Instructional Language
The difficulties inherent in traditional phonic teaching lie in part in the language of instruction. Children have to learn it. They cannot speak it naturally, and they do not find it interesting.
Letterland introduces a story-like instructional language where phonic facts ride home on little analogies which children readily understand. The stories 'lift' your instruction, making it immediate for the children. From the very beginning they can speak this story language too. The chart below shows the shift in language. The changes, though small in detail, are far-reaching in effect.
Teachers' Language Comparison
| Letterland Teacher's Language | Traditional Teacher's Language |
| Each letter is 'he' or 'she' and both teacher and children speak about them by their character names, like talking about friends. | The teacher refers to each letter as 'it' and speaks about either 'the aee, the bee, and the cee' or 'the ah, the buh, and the cuh',etc. |
| All 26 names are made from descriptive and meaningful words, so children can learn them as readily as friends' names. | Both 'aee, bee, cee' and 'ah, buh, cuh' are meaningless terms. No logic connects them to their letters, so memorising them is slow. |
| The child always finds the correct sound just by starting to name the character. This one simple strategy works for every letter. Alliteration, built into each character name reinforces the correct sound in name, in every case. |
Alphabet names are treacherous. In 8 consonants the correct sound is at the start. In 6 it falls at the end, and in the remaining 7 at neither end! The five vowel names give no clue to the short vowel sounds. To add to the confusion 15 letters actually begin with another letter's sound (c, f, g, h, k, I, m, n, q, r, s, u, w, x, y)! |
| Every letter has an unambiguous front and back side, so all words describing position and orientation are always clear. | Position words are ambiguous: 'before', 'after', 'followed by', 'in front of', 'behind', 'to the right of the ...' etc. |
Technical phrases avoided where possible:
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Technical phrases are hard to follow: (e.g)
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| Digraphs are made logical: The teacher tells a brief story- e.g. sh: 'When you see Sammy Snake next to the Hat Man he hushes Sammy Snake up like this,'sh!', because Harry Hat Man hates noise. | Digraphs are not logical: The teacher states a dry fact to rote learn - for example, sh: 'When you see 'ess' next to 'aitch' in a word the new sound will be /sh/'. (No reason available.) |
| Children use what they already know to understand a new development in an earlier story. | Children must suppress their first information about 'ess' and 'aitch' when learning the new sound. |
By adopting the instructional language of Letterland, you are laying the foundations for teaching all combinations in the same storytelling style.
If you have any further questions, please contact us.
