Return-Path: <nifl-family@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id g3JJZTu20927; Fri, 19 Apr 2002 15:35:29 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 15:35:29 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <20020419193047.76219.qmail@web14311.mail.yahoo.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-family@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-family@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-family@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: tom zurinskas <tzurinskas@yahoo.com> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-family@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-FAMILY:986] Re: FW: [NLA] Home-buying Readiness and Money Management So... X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Status: O Content-Length: 4418 Lines: 106 The president’s program “no child left behind” is great, but should involve new reading instruction techniques, to pull up dyslexics and those with learning difficulties. But what technique can be use that doesn’t tag the student as a slow learner and embarrass them, making them drop out mentally or give up? Dyslexics can be extremely talented, but have difficulty linking sounds to letters. English spelling makes this difficult. A recent study by Paulescu shows that English spelling actually “causes” dyslexia. Dyslexia is not as prevalent in the more phonetically consistent languages. For instance, Italy has half the number as USA. So, if we are to leave no child behind, how do we approach this spelling issue? One way is to start children off with an easy-to-use phonetic spelling such as the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.). In her paper “The Use of i. t. a. for Remediation of Dyslexia”, Jane M. Flynn shows that phonics is not enough. She cites Torgesen 1997 who found that dyslexics taught present-day remedial phonological awareness using regularly spelled words as examples do not advance after 1 year. However, Flynn’s experiments show a 2.5-year advancement for dyslexics in elementary and middle schools with i.t.a., see http:/www.italiteracy.org/research.htm. But i.t.a. is not only a remedial thing. Adept children as well enjoy learning with it and find it fun to be able to read and write quickly. John Downing's book "Evaluating the ITA" points out that children learned to read English twice as fast as the control group. Also he found that transition to traditional spelling also was not a problem. Flynn found this as well. She found that i.t.a trained children did better than the control group on traditional spelling tests (same site). But the i.t.a has its drawbacks: It’s not phonetically consistent; it’s limited to initial learners; it’s useless after transition; it uses non-keyboard symbols. A better approach would be keyboard-friendly pronunciation guide spelling, which could also be used beyond initial instruction in our dictionaries. A pronunciation guide spelling could do this. It could help attain the President’s goal and actually help the President, himself by enabling him to read speeches phonetically in all languages. This is possible because my investigation shows that about 95% of the phonemes of the most popular languages are common to English. That means that a pronunciation guide spelling is not only remedial but applicable to all students and adults both ESL and adept for multiple reasons. An important point here is that pronunciation guide spelling is a dignified way to get slow learners started. Because it’s the simplest possible spelling method, they can learn it easily and get rolling along with the adepts. Meanwhile, the class body learns together to spell with their bona fide phonetic alphabet key that they can use for looking up words. Their new dictionary will give the pronunciation guide word first and the traditionally spelled word after. No silent letters. Also, computers can be programmed to recognize pronunciation guide words and replace them with a traditionally spelled words. Working in human factors for the FAA, I designed the world’s first pronunciation guide for ESL pilots and controllers. To learn USA English pronunciation requires associating the 40 sounds (phonemes) of English to 40 spellings of them. Stress in a word is typically the first syllable but shifts to after a double consonant. This makes reading as simple as it could be. It’s immediately use is to practice and attain a USA accent. Truespel is flexible. Instructors can design their own lessons using the converter at http://www.foreignword.com/dictionary/truespel/transpel.htm. It’s free. Using truespel takes a little practice. A truespel CD-ROM tutorial and test using nonsense words is available for training on recognizing the phonemes. Takes only an hour to do. Interested parties can contact me and I’ll distribute. Thank you. Tom Zurinskas tzurinskas@yahoo.com Pres. Truespel Foundation ===== Read all about truespel at truespel.com. Convert text to truespel USA accent by copy/pasting it at: http://www.foreignword.com/dictionary/truespel/transpel.htm __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/
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