Oh dear - I wanted to watch the debate again but am now getting the message that the video has been removed by the user. I'll see if I can find another route to it.

Jenny C.``

This debate took place today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRE2OKL6EtY&app=desktop The preliminaries go on for about 45 minutes before the debate itself starts. The three speaking in favour of systematic synthetic phonics do an excellent job. I think the first questioner from the floor is right t...

Thanks for the Share extracts, maizie - he's always very good value. There’s also this 1990 article by Wimmer and Hummer: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/applied-psycholinguisticsarticle/how-germanspeaking-first-graders-read-and-spell-doubts-on-the-importance-of-the-logographic-stage/49B5D90...

I’m adding to this thread because I've just revisited a 1999 article by Henrietta Dombey, a contributor to Reading the Evidence . The article was in Literacy Today : Uta Frith has shown us that children go about the business of identifying new words in fundamentally different ways as they go through...

Prof. Rhona Johnston, the lead researcher in the Clackmannanshire studies, has done a re-analysis of data included in two existing meta-analyses and has shown problems with them or with the way they have been interpreted. She has given this to the RRF: http://rrf.org.uk/2018/06/17/examining-the-evid...

This is interesting: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Projects/Evaluation_Reports/GraphoGame_Rime.pdf See also this 2014 RRF thread, where Susan Godsland flagged up this study and various reservations were expressed about onset-rime theories: http://www.rrf.org.uk/messageforu...

It seems to me that Bowers and Bowers don’t reckon with the fact that real beginners know few if any letters, and recognise few if any words in their written form. Children really do need to start at the very beginning, and the examples that B. and B. give (‘do’- ’does’, ‘act’- ’action’- ’react’, ‘s...

Here are two new articles on morphology: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1747021818759477 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1747021818775053 I wrote to Jeff Bowers (Bristol) just over a year ago after reading another Bowers and Bowers article. I said that although I was very ...

I don't think it's a matter of children ALWAYS being dependent on a third party if they are taught analytic phonics - they obviously do need to get to the point of being able to work words out independently in due course. It's just that it's not clear how they manage it if they are not taught that w...

I, too, have always been in favour of incidental phonics teaching as well as planned systematic teaching. The drip-feeding of high-frequency ‘tricky’ words can lend itself to this, particularly if the teaching stresses the parts of these words which do and do not fit in with the phonics taught to da...

Here’s another chapter from the recent Clark book which has been made available for free: http://backseatlinguist.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/McQuillan-Synthetic-Phonics-2018a.pdf ...and a press release about it: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/3735767 I made some comments about the McQuill...

Just to clarify: what I wrote was ‘I agree, in principle, that “we should stick to research evidence”’. I also accept, though, that other considerations come into it in practice . I myself can’t ignore the fact that my contemporaries and I were taught good phonics as young children, with no guessing...

Thanks, Maizie. Three comments: 1. I agree about the teaching of blends (e.g. ‘br’, ‘bl’). The Clark books have been produced in the context of synthetic phonics (s.p.) developments in Scotland and England. Krashen and others need to look at relevant s.p. programmes rather than making assumptions ba...

Thanks, Elizabeth. It’s great that Krashen has made it possible for people to read his chapter without needing to buy the book. If any others have the time to read Becoming a Nation of Readers , I would be interested to hear whether they think, as I do, that taken as a whole it does not support the ...

Still more thoughts.... Stephen Krashen’s chapter in the new Clark book distinguishes between ‘intensive phonics’ and ‘basic phonics’. He says that ‘Basic phonics appears to have some use, but there are good reasons why intensive phonics is not the way to improve reading’. He illustrates ‘basic phon...