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Sitting round a table, eyes glued
to their teacher, a group of six year-olds put their hands to their heads and
flap them, crying ``ee-or创 in their best imprssion of a donkey磗 bray.
Next they put their fingers to their lips and whisper ``shhhh创 as if
someone had spoken out of turn.
But any noises are purely intentional. These children, at
the Faith Learning Centre (FLC) in Kowloon Tong, are learning phonics in a
fun way. It is a far cry from the usual practice of learning words, which has
never grabbed children磗 attention like this.
The teaching of phonics in English literacy is back in
fashion in western education, having been ostracised for most of the 1970s
and 1980s in favour of the ``look and say创 or `` whole book创 approaches,
which assumed that children would learn to read almost automatically if
exposed to the written word. Many did not, causing literacy standards
to fall.
Taking its cue from the U-turn in the west, Hong Kong is
waking up to the potential of phonics to improve literacy standards in
English. Phonics, in which children learn to match the sounds of English with
their alphabetic symbols, thus enabling them to decode the written word, is
already part of the literacy strategy in most international schools, but not
in local ones. Most young children still learn words by rote, reciting the
letter names rather than sounds to learn words like ``a-p-p-l-e创.
The recent results from teachers sitting the first English
benchmark tests have added fuel to concerns over how young people learning
English, and why so many are failing to gain a basic competence despite
learning the language from their first years in Kindergarten. The lack of
phonics may be purely to blame.
Tse-Tso Yuk-wah, senior lecturer in the English Department
of the Hong Kong Institute of Education, believes that phonics can help
second language learners who have trouble with the sound of the printed
letter.
`` In most schools, Chinese children learn to pronounce
words by imitating the teacher. They can磘 work out the letter sounds for
themselves. Students can easily look up the meaning of words in a dictionary,
but pronouncing the word correctly is another matter,``she said.
In 1999, Ms Tse-Tso undertook phonics research with three
primary schools. Her results showed improvements in spelling and pronuncition
and an increase in interest among the students to learn English.
The teaching of phonics is not compulsory in local schools.
The Education department supports its optional use and provides materials and
training. It cannot confirm how many schools are actually teaching phonics
but it does know that teachers welcome help in mastering a knowledge of the
system.
But Kung Chan Wai-ping, from the Advisory Inspectorate
Division, English Section, in the Education Department, does not want to
isolate the discipline. ``Phonics is just one of the approaches that teachers
should use. It should be taught in context alongside other activities such as
shared reading and the use of ``Big Books创, which all help to raise
phonological awareness in children,创 she said.
Pauline Bunce, a native English teacher at a band five
school in Chai Wan, believes that Hong Kong stands alone in its paucity of
phonetic awareness. ``In places like mainland China and Taiwan, children are
taught Chinese using an alphabet- based phonetic system. This doesn磘 happen
in Hong Kong. Children aren磘 even given that phonetic introduction into
their own language,创 she said.
Ms Bunce also thinks the growing interest in phonics has
reached a frenzied level. Her concern is that it is being used as a magic
wand to solve all literacy problems. `` It磗 more about how English is
taught in local schools. Hong Kong children are learning a fundamentaly
different language to Chinese. English is an alphabet- based language yet
Chinese and English are being taught in parallel. So much so, that with
English, students still rely far too much on their visual memories rather
than the skill of alphabetic decoding,创 she said.
Sylvia Tsoi Wing- tin, former
headmistress of Diocesan Prep School and now a lecturer at the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University was one of the first people in Hong Kong to address
the lack of phonics teaching by devising her own phonics programme. Drawing
inspiration from British programme Jolly Phonics, devised by
schoolteacher Sue Lloyd, Ms Tsoi developed Letters and Sounds (Educational
Publishing) for pre-school children. `` I felt local children should have something for
themselves. So Letters and Sounds contains a local story for each of the 42
sounds of the English language,创 she said. According to Ms Tsoi, the books
have gone down well with kindergartens and childcare centres. She also
recognised the growing anxiety of Hong Kong parents that their children were
not getting to grips with English. For the home study markets, she went on to
publish Easy Phonics for primary school children. This consists of a set of
four workbooks and tapes that they can use at home.
There has also been a proliferation of imported phonics
programmes to Hong Kong. One of the most popular is Letterland, developed in
the 1970s by British special needs teacher Lyn Wendon. ``I was working with
children who were consistently failing in their reading. I saw how rote
teaching could damage them: it磗 an anti-child method. I wanted to prevent
children from suffering at school,创 she said. Letterland consists of a
series of characters that live inside each letter of the English alphabet.
The characters provide visual links for recalling sounds and spellings. The
letter``Hh创, for example, has a character called Hairy Hatman and the
letter ``Ss创 has Sammy Snake.
King Lam Catholic Primary School in Tseung Kwan O uses
Letterland. Carol Williams, the school磗 NET, works with a co-teacher to
deliver phonics to more than 800 students. There is a palpable air of
enthusiasm when she speaks about her students磒rogress. ``We can only teach
phonics to our children once a week for 35 minutes.
``But already we believe they have a basic knowledge of it.
Confidence levels are rising. The children are keen to have a go at sounding
out unfamiliar words and delighted to see that sounding out works, even with
new words,创 she said.
The FLC uses Jolly Phonics, which uses lively
actions to teach the sounds instead of the strong characterisation of
Letterland. According to Jolly Phonics磒ublisher, Christopher
Jolly the programme has been scientifically proven as a success with
different types of children, including second language learners.
Jolly Phonics also stands apart from the other
programmes because it sets a rapid pace of phonic acquisition. `` Children
are quite capable of learning a new sound a day so that by the end of the
first term, all 42 sounds of the English Language are covered. It磗 more the
adults who are daunted by this rate. In my experience, children are eager to
find out what the ``sound创 of the day is when they come to school,创
explained Mr Jolly.
Rival groups of phonics experts in Britain have been
arguing over whether `` analytic创 or ``systematic创 phonics should be
used. Analytic phonics starts with the whole word and then encourages the
student to split it into its constituent sounds. Systematic phonics starts
with the separate sounds of the word which are then blended to form the word.
This latest phonics rivalry has yet to consume Hong Kong
educators. Although combining both phonic approaches, Ms Wendon says that
Letterland puts greater emphasis on the synthetic approach, the camp with
which Jolly Phonics is firmly aligned. ``There is a significant
difference between the two approaches,创 said Mr Jolly. `` Analytic
phonics requires too much memory with only some phonics back- up. It磗 a
much more successful method to teach children how to work out the sounds and
then blend them.创
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