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Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

So, it all makes sense, but by this theory, it seems like the english words "through" and "tough" and "benign" should be really hard to learn, compared to "true" and "stuff" and wine". Also, English ought to be harder to learn to read than, say, German or Spanish. But I don't know of any evidence that English-speaking countries have lower literacy than Spanish- or German-speaking countries.

I don't mean that phonics isn't useful, but the idea that having multiple strategies can kill your ability to read sounds fishy.

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I think the point is that for early readers three-cueing (MSV) is counter-productive as it neglects the skill of identifying the words themselves. Reading must come before reading comprehension. Just like you have to memorize numbers before you can do basic arithmetic, or learn algebraic notation before you can learn algebra--that is, algebra as a tool for exploring and applying higher-order mathematical concepts.

It seems to me that MSV is precisely the method that illiterate people use to fake literacy. Likewise for people who've developed a very minimal foreign language proficiency--they can get by in certain contexts but they're not in a position to constructively build fluency. If MSV were sufficient alone such people (and I include myself when it comes to foreign language proficiency) wouldn't be stuck at a dead-end.

MSV is obviously an essential skill, just not for acquiring foundational literacy. For one thing, early readers already understand the vocabulary. At that age they wouldn't be reading words like "benign" or even "tough"--some children might not fully understand them, but in any event learning to identify and distinguish such words is unnecessary at that stage. The primary task is to teach them how to identify enough of their existing vocabulary on the page that they can read sentences, paragraphs, pages, books, etc--enough to support basic narratives and concepts, especially unfamiliar ones. Only once they can read proficiently can reading become an independent channel for language acquisition and comprehension, where higher-order reasoning skills like MSV can be constructively applied, including toward furthering their literacy.

"through" and "tough" aren't hard, because by the time the reader is exposed to them they are well trained in phonics and are able to handle exceptions to the rules with little difficulty.

I learned to read with Dick+Jane, but was taught phonetic reading.

I remember looking over my mom's shoulder while she read books that were just walls of text. I couldn't read, and thought reading was some magical skill. It was pretty exciting to learn to read and then I could read anything. It was like someone turned the lights on.

Anecdata: As long as I knew her, my ex had the difficulties described in the article. She blamed how she was taught to read in school -- specifically not having been taught phonics. I figured that was nonsense, and blamed a peculiar-to-her learning disability.

At some point I read Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" (which is 20+ years old at this point!), which describes all the research on learning to read... and which pretty conclusively proved to me that my ex was right. For at least some subset of kids, not learning phonics leads to a lifelong reading issues.

>>and which pretty conclusively proved to me that my ex was right

I wouldn't make a conclusion on just one data point.

I ultimately agreed with her based on reading about the research, which is at this point 30+ years old -- and popularized 20+ years ago.

While phonics certainly are important to reading comprehension, IMHO a teaching technique which the article does not address is described in:

Reasons to Teach Word Stems and Roots[0]

0 - https://mrsrenz.com/reasons-to-teach-word-stems-and-roots/

That is a useful system for middle readers with limited volcabulary to jump into high school / professional reading, but not so good for very early readers. Note how all the grecoroman stems are defined in terms of germanic words, which are phonetic.

The article is concerned with students who find words like "rabbit" challenging, not with students figuring out "neologism".

Point taken.

Perhaps this comment[0] I posted earlier more directly addresses the article's intent in how to help teach reading skills.

0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20791015

> the idea that having multiple strategies can kill your ability to read sounds fishy.

That's not the idea. The idea is that not understanding the basic building blocks of your language can kill your ability to read. I find it mind-boggling that this is at all controversial.

In the article they mention an experiment where they showed readers words in and out of context, to determine whether cues are important. It seems they could repeat this with phonetically simple and phonetically difficult words, and see if there is a difference.

Indeed phonics make English spelling harder as English spelling is more etymologically conservative than it is phonetic.

It was fascinating watching my kid learn to read: his school hired a native English speaker to teach English, using phonics. He preferred reading to almost any activity, but not in English (though we had plenty of books in that language) until I switched to reading with him only in English for a few months. The phonics led him down a false path.

Not in my personal case. My school didn't teach phonics, through 6 months of remedial tutoring with phonics I was able to go from being deemed a potential special ed student to being the most 'gifted' one. My full ride scholarship through academics stems from the course correction my parents made to the phonics path. I will be teaching my own children phonics with followups on the non-phonetically standard words.

Anecdote: My mother told me I was taught to read using phonics.

I don't remember learning to read except one very brief memory where I was trying to read Sam Who Never Forgets.

However in 4th grade I was reading at a 12th grade level, and I was reading 300pg novels in 2-3 days while classmates were reading short kids books.

Phonics aparently worked very well for me. Though I'm not always that good with spelling.

This was my experience also. My mom taught me phonics at home, while my peers learned whole language at school. And (quite possibly as a result) I was reading much longer books at a much earlier age than my peers.

English spelling is so dreadful that we actually have spelling competitions for students up to the 7th and 8th grades! For example, the US has a National Spelling Bee where (I believe) the winner receives personal congratulations from the president.

Dyslexia (or at least diagnosed dyslexia) is also much more common in the English-speaking world than in countries with more phonetic writing systems.

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