PHNO-COMMENTARY: READING WITH "K"

COMMENTARY: READING WITH "K"

[PHOTO - SECRETARY OF EDUCATION ARMIN LUISTRO]
MANILA, JUNE 5, 2012
(INQUIRER) By: Roberto S. Salva - In K + 12, the new basic
education program, the Department of Education is not introducing a formal
science class until the third grade. It wants the children to focus on learning
how to read first.
Filipinos in the science community are aghast. Children's natural curiosity
should be cultivated and molded, as early as possible, toward formal scientific
investigations. On Facebook, a friend questioned the competence of those behind
the design. "Don't tell me they are still wasting children's time with ba be bi
bo bu, ka ke ki ko ku," she wrote.
A Filipino scientist now teaching in Georgetown University also complained
about the late introduction of formal science classes. He suggested that if the
children are to be taught reading, they should be taught to read in English as
materials in the language abound.
In his book, "Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read," Prof.
Stanislas Dehaene reestablishes the best route to learn to read, and that is:
learning first the sounds of each letter and combination of letters. Various
studies had earlier proven this, but Dehaene, acknowledged as the leading
authority in the neuroscience of language, uses his research into the brain to
emphasize it.
We learn to read by first learning the "babebibobus" and "kakekikokus," the
connection between written letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes).
Dehaene debunks the "whole-word" method to teach reading. In this method,
teachers teach children to recognize the direct association between whole words
or sentences and their corresponding meanings. Teachers, thus, throw the
"babebibobus" and "kakekikokus" out of the classroom windows and waste not the
children's time.
Linguistics researchers note that this debate between the two methods is only
quite heated in English-speaking countries. Other countries in the West have
been clear with the efficiency of the grapheme-phoneme approach in the teaching
of reading.
In a 1998 academic article, Usha Goswami of the University College London and
his team speculate that this may be so because the English language is
orthographically nontransparent. Each letter and combination of letters of the
English language do not have a consistent pronunciation. (The pronunciation of
"ough," for example, is different in "bough," "bought," and "tough").
The 40 sounds of the English letters and letter-combinations, according to a
different study, can be represented in 1,120 ways. The 25 sounds of Italian—a
transparent language, on the other hand—can be represented in only 33 ways. As a
result, Italian children can read any Italian word after only six months of
schooling.
In an early 2000 study comparing the children who just finished first grade
in 15 European countries, Italian children had a 5-percent reading error rate
compared to British children's 67 percent. French children, who learned to read
in a language that is nontransparent but less so than English, had a reading
error rate of 28 percent.
It takes around two additional years before English children are able to read
at the level of French children.
The Italian, French and English children have been learning to read in their
respective mother tongues. They are learning to read in languages in which they
have found themselves submerged.
Italian children learn any Italian word in only a couple of months of
schooling, the French in a year or so more after, and the English in around two
years more after the French. How long, then, would Filipino children learn to
read in English well?
If "yer honeurs" followed the impeachment trial and "wetnessed" how our
"politayyycians" and lawyers read English words, we could say that we may need
ample years more.
Reading the sounds of English letters and words right is not the most
important in reading—that is, if you already know how to read. But learning to
associate the correct sounds with the right letters or words is a crucial step
in learning how to read.
Thus, the plan to use the mother tongue as the language for teaching primary
graders until the third grade is enlightened. We have finally realized that our
native languages are not handicaps, that what we have are not necessarily
hindering us from succeeding.
Our languages have transparent orthographies. We can read them as they are
written. If the children are taught to read in the languages in which they have
found themselves submerged, they could perhaps read in these languages
efficiently in less than a year of schooling.
The use of mother tongues as the first language of instruction, first
promulgated in 2009 by then Education Secretary Jesli Lapus, is introduced after
various studies done since the 1970s have shown the efficiency of using the
mother tongue as medium of instruction compared to using a second language like
English. The same studies have shown that a good grasp of the structure of a
first language is also a good bridge in learning another language.
The lack of materials in our mother tongues is an opportunity for local
writers and publishers. In the past few years, the production of children's
books written in Filipino has risen. If you read them, you would notice that
they are quite good and inexpensive. Filipino children's books are able to
capture something in ourselves that foreign books do not.
Reading, then, in K +12 is off to a good start. Our children are beginning
with what they have—the language to which they were born. Hopefully, they will
inch their way, step by step and wasting their time, until they are able to read
with "K."


Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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