Paul has kindly responded to my questions with the following comments in the 'quote' sections. My original questions are in blue text below:
My second question to you is whether you have any way of comparing the results you get from using my programme with results from previous teaching? I always try to promote specific results rather than 'feel good' descriptions alone. Of course teachers can tell when something is working well – but we are still in a battle ground of how to teach the most effectively.
Dear Debbie.
Answer to your second question. I cannot personally compare the results to my previous teaching, as this is the first time that I have taught a programme for reading, writing and spelling. I have been in China for seven years teaching Oral English, so I have experience in seeing the results of the teaching methods here in China, although it is all connected, I will go into this area some other time, as it could be a bit lengthy.
My wife of course, can compare results now to her previous teaching, she has had over twenty years teaching English in State Primary and Middle schools. The teaching method all the Chinese English teachers use is to get the students to try and remember words. They take words from course books and have to repeat them over and over again, and after eight or nine years still cannot read very well. They are taught phonetic symbols, but as my wife said, this isn't any use for reading, only for looking up in a dictionary.
So my wife is very pleased with the results so far with your programme as they can actually read the words without trying to remember them, they learn much quicker, and the method leads to independent learning, which doesn't normally happen here, although things are slowly changing.
My final question (at the moment) is whether you could afford the time to describe which elements or resources of the programme you have used to be effective so that others can gain from your year long's experience.
Third question.
Well, the most important resource from the programme for us now, is the new Early Years Starter Package, particularly the activity sheets. In our situation the Early Years does not necessarily mean young children, but the early years of learning, our children range from around eight to eleven years old, a few four, and 14 years old, but they all fall into the same category.
We had been thinking about the main programme activity sheets for some time. The children are quick to learn the sounds and blend the words, but we found that there were too many words on them, of course the idea is to learn to read them, that was alright and good for the purpose of reading, but the words didn't mean anything to them. They could blend and read words much much faster than they could ever learn the meaning of them. The space at the bottom of the activity sheets we could not use, they just do not know enough English to be able to draw, or even think of any objects, animals or actions, even the older children. They are good at blending the sounds and words, but then we hit a problem when it comes to the reading of the, I Can Read texts. The reading of those same words, that they can blend and read so well comes to a dramatic slowdown. There are many reasons for this but the main one is understanding. I will give more details on this sometime later.
Back to the Early Years Activity Sheets. These sheets will really make their learning much more meaningful, with more understanding of what they are achieving. The sheet being in eight sections is much easier on the eye for them, and every section can be used in a very practical and useful way, for example, letter formation, writing, dictation, picture mnemonics, and the very useful short sentences at the end, all on one sheet. I think something along these lines should carry on through to unit twelve, used in conjunction with the main programme.
I think the picture mnemonics are very useful, not so much as just an aid to remember words, but to give the children a general idea that these words and sentences do in fact have a meaning. This is where the new posters [Alphabetic Code Frieze Posters] will come into their own. All of this is open to debate and discussion, we are learning, there are more things to discuss, and obstacles to overcome, but we will get there.
Many thanks to Paul for his detailed comments above and his permission to copy and paste them from our emails.
In light of his feedback - and the feedback from a number of other people - to the new Early Years Starter Package resources, I have decided to extend the Early Years
Activity Sheets strand throughout the programme.
I will then provide the original Early Years Activity Sheets for units 1 to 6 along with the new Activity Sheets for units 7 to 12 as a complete strand for the full Phonics International programme and provide it as an optional extra to complement the full programme.
I shall call this new package the Phonics International ALL-IN-ONE ACTIVITY SHEETS.
Re Paul's comments about the Phonics International SOUNDS BOOK ACTIVITY SHEETS:
My suggestion for the drawing space at the bottom of the page would be to use this as an opportunity to teach the learners some new vocabulary taken from the cumulative word bank at the top of the page. For example, if the cumulative word bank included the words 'car', 'jar' and 'star', I would draw these on a board for the learners to copy and label in their drawing section. Although learners who do not speak English may not know these words at first, selecting a few key words on their behalf would help to increase their vocabulary knowledge in addition to them rehearsing the blending of the words.