I must have heard Hooked on Phonics commercials, er, pardon infomercials for about 10 years. Is this product any good. Has any of the Dopers bought it? Curious.
Hooked on Phonics is only good to get someone started.
A slow learner will also find it a good start.
After that, however, owing to the intricacies of the English language, it simply fails miserably. Unlike Russian or Korean, where each alphabet symbol pretty much equals one sound, English has way too many variables. Those variables not only make English difficult as a second language, but quite difficult as a primary language, as well.
The National Council of Teachers of English speaks.
http://www.ncte.org/faq/
http://www.ncte.org/wlu/08894f2.htm
Interesting stuff. It looks like the answer to the question, “Is it any good?” is, “It depends on what you want from it.”
In the current commerical on radio, there is a line which says “why the word knowledge does not have the “d” sound in it.” I just looked the word up and Webster says this: Pronunciation: 'nä-lij. The trouble is that when I say it I heard a faint “d” and I hear the same thing from their audio example. Can someone 'splain this to me?
Oh, and you’re right, I am trying not to have to purchase the product to find out.
Cecil did a column on phonics v. whole language a few years ago.
You’re right; they’re wrong. The <j> symbol your dictionary uses represents an English phoneme known as an affricate. An affricate is a combination of a plosive sound and a fricative sound – in this case, the <d> from “dog” and the <g> from “beige”. You’ll find that if you say these two sounds in rapid succession, it will be indistinguishable from the <j> in <'nä-lij>.
English has one other affricate–namely, the sound heard at the beginning of the word “chair”. It’s phonemically equivalent to what you would write as “t” + “sh”. Try saying the word “share” with a /t/ at the beginning. “Chair” == “tshare”.
hukt on fonix wurkt fur me
[sub]I can’t believe no one’s beaten me to this.[/sub]
Phonics is good generally. Neither of my kids used the Hooked on Phonics course but they had phonics in school and learned to read at an early age.
Unfortunately neither can spell well.
My son is 21 and had 2 1/2 years of college. My daughter is 14 in 8th grade.
I don’t know if too much phonics and not enough spelling is the problem but that is my guess.
Both their mother and I are good spellers so it ain’t heridity.
snicker heredity
hukt on… damn.
…My daughter failed Kindergarden so we figgured this would be a good investment for summer study.So we spent the then 140 bucks on the thing.(Aparently failing Kindergarden is Genetic as two of her first cousins did as well)She spent 20 Minitues a day sitting at the diningroom table, listening to the tapes and reading the books.There was NOT alot of noticable difference in her skills, so after the third book she discontinued use.
…The thing sat around in my closet for years,collecting dust.When J went into the Third grade it was recomended she be tested for a audio lerning disability.I then remembered how Hooked on Phonics did not work for her.Maybe it was just my kid, as the tests came out inconclusive,
…On the good side of the program, it came with little cards called SRA’s.The elementry school I attended used these very cards in the classroom and I remember enjoying using them. It was a pleasent little suprise for me to see and remember them.
…Years passed and I became aquainted with a woman who home schooled her three children,one of whom was in the second grade.I dusted off the box and sold it, complete with the SRA’s to her.She didn’t nessisarly rave about the product, but she did say it was a good time killer for her youngest.
…No product can turn a bad reader into a good one.Only time it seems and rote,works for some kids,like mine.
…She is now a Freshman in H.S,and although I can complain about her math grades,I sure can’t complain about her language related skills.
…It seems to me the amount of craziness happening in the English language might be a bit of a deterent to learning.
I’d be interested in knowing if there are variations of Hooked on Phonics for other languages?I’d kill to learn Welsh,and the affore mentioned Freshman could use some help on her German.
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…Missproenoneseeashun ahnd missespelleing schuld neevr git in tha wei uv gould comeyunikashun!!!
Can anyone explain how phonics works? Sorry of this is a hijack but I’ve always wanted to know. When I was growing-up there were no ‘phonics’ classes or at least they weren’t called that then (early 70’s). I don’t know if this is true or relevant but one person once told me that Dr. Seuss probably constitutes the first phonics books without being called phonics.
I was born in 1949, so when I was a child, the HOP program didn’t exist. However, when I was 3 and my brother was 5, Mom, aware that our school used the look-say method of teaching kids to read, taught us phonics at home. We both skated through elementary school, because we could read much better than our classmates.
–Nott
I can only speak to my own experience. In the 1970’s when I was growing up, I started in a private school that taught with phonics. Later, my family moved to a city that had better public schools and so sent me to the public school. The public school used whole language, IIRC. Anyway, I was reading far ahead of my grade level. I don’t know if that was because of phonics or if I was just intuitively a better reader. I liked books, too, so that probably helped. But I suspect phonics drilling helped (I still instictively try to sound out unfamiliar words before coming to my senses and grabbing a dictionary).