Orthography and the duel between Phonics & Graphophonics

I liked the refresher on the subject of orthography because I had forgotten some of the basic information about the logographic system (especially how it has developed in China) and the syllabic system. I think that it is really interesting (I use that word waaay too much in my blogs I think) that even though both of our texts contain a ton of information we still are only scratching the surface of these subjects. It just goes to show how complicated language studies really are.

I especially liked the Freeman chapters this week because much of this information was new to me. Some of the spelling "rules" that were displayed I had never heard of before, but I think that is because my knowledge of English orthography is mostly from graphophonics instead of the phonics based learning style. Because I was not taught with the phonics method I have a large bias against it as well as the "scientific" approach that was described in Chapter 5. I know that a little bit of phonics teaching is ok, but I don't think it should be the main focus. Many native speakers do not learn this way, so I was wondering if it has ANY advantages for non-native speakers of English or if it's just a simplified way of explaining the English spelling system because it seems to bypass language acquisition and just head straight for language learning? I like the quote from Smith on page 135 when he says phonics, "may seem obvious, just as it is obvious that the earth is flat... Obvious, but false". The chapter then goes on to discuss how we read in chunks instead of each individual sound and I think that it is important for non-native speaking students to understand this because if they go solely with the bottom-up approach (phonics) then I think they will have a very difficult time acquiring a good reading rate, which would also include the top-down approach.

Finally I'd like to mention the rule on page 138, "When to vowels go walking. the first one does the talking". The reason why I wanted to mention this is because this was the only "rule" that the Freemans mention that I have encountered in my English studies. I was amazed to find out that, "Clymer found 309 words, like bead, that followed the rule but 377 others like chief, that do not" (that's less than half the time when the rule actually works)! I was amazed, but not surprised. I feel as though Graphophonics wins this fight no contest, but that phonics and some investigations into spelling patterns has its place even if it is sitting the remote corner of the room with its dunce cap on.