"Mistake" in Letters and Sounds?!?

Whether or not you are using the Phonics International Programme, feel free to visit this informal 'Chat' forum!
Here you will find all sorts of interesting articles, links to research and developments - and various interesting topics! Do join in!
Post Reply
pdwroe
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:54 am

"Mistake" in Letters and Sounds?!?

Post by pdwroe »

I was rather confused when looking at Letters and Sounds the other day. In Phase 3 it shows that children need to be learning the trigraphs air, eer and "ure". air and eer I was fine with, but "ure" confused me somewhat, especially when I looked at the examples
sure
lure
assure
insure
pure
cure
secure
manure
mature

"Surely" there is something wrong here? I thought to myself. I'm sure the ure in pure is not the same as the ure in sure? I checked my trusty dictionary for the pronunciations and sure enough I was not going mad.


Anyway. :evil: It made me very cross to think that the government still haven't quite got it right with Letters and Sounds, there are lots of teachers out there who will just do the ure trigraph without question, but I'd like to think that most will notice a problem with the examples.

Of course, it could be me thats got all this wrong, am I just missing something and being a bit thick here? :oops:
Has anyone else noticed any problems?:wink:
Last edited by pdwroe on Mon Apr 27, 2009 1:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
debbie
Posts: 2596
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: UK

Post by debbie »

I have not addressed these 'ure' words specifically in the Phonics International programme.

I do think that the words could be grouped together for learning purposes but, no, the grapheme 'ure' in 'sure' is not the same sound as in 'mature'.

In Phonics International, I provide grapheme 'ue' Sounds Book Activity Sheets in unit 5 which address the sound /y+oo/ and long /oo/. I ask the children to respond to seeing the grapheme 'ue' when we do Flash Card work or use the 'SAY THE SOUNDS' Posters to respond with "/yoo/ - /oo/".

In unit 6, this progresses onto revising 'ue' and formally learning about the split digraph 'u-e' which can also be pronounced as /yoo/ or /oo/.

It is possible in practical terms to develop these letter/s-sound correspondences to the word chunk 'ure' specifically.

The teacher would need to inform the learners that in words like 'sure', 'insure' and 'assure' that the 's' and 'ss' graphemes ARE CODE FOR the /sh/ sound. This is fair enough as we are always having to tell children about word-specific information.

I believe it is then possible to blend the words above with an adaption of the /oo/ sound.

It is then possible to blend the words such as 'mature', 'cure', 'pure' and 'secure' with an adaption of the /yoo/ sound.

How these words are then ultimately 'pronounced' is, once again, a matter for regional accent.

With experience of reading these words, knowing what these words mean, and knowing that there are two main ways of saying them, the learners will then be supported from the point of view of spelling them.

I am more than happy to produce a new Sounds Book Activity Sheet to support the teaching of these words if users of the Phonics International programme would like one.

Just let me know! :wink:
Debbie Hepplewhite
poppetsam
Posts: 22
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2007 8:24 pm

Post by poppetsam »

It might be regional....they are the same for me!

Sure, pure, manure, mature! xx
User avatar
debbie
Posts: 2596
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: UK

Post by debbie »

Jennifer Chew has asked me to post this response to explain the 'ure' grapheme in the UK government's 'Letters and Sounds' guidance:
I helped with the writing of 'Letters and Sounds', and I can assure people that it has not made a mistake. It's true that what comes after the initial consonant in 'pure' sounds different from what comes after the initial consonant in 'sure', but the VOWEL sound with which both words end is the same - a sort of /oo-uh/ in British Received Pronunciation (RP) and /aw/ in other accents. So 'sure' and 'pure' both contain the same grapheme, 'ure', and the same vowel phoneme, whether that vowel phoneme is pronounced as /oo-uh/ or as /aw/. The difference lies in the intrusion, in 'pure', of a /y/ sound between the /p/ and the vowel sound. This is not part of the vowel phoneme, however, but is a separate CONSONANT phoneme. The phoneme which 'Letters and Sounds' represents as 'ure' is /oo-uh/, not /your/ as suggested by pdwroe.

The list of 'ure' words on p. 102 of the 'Six Phase Teaching Programme' is under the general heading 'Words using the Phase Three vowel graphemes'. The point is that if, in reading, children see the GRAPHEME 'ure', they may need to try both pronunciations (i.e. with and without the /y/ sound). For speakers of Received Pronunciation (RP), this means choosing between the /oo-uh/ pronunciation, as in 'sure', and the /yoo-uh/ pronunciation, as in 'pure'. For others, it may mean choosing between the /aw/ and /yaw/ pronunciations - e.g. they may pronounce 'sure' as /shaw/ and 'pure' as /pyaw/. In both cases, however, the /y/ is an additional consonant phoneme, not part of the vowel phoneme.

The RP phoneme /oo-uh/ does not occur in many British accents, and 'Letters and Sounds' therefore says that the PHONEME in question, for which it uses the grapheme 'ure', 'can be omitted in Phase Three, and perhaps even permanently' ('Notes of Guidance', footnote on p.11 - see also footnote on p. 24). The GRAPHEME 'ure' cannot be omitted, however, because it occurs in so many common words - not only 'sure' and 'pure' etc. but also 'measure', 'treasure', 'picture', 'adventure', 'capture' etc.' Children need to know how to deal with this grapheme when they see it.

We may feel we should call letter-groups 'graphemes' only if they represent single phonemes, but that leads to a complication: 'ure' would then be a 'grapheme' in 'sure', but not in 'pure' (and 'x' would be a grapheme in 'xylophone' but not in 'fox', 'qu' would be a grapheme in 'quiche' but not in 'quick'). It's really better to bend the rules slightly (see p. 74 of the 'Six Phase Teaching Programme' re. 'x' and 'qu') and to teach children to think of 'ure' as a unit wherever they see it - 'phonics' can and should take some liberties with phonemes. In reading, what is important is that children are prepared to 'tweak' if the first attempt doesn't sound quite right - in the case of 'ure' words, to put in the /y/ sound if the word doesn't sound quite right without it. Spelling is harder, as word-specific knowledge is often necessary: RP speakers may pronounce 'sure', 'poor' and 'tour' all with an /oo-uh/ vowel sound, whereas others may pronounce them all with an /aw/ vowel sound (/shaw/, /paw/, /taw/), but however people pronounce them, they need to know the right word-specific spelling for each of the words.

Unfortunately, people can get into some rather deep water if they try to be too orientated in the phoneme-to-grapheme direction, especially if they are not 100% secure on phonemes, which are rather a specialised area. 'Letters and Sounds' tries to give as much attention to the grapheme-to-phoneme direction (the direction needed for reading) as to the phoneme-to-grapheme direction (the direction needed for spelling) and to take such liberties as it's sensible to take.
Many thanks for this explanation, Jenny - it is excellent. :D

I agree entirely about the need "to take such liberties as it's sensible to take" and there are a few such liberties in the PI programme.
Debbie Hepplewhite
pdwroe
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:54 am

Post by pdwroe »

Thank you for that clarification. It just goes to show what a difficult and specialised subject phonics can be to teach.
:)
User avatar
debbie
Posts: 2596
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: UK

Post by debbie »

On reflection, I'm afraid I do not agree that Jenny's explanation of how to approach reading words ending with 'ure' is practical by teaching that these have an /oo-ah/ or /aw/ pronunciation.

The intrusion of a /y/ consonant sound in some of the words such as 'pure' is, in my opinion, much more readily taught by creating a unit of sound which is not just a pure phoneme - but which embraces that /y/ consonant sound.

So, the creation of such a sound unit amounts to /y+long oo/.

As I described above with regard to the letter groups 'ue' and 'u-e', it is straightforward to teach students to respond to these such that they can be either long /oo/ or /y+ long oo/ (which I denote as /yoo/ for simplicity).

This teaching can enable a student to read words such as 'pure'. The sounds to reach the pronunciation would be /p/ /yoo/ /r/). In other words, this is decoded like any other split digraph word with the 'u-e' letters. Take, for example, the word 'cute' which can be decoded as /k/ /yoo/ /t/ through the suggestions I make in Phonics International.

Jenny mentions words such as 'picture'. There are many words with the end letters '-ture', and most of these have the same end pronunciation. Words such as this include: vulture, future, venture, adventure, lecture.

In practical terms, it seemed to me that these all have a "chu" sound at the end, but for some people there may be more of a pronounced /r/ at the end rather than just an /u/ schwa.

This leads to something like /ch+u/ or /ch_er/. So, it seemed very practical, then, to look at this group of words specifically and for the teacher to teach '-ture' as /chu/ or /cher/. On my Alphabetic Code Overview Chart, I decided it was very practical to write the '-ture' grapheme as an add-on in the /ch/ row described as /chu/ or /cher/. Teachers need to decide locally which notation to use.

Once again, these are not phonemes - but a combination unit of sound which is very helpful in a practical way.

This is the advantage of writing a teaching programme independently. Jenny was under various constraints when writing a programme for the government. She and co-authors had to be seen to write everything very technically perfect - but this is not always the best way to do the actual TEACHING - nor the easiest way to LEARN.

I know that Jenny herself, however, frequently talks about the need to be practical when teaching - and also the need for tolerance in terms of the different ways that synthetic phonics and linguistic phonics programme writers approach the details. :wink: :D
Debbie Hepplewhite
pdwroe
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:54 am

Post by pdwroe »

I am personally really glad that the debate I started - and which was my undoing! - is still pertinent and getting people to think about best practice which was always my intention.

I'm feeling daring so I'd like to go out on a limb once again, and ask for people's views on the teaching of "spellings".
I have noticed that there is a trend in some schools to send out spellings according to sounds they are teaching that week. This makes perfect sense to me. and I think it is really important that if spellings are being sent home, they are following a logical order.

When I teach a phoneme I start with the most common spelling of the phoneme, and then go on to teach the variety of different graphemes that are used as code for that phoneme. so one week (or unit of work) might be spent on the ie phoneme, and we would learn that ie can be spelt, ie, igh, i-e, y etc. I would at this stage try to explain rules wherever possible, and also teach about exceptions to these rules. So the children would learn that if an ie sound is followed by a t than it will most likely be spelt igh. I would then pick out the most frequently occuring words for each of the spelling variations for the children to practise as "spellings"
So for example a child may get a list such as:
pie, lie, die, try, cry, my, light, night, sight, bite, mine, etc etc

However......

I am finding that lots of places are teaching using the graphemes rather than the sound, so they teach the same spelling and the different sounds that the spellings represent. So a child's spellings list may look something like this:

look, good, book, moon, spoon, soon

My personal preference is to teach the spelling patterns of each phoneme so that children think about how a sound can be spelt, to me this makes more sense as it is a sound to print routine.

I also think it is very important that if spellings are going to be sent home, they are for words that the children will actually need to write regularly. I don't like that idea of children spending time learning obscure words simply because they contain the spelling pattern being taught.

Has anyone else got an opinion on this, or am I just slipping into an OCD Synthetic Phonics quagmire?!! :wink:
User avatar
debbie
Posts: 2596
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: UK

Post by debbie »

My personal preference is to teach the spelling patterns of each phoneme so that children think about how a sound can be spelt, to me this makes more sense as it is a sound to print routine.


As time passes, a phonics programme, such as Phonics International, becomes increasingly important for providing specific words for spelling. There's no way round this. Ultimately, students have to have word-specific knowledge which concerns the 'spelling alternative' for the long vowel sounds (like 'ai' or 'ay' or 'a-e' or 'a' and so on) and/or some of the consonant sounds (like 'f' or 'ff' or 'ph' or 'gh).

Phonics International works hard to provide teaching and learning resources which support the learning not only of the concepts involved (that is, different spellings for the same sound) but also for the word banks that need to be learnt for the same spelling alternatives.

Also, the ALPHABETIC CODE OVERVIEW CHARTS are, in effect, spelling reference charts based around different spelling alternatives for the same sound.

However, it's not quite as straightforward as that!

When we 'read' we need a skill that words from sound-to-print, so we need to be able to recognise letter groups. Then those letter groups may well be code for different sounds. For example, the letter group 'qu' may be /k+w/ as in 'queen' or it may be /k/ as in 'quiche'.

At first, we might learn 'qu' as /k+w/ as most words beginners encounter are 'queen', 'quick', 'quiet' and so on. But, even for reading, it helps to be looking at a bank of words.

This is an easy one for spelling, also, as there is no such grapheme as 'kw' in the English language!

However, there are some letter groups which is helpful to look at both from the spelling perspective and the reading perspective - and this might benefit from looking at some more obscure words - and when are words more obscure or not? This may be age-dependent.

For example, let's think about the grapheme 'ch'. When we see this as beginners, it's usually code for the sound /ch/ as in 'chips' and 'such'.

However, an early word is 'school' - and there are names like 'Christopher' which fit in with this code.

But also, Charlotte is a common name in some English-speaking countries -and 'ch' is now code for the sound /sh/ - which we teach as the grapheme 'sh' at first.

This could get very complicated and this is where it is helpful to have a formal, planned programme and also an 'incidental phonics teaching' approach running alongside. If you have a 'Christopher' and a 'Charlotte' in your class, you need to talk about these code variations for their benefit ahead of the introduction of this code in your programme.

The word banks for these letter groups, however, have some longer words in which may well be more appropriate for older students, such as:

chaos, orchestra, cholera, chameleon, choir, chorus

chiffon, chandelier, chalet, machine, parachute

It could be that children need to read these words in their wider reading before they can really be expected to spell these words for their writing.

The Phonics International bases most of the core SOUNDS BOOK ACTIVITY SHEETS on writing the 'grapheme' at the top of the page which is the 'new learning'. This might include, for example, a heading of y, -y, -y where the focus is on the same grapheme for different sounds. That is because there is a reading emphasis and children need to know that they will see the letter 'y' frequently and it's position in the written word will affect the pronunciation alternatives!

However, the extension SOUNDS BOOK ACTIVITY SHEETS from Unit 6 onwards are often based on the 'sound' in common to various spelling alternatives. So, there may be a heading /air/ and beneath that there will be the various spelling alternatives of 'air', '-ear', '-are' and '-ere'.

Teachers themselves need to be very clear about when they are needing to look at the teaching from the 'pronunciation alternatives' (for reading) and the 'spelling alternatives' (for spelling) and decide where the emphasis is better placed in any given exercise.

Oh boy - I hope that made sense! :?
Debbie Hepplewhite
pdwroe
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:54 am

Post by pdwroe »

:lol: It made perfect sense to me, but the I'm a phonics nerd! I fear that the majority of people on this planet would think we were talking some alien language!
I have just read the article you linked to in the PI Newsletter - oh what a beauty!!! At last we have a sensible report telling the government that Reading Recovery is NOT in line with systematic Synthetic Phonics Teaching.
Can you put PI forward as an alternative?!?! :wink:
I've pasted the link here, hope you don't mind, it really is a great read, it cheered me up immensely!

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 4/4405.htm
Please read and enjoy!! :D
User avatar
debbie
Posts: 2596
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 2:28 pm
Location: UK

Post by debbie »

Do I mind? I think people with an interest in reading instruction methods should read it - particularly if they are interested in intervention (special needs).

They also need to read it to show how governments and those in authority need to conduct themselves objectively and very carefully.

The question remains, however, as to what happens next following this report.

What will happen to the thousands of teachers in England that are just about to be trained in the Reading Recovery programme at taxpayers' expense? As a committed educationalist and as a taxpayer - I'm very upset about this. It's not only a wasted opportunity for providing those teachers with leading-edge synthetic phonics teaching instead - but it is not what the children themselves need and so the debate goes on and on with the clock ticking for the children - and more teachers seriously mistrained.

We'll have to see what happens next but I shall be asking the question.

Is any real authority attached to these select committee inquiries and their conclusions?
Debbie Hepplewhite
Post Reply