was effective for me, who got low marks anyway, was that it was a blow to my pride as a good speller - one of the few things I was good at, in secondary school!) It worked for me. I share with a colleague of similar vintage the joint honour of being the office dictionary, a post I have occupied in most of the places I have worked. But I am cautious of saying that the method used in school that worked for me are the best. They worked for me because I had massive support at home. If I couldn't spell a word and asked my other, she would tell me, but then make sure that I could spell it without having to ask her. Later, she insisted that I use the dictionary. There were books, magazines and newspapers all over our house and I was only restricted from looking at a few that my mother thought were not fit for young eyes (which made me read them surreptitiously, of course!) For children from homes where this back-up is not available, different techniques of teaching may well be more appropriate. In the end, one-to-one teaching of basic skills is usually the best foundation. But where will you find a government that is willing to commit tax-payers' money to such an expensive scheme?
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veteran
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learning reading/spelling
I learned to read the same way and in the same era, sans bombs. I sat on my grandmother's lap while she read to me and I can not remember a time when I could not read. In elementary school, reading was taught using the phonics method, so that was how you learned to spell. But the capstone of spelling instruction came in high school. I think I mentioned this in an earlier thread; in the high school I attended there was a list of the 100 most frequently misspelled words in English. This was divided up into 10 pieces and each week you had to study those 10 words and on Friday there was a test. They kept going over and over those 100 words, 10 at a time, for the 3 or 4 years you were there. Thanks to that, I could no more misspell judgment (the only word on the list I can recall off the top of my head) than I could misspell my own name.
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journeyman
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journeyman
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That list of 100 frequently misspelled words is still in the schools, but only a very few teachers do anything about it. I wonder if your school system still has that system activated? So many of our American schools have a system that works and then "wham" someone pulls it out and starts a new program. How can the kids know what going on if the teachers don't. All the time wasted and spent learning new ways. I really support new methods and ways, but spelling is one thing that really does not change. We have to imprint the words in our head somehow---and it sounds like you did! Thanks enthusiast
enthusiast
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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>...in the high school I attended there was a list of the 100 most frequently misspelled words in English...They kept going over and over those 100 words, 10 at a time, for the 3 or 4 years you were there. Thanks to that, I could no more misspell judgment...Oh, I would have thought English is a much more robust and devious langauge than you give it credit for, Bob. A concerted attack on the 100 most frequently misspelled (now there's a candidate!) words would just see 100 new ones pop up somewhere else!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Bobyoungbalt wrote :
a list of the 100 most frequently misspelled words in English
Very interesting! My Editor had that list and he would choose the words most likely to come up in writing for a newspaper and quizz job applicants on them. Since we had a "Lifestyle" section which included The Cook Of The Week with concurrent recipes, mayonnaise was on the list. Amazing how many missed it.
Oh, when I applied I got 13 out of 15 and he gave up and hired me! Can't remember which two I missed but you can bet I learned how to spell them.
Nevertheless there seem to be a few words that I had to look up. Every election time it was that thing people cast ... one or two "L"s ? Once researched, though, I had it ... at least for that year.
wow
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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herbrew is very similar-- and the "vowel" notations, are "Jots and ..(tittles it think?) some biblical scholar will no doubt no the referece in the gospel, when some one is talking about record keeping, and states that god "keeps track of all our sins, and good deeds, like a text with every jot and t...."
I don't know herbrew, but i do remember learning that much about reading it--
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veteran
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veteran
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"Jot" comes from the Hebrew letter "yod", which is just a small squiggle and looks something like a comma; the Greek letter "iota" is related to it, and is only a single stroke. I did know once what "tittle" is from, but don't remember at the moment; no doubt someone will let us know.
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