Counting the sounds in spoken words

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debbie
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Counting the sounds in spoken words

Post by debbie »

Goodenough has given me permission to copy and paste this query which she recently posted on the UK Reading Reform Foundation message board. I think this is an important question to raise and therefore asked if I could link to the responses on the PI message forum. Please click on the link below to view the responses and please feel free to contribute in any way to this thread about your experiences of tallying sounds all-through-the-spoken-word to 'fingers' followed by writing sound-dashes and then writing the graphemes all-through-the-word on each sound-dash (or other methods):
Maybe this question should be in the practical posts forum. I'll repost if I get no replies!

I seem to have only recently noticed that several synthetic phonic programmes suggest/insist that children should count the sounds in a word before writing the word. This seems to be of the form "Write 'cat'" Child counts to three, writes _ _ _, then writes c a t. I have never really done this as I don't see how you can count sounds without actually saying them so in my classes we tend to do "Write 'cat'" Child says c, a, t, and then writes c a t.

Can someone tell me if it is possible to count sounds in a word without actually identifying the sounds - (by noticing when your mouth changes shape I have read somewhere). If it is possible is it desirable/necessary? I don't seem to be able to do it myself with any ease but perhaps this is because I know the sounds in the word and it would work for beginners. I did try to get some children to try it as an experiment but as far as I could tell they were counting the sounds by saying them quietly to themselves and the beginners who couldn't do this yet couldn't count the sounds either. This has started to bug me so I would appreciate some insights and advice please.
See:

http://rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopic.php?t=3638
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

My initial response:
I don't think you should 'count' the sounds as in "one, two, three" - but you should 'count' the sounds as in put up thumb and fingers of the left hand, palm facing, whilst 'saying' the actual sounds, "/k/ /a/ /t/".

In this way you have both said the sounds (segmenting orally) and you have tallied how many sounds there are.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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