Random Thoughts....

I guess that's kind of my point. There doesn't seem to be any other way to read. If you tried to sound every word out letter by letter.... that wouldn't work out too well. And I often notice spelling errors simply because the word "doesn't look right."

I think I am way too literal for this discussion...

How old are you, if I may ask? See when I was a kid (I'm 29) phonics was THE way to read. You were supposed to sound everything out according to a complex series of rules. I refer you to the PBS kids show "Between the Lions" if you've never been exposed to hard core phonics. If anyone in my life every tells me to "sound it out" again, I may very well slap him/her. Anyway, I'm a notoriously poor speller because I like to spell things the way they sound. Geez, imagine that. I know sight reading was popular with my parents generation and is now becoming popular again. Learning theory is, I swear, the most fluid thing I have ever seen. (I worked with some learning theorist once.) I honestly call it learning BS when I'm talking to myself.

Edit: It also has a lot to do with your personal learning style. Some people will naturally gravitate towards one or the other while others are forced to fit the mold thought best by the current educational system. This is true for pretty much everything BTW.
 
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19, though I do have vague memories of "Between the Lions."

For me, the word phonics instantly conjures up memories of these commercials. Never properly learned the meaning of the word, so I probably didn't learn to read that way.

Hmm.... do I want to put my age in my profile? Yes, I think I do. Never had any problem giving it out.
 
In Finnish, excluding emphasising some consonants, everything is pretty much written the way they sound.
 
I think this sight-reading thing is the way I learned to read. I used to have those books on tape by Little Golden or something of the sort. I would listen to them all the time, and eventually figured out the marks on the page represented the words they were saying.

So it seems learning to recognize whole words and deriving phonics from there is a pretty natural way to learn.
 
19, though I do have vague memories of "Between the Lions."

For me, the word phonics instantly conjures up memories of these commercials. Never properly learned the meaning of the word, so I probably didn't learn to read that way.

Hmm.... do I want to put my age in my profile? Yes, I think I do. Never had any problem giving it out.

Interesting. I'd have figured you would have been part of the big phonics push too.

In Finnish, excluding emphasising some consonants, everything is pretty much written the way they sound.

In English, excluding some consonants, nothing is written the way it sounds. :p Ok that's an exaggeration, but not by much!

I think this sight-reading thing is the way I learned to read. I used to have those books on tape by Little Golden or something of the sort. I would listen to them all the time, and eventually figured out the marks on the page represented the words they were saying.

So it seems learning to recognize whole words and deriving phonics from there is a pretty natural way to learn.

If you taught yourself to read before you started school, you probably did.
 
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It's not a problem! It's just different. Unlike either of you, I wasn't reading at all until school. I'll bet you were both VERY proficient as well, or you'd remember being "retaught."
 
In Finnish, excluding emphasising some consonants, everything is pretty much written the way they sound.

And that's why our language is so easy and simple. :)

(this is the random thoughts thread...)
 
It's not a problem! It's just different. Unlike either of you, I wasn't reading at all until school. I'll bet you were both VERY proficient as well, or you'd remember being "retaught."

I went to a private school. I'm not sure they actually did teach us to read there. They had entrance tests for kindergardeners. I remember us writing paragraphs in kindergarden, actually, on that lined handwriting paper. We had to practice indentation of the first line.
 
I went to a private school. I'm not sure they actually did teach us to read there. They had entrance tests for kindergardeners. I remember us writing paragraphs in kindergarden, actually, on that lined handwriting paper. We had to practice indentation of the first line.

I'd call that proficient!

I had been to preschool for years and came in kinda knowing some letters and sort of writing my name. I wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box. Some things never change.
 
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^ I think this discussion has proven at the very least that you can think flexibly. Unlike some of us who find it nearly impossible to "unlearn" something :unsure:
 
Ugg, Let's talk about something else. I hate learning theory. Anything that can completely change directions every 5-10 years at infinity isn't a theory; it's a freaking random guess.

I like stuffed animals too. Target used to have so many cute ones, but then they quit carrying them. It's hard to find nice ones these days.
 
Something else.... something else....


Well, we do server monitoring at work, and we have software to tell us when something may be going wrong, so we just got a message. Excerpt:

[FONT=&quot]The following is an event based alert. You will not see a recovery for this alert, and you will not be able to acknowledge it.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]This alert requires that you investigate!
Please acknowledge this alert, verify to the best of your ability that this alert is valid and/or fix the problem to the best of your ability.[/FONT]

Lots of "WTF" emails going back and forth.
 
My Mom told me to get together my Christmas list, I can't think of anything so I'm putting down a ton of model cars. I'll probably be told off by her but I seriously can't think of anything else that I want besides Gran Turismo 5.
 
^ Logitech G27 or Fanatec equivalent.

I've actually got a decent list this year, since I got the car I've been majorly holding back on expenses.
 
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