May 5, 2010, 8:46 PM
Post #31 of 32
I was lucky enough to be in one of the last special classes in a California State grammar school where we learned to spell using the phonic method. Some lame brain in the California State educational system had decided that the easiest way to teach kids to spell was to simply teach them how to spell every single syllable in the English language, then all they had to do was put those several hundred, or thousand, syllables in order, and Presto! Everybody could spell anything correctly. It was a great idea, and was, and still is, a colossal failure.
We were taught how to pronounce every letter, and combination of letters in the English alphabet, and that there are only 10 pronunciations for the 5 vowels, long and short.
Many people that have not been lucky enough to have been taught spelling using the phonic method ignorantly confuse it with phonetics. Phonics is a science and method of teaching correct spelling, Phonetics is a description of spelling or pronouncing a word or words by the way they are spelled, or spoken.
Anyone, probably nearly everyone, that is in any doubt about the true meaning of those two words should get a good unabridged dictionary, (not a paperback), and look them both up.
I will match my spelling skills against any American English speaker anytime. If any word is pronounced correctly, I can spell it correctly using United States English. That is the reason that at all spelling bees, there is a person called “the pronouncer”. Typos are a different matter. A key mis strike may get past the best spellchecker. I used to use Microsoft Word 2000 for my word processor. It had a grammar checker in it, it caught most, but not all grammatical errors.
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