Speaking of memorizing words, our generation had a bitter history back then, right?
For example, the word knows me, but I don't know it, so I have to mix some marks like this:
pregnant – pounce on a man;
Ambition – I will win;
For example, every time you pick up the word book at hand, it is a gorgeous beginning, and then, there is no then... The first 20 pages are curled up because of too many turns, and the back part of the book is cleaner than the face.
So how do children learn words today?
After going to primary school (especially after the third grade), memorizing words has become a routine task in school, weekly dictation is a must, plus many first- and second-line children's English enlightenment early, in the primary school stage will impact the difficulty of the college entrance examination KET and even PET test...
Vocabulary is the foundation of language learning, no matter which generation learns English, memorizing words is a task that every English learner can't escape.
However, different children also vary greatly in this matter.
For example, some children still follow the stupid way we did when we were young - memorizing words by rote. Therefore, the mistakes we often make when we were children are still a lot, such as my colleague's post this week, her family has been in middle school children's newly baked dictations, like this "er" mistakenly written as "ar".
There are also those that confuse the positions of the letters "e" and "i":
It is no wonder that 26 letters do not look much, but their various combinations and transformations have evolved into thousands of words, and the human brain is not a computer, relying purely on memory to memorize, it is conceivable that the effect will not be satisfactory.
Are our children also doomed to narcissism in rote memorization of words? Not really! Everyone found that no, some children around them memorized the words quickly and well, almost read the words out at the same time and wrote them out, almost handy, effortless!
So, are these children gifted and have a great memory?
There is indeed a difference in talent between children, but these children memorize words quickly and well, and the root cause is that they have mastered the secret of efficient memorization of words, that is, natural phonics!
Chang Dad can be said to be a strong advocate of natural phonics, and he has also written articles about natural phonics several times before. Today, Chang Dad will talk about how natural phonics helps children memorize words. It is no exaggeration to say that as long as the child masters natural phonics, the correspondence between the letter/letter group and the pronunciation is established, and it is quite easy to memorize the words.
Some parents may be half-convinced, thinking that Chang Dad is not exaggerating the role of natural phonics? There are also parents who are deeply troubled by their children's memorization of words for a long time, and they are eager to let their children get this skill immediately. Don't worry, today Chang Dad will dig deeper, what are the magical effects of natural phonics, why will the children who naturally spell words memorize faster?
[ Magical Effect 1 ] See words can be read
Although natural phonics is not a new concept, in view of the fact that there are many parents in the background who leave messages to inquire, we are still simple science popularization.
Natural spelling was originally called Phonics, which means "sound", which translates to "phonics", and the word "natural" was added later. We know that English is different from Chinese in that it is an alphabetic language in which the letter itself has one or more pronunciations.
Linguists summarize the main pronunciations in English into 44 (some say 42, or 48), and there are more than 200 pronunciation rules. When children master this set of pronunciation rules, they can read a word even if they don't know it — about 70%-80% of the words conform to this spelling law.
Isn't that amazing? This is the first ability that children have after mastering natural phonics: they can read words.
Let's take the English word "cat" for "cat" as an example to explain:
How will children who can spell naturally remember it? It draws your child's attention to the pronunciation of each letter and combination. Children will break down "cat", first spelling out the pronunciation of the first letter c (transliteration /k/), followed by the pronunciation of the middle letter a (transliteration //), then the pronunciation of the ending letter t (pronounced /t/), and finally combining these three sounds to spell cat.
Isn't that amazing? In this process, Chang Dad took a small video to show that everyone understood it when they saw it.
If the child's listening vocabulary happens to have the concept of /k t/= cat, then the child will know how to pronounce the word "cat" and what it means the first time they see it. The listening vocabulary that was originally stored in the brain can be converted into reading vocabulary.
What is listening vocabulary? It is the word that we can clearly understand the meaning when we hear a word. For example, if you say "apple", the child knows that you are saying "apple", but may not be able to recognize it; and reading vocabulary is that the child knows how to read the word after seeing it, and understands what it means.
After learning natural phonics, the child can also learn the pronunciation of /s/, /t/, /a/, /p/, the child can immediately spell out a large number of words, such as sap, sat, at, tap, pat, taps, taps, a tap... In this way, the child must be confident, and is it still worried that the child is not interested in Learning English?
How cool is it to be able to switch from listening vocabulary to reading vocabulary? Chang Dad had a friend who once made a very vivid analogy that his child was no longer "blind"!
His children have been enlightened in English since childhood, accumulating a lot of listening vocabulary, and the small mouth is quite good at speaking, but when he reads a book, his eyes are black, and he can't read it. Later, after learning natural phonics, it was considered to be the second pulse between the two abilities of listening and reading, and the channel between "sound and shape" was interconnected, and the child suddenly improved rapidly.
The function of natural phonics is to convert the child's listening and speaking vocabulary into words that the child can recognize, so as to help the child read. If the child does not have a large amount of listening vocabulary accumulation, even if he uses the spelling method to spell out the pronunciation of the word, but does not know what the word means, it will not help him understand the meaning of the sentence or article.
For example, in the above example, if the child did not have the concept of "cat = cat" in the previous listening vocabulary, even if he spelled cat, he did not know what it meant, and it did not mean much. Therefore, before learning natural phonics, children need to have a certain amount of listening vocabulary as a foundation.
As mentioned earlier, natural phonics is essentially a set of relatively fixed phonetic relationships to help children transform their shapes. In addition to allowing children to read words, they can also let children have a second powerful ability: listening and writing.
Chang Dad uses the vernacular to translate it, that is, after the child hears a word, because its pronunciation and spelling are corresponding, he can also spell it out and write it out.
Remember the fear of being dominated by long words? Learn to spell naturally and never again!
Or for example:
For example, "helicopter", the child memorizes one by one according to the letters, it is like this: h-e-l-i-c-o-p-t-e-r, I'm afraid there is no ten times twenty times, the child can not remember at all! Either you just remember to lose the letters, or the order is out of order.
But for a child who can read naturally, his mind will automatically cut this long word into several syllables: he-li-cop-ter, because the sound and letters are corresponding, the child can easily write it out when reading the sound, and write it two or three times more.
Chang Dad also went to shoot a small video to make a gesture for everyone.
See here, did you find out? After learning natural phonics, children have mastered a new way to memorize words: cutting words (especially those long words that are difficult to remember) into syllables to memorize them efficiently, completely saying goodbye to the way of rote memorization of letters!
The same is the memorization of words, but the difference between the two is too big! Which is more scientific, which is more efficient, don't need to say more about Chang Dad?
[Magic Effect 3] Listen to the vocabulary and there is it
When a child learns to spell naturally, it is equivalent to mastering the code of conversion between the sounds of words. In this way, when children are usually reading and listening, they can decode more unfamiliar words, and the vocabulary is expanded by listening to them.
Every time I give a small example, today I will also tell me about our team friends:
Once, her child's foreign teacher asked the child: Where is your mask? The child was confused because she didn't know what the word "mask" meant!
But she had learned natural phonics, so when the child came home, he spelled the word M-a-s-k along the pronunciation and found out in the dictionary that the word meant "mask".
In fact, children who have mastered natural phonics are like this many times, through listening, spelling, and checking, they naturally learn a lot of new words, and because there are vivid life scenes and learning scenes, they are not fast, and they still remember well.
In this way, when children usually listen to stories, watch English movies, communicate with foreign teachers, and read on their own, they have become a good time to learn their own vocabulary and expand their vocabulary!
Speaking of up to now, everyone must be very concerned about the natural phonics so good, how to learn in the end? Chang Dad summed up a few points for everyone.
01 does not depend on age, it depends on ability.
Phonics is best for children who start English from an early age and start learning after mastering a certain amount of listening vocabulary. Children with zero foundation are not suitable for learning phonics naturally.
02 Natural Phonics can not seek "fast".
In addition to learning natural phonics, it also requires children to repeatedly accumulate experience in "spelling" in long-term reading (in some European and American countries, natural phonics is included in the basic skills that must be mastered in the K-G3 stage of basic education), so parents cannot rush to the heart and expect "quick success".
03 Finish first, then perfect.
Learning phonics, like any other learning, doesn't initially require perfection in every pronunciation. First encourage children to open their mouths and practice more, interest is the first, and gradually improve and perfect in the process of learning.
Finally, Chang Dad summed it up again
When children master natural phonics, they can achieve "what they hear is what they get". Seeing that words can be read, hearing and writing, and that sounds and shapes are no longer separated, children will get a new and more efficient way of memorizing words, and no longer have to memorize words by rote.