Overview

In every English-speaking country, roughly one in six children find it impossible to learn to read and write well enough to cope with secondary schooling or the literacy demands of modern life. This failure tends to be blamed, predominantly, on poor teaching and inadequate parenting. Government ministers put teachers under relentless pressure to improve their methods and raise standards. They also run expensive media campaigns to encourage parents to get more involved in their children's education. Masha Bell believes that the main cause of the relatively high levels of literacy failure in all English-speaking countries are the irregularities of English spelling. She explains how they make learning to read and write exceptionally difficult and time-consuming. She also traces the chief causes of English spelling inconsistencies and makes some suggestions for coping with them and for reducing them.

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9781910903087

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Masha became intrigued by English spelling when she first encountered it at fourteen, after learning the more regular writing systems of Lithuanian and Russian. When she later became a teacher of English in England, she was amazed by how long most native speakers needed to learn to read and write. The main impetus for her analysis of English spelling, and for her study of its origins, was when poor literacy standards became increasingly blamed on bad teaching. She suspected that English spelling played a big part and wanted to establish how and why.

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