Phonics for Dummies (For Dummies (Career/Education))

I am a new teacher who just completed my Master's degree in Elementary Education. I wanted to know more about teaching phonics, so I picked up a few books on the subject. This is one of the best books on phonics that I have found, and you don't need a degree in education to benefit from it. It is written in easy to understand language and does a very thorough job of covering phonics instruction. If you are looking to (1) teach someone to read, (2) improve your own reading skills, and/or (3)choose appropriate phonics reading materials, this book will help. I suggest using additional phonics activity books to round out your instruction, but overall this book is an excellent resource.

I had a hard time trusting the information in this book because of Dr. Greve's pervasive illogic, untruthfulness, and general fuzzy thinking.

For example, Dr. Greve alleges us that letters "make" sounds (page 15) and that they "say" sounds (page 111) -- something about as sensible as claiming that menus make dinner and license-plate numbers make cars.

People (not letters) make sounds -- letters and their combinations stand for sounds, but never make sounds. (When did you last hear an ink-mark produce any sound whatsoever?)

Claiming that "letters make sound," then, amounts either to fuzzy thinking (if Dr. Greve really believes that letters generate sound) or to blithely dispensed untruthfulness (if Dr. Greve does not believe any such thing, but she wishes us to believe it). Beginning a phonics course with an untruth (and maintaining it thereafter) may make it hard for even a readership of "dummies" to trust the material.

Matters grow worse -- from fuzz or untruthfulness to sheer confusion and self-contradiction Page 16 defines a diphthong as "two letters joined to create a completely new sound" -- other pages give other, and partly or wholly contradictory, definitions for the same word.

This left me giggling when I called to mind Dr. Greve's somewhat strident assertion (page 11) that phonics will cure illogical thought and forgetfulness.

I have no reason to doubt Dr. Greve's statement that she has taught people to read. No matter how well she teaches reading, may one suggest that she refrain from teaching self-contradiction, obfuscation, and confusion of categories along with it?