#why is phonics important

[harbingerofwhump]

Because learning English phonetics... teaches you how to pronounce French names?

learning that apparently several hundred people have been pronouncing 'miette' as 'mighty' has actively worsened my day

[writers-potion]

Writing Character Accents in Fiction

Hey there, thanks for the question! I speak English as a second language; most English speakers I encounter aren’t native (yes, including fictional people); thus, this is a concern I’ve explored personally when I write. 

I think the core principle regarding accent writing is this: it shouldn’t be distracting. 

For the same reasons why Stephen King prescribes the basic dialogue tag “said” rather than fancier alternatives like “whispered”, “shouted” or “screeched”, dialogue must be first and foremost easy to read. It must flow like a real conversation – the pace and tone are a lot more important than how specific words are being pronounced by the character. 

Focus on what effect the accent has:

Using adjectives to describe their voice in general. Different types of English (American, British, Australian, etc.) will give off a different vibe, also partly dependent on how your character speaks in general:

Lilting: Having a smooth rise and falling quality; sing-song like. Welsh accent is often described as singing. 

Posh: from a high social class. This is the term generally used to describe the upper-class British accent.

Nasal: this happens when the sound goes through somebody’s nose when they’re speaking. North American accents are more nasal than, say, British pronunciations. 

Brash: harsh, loud, indicative of sounding a little rude. 

Slur: speaking indistinctly; words merging into one another.

Using metaphors.

Her voice was cotton and fluffy clouds. 

When he spoke, the ‘r’s scratched the insides of his throat. 

Mentioning their accent with a brief example(s). 

“Would you like to drink some wine?” she said, though her Indian accent gave extra vibration to her ‘w’s and ‘r’s, making the words sound more like ‘vould you like to drrrink some vine’.

“I want some chocolate.” His syllables were choppy and ‘l’s rather flat, saying ‘cho-ko-lit’. 

Some Tips:

Don’t phonically spell out everything. Perhaps give a few examples in the beginning, but stick to standard English spellings. 

Pay attention to word choice, slang, and colloquialisms. 

An Australian person would say “tram”, not “trolley; “runners” instead of “sneakers”

A Canadian may refer to a “fire hall” – what Americans call a firehouse or fire station

If your character comes from a non-Enligsh background:

Use vocabulary from other languages. 

“What time was the exam, ah? Two o’clock? Jiayou!” → putting “ah” or “la” at the end of sentences + Jiayou means “break a leg” in Singlish. 

“I can’t believe that 4-year-olds have their own SNS accounts now.” → “SNS” is short for “social networking service”, a term used to refer to social media in Korea. This would a subtle difference – even though it isn’t technically Korean at all!

Transpose grammar from different languages. 

For example, in French, plural nouns take plural adjectives (whereas in English, you would speak of ‘white cars’, not ‘whites cars’).

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* . ───

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[olderthannetfic]

Now I'm wondering how countries like Japan and China teach literacy.

Since kanji / hanzi don't really have that much in the way of phonetic elements, they kinda have to teach them by memorization and I don't think they have many reading comprehension problems over there.

(Although both countries do have supplementary phonetic writing systems in the form of bopomofo and pinyin for China, and the kanas for Japan)

--

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RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

It's a little closer to teaching vocabulary than spelling, but the same kinds of principles apply: You teach the building blocks, like the traditional radicals, which aren't so different from teaching Latin and Greek roots in an English class for English speakers.

And, as a matter of fact, lots of those radicals do predict pronunciation, just not in every single case. They can also be clues to meaning, but again, not absolutely consistently. Many characters have a sound-cueing radical on one side and a meaning-cueing radical on the other. It's just that only some are still useful in the modern day, while others are more like the English word 'plumbing' where knowledge of Roman lead pipes explains why this word comes from the one for lead, but the root probably wouldn't help a kid learn the word in the first place.

One similarity to teaching phonics would be teaching students to tell very complicated and similar characters apart: you want to help a student spot all the little building blocks of the character and then spot the ones that are different, not just glance at the whole character and get a general overall vibe. If you do a whole look-based approach, too many characters are too easy to mistake for one another.

Remembering a bajillion Chinese characters is hard if you're trying to memorize them in a year and not all of elementary school, but I think people who don't read them underestimate how many component parts there are and how approachable they can be if you start by learning fundamentals, not just memorizing a few individual characters as though they have no relation to anything else.

They're actually pretty systematic, just in the way that English spelling is with its overlapping systems and historical artifacts, not in the way that highly regular Spanish spelling is.

Having taken a lot of Japanese classes, I will say that Japanese as a foreign language textbooks often do a piss poor job of this and totally do teach kanji in a sight words-y way... But my Mandarin class started with important foundational concepts that served me well in Japanese later even if I bombed out of Chinese class at the time.

Can you tell how irritated I am by all the foreign language learners who think characters are sooooo hard when, really, it's just their crappy textbook? Haha.

They're moderately hard in the way that learning a full adult spectrum of vocabulary is hard, but people do that for foreign languages all the time. The countries that use characters do tend to make sets that are smaller for certain kinds of applications, same as we have things like simple English wikipedia, but a literate adult will always know lots more, whether it's from their career in engineering or their predilection for historical romance novels.

Uh... anyway, the answer is "Bit by bit in elementary school, just like in any other country".

[star-ocean-peahen]

The more you think about Jason Grace's life, the more fucked up it gets.

Like, the whole "joined Camp Jupiter as a three year old" thing. We already know Camp Jupiter is fucked up because it places heavy importance on a child army, despite having plenty of demigod adults at hand, but they straight up recruited a three year old into the military. He showed up and got promptly stuck in a barrack for the rest of his childhood.

Like, why?? Why on earth would they do that instead of giving him to someone in New Rome to raise and inducting him into the legion at a respectable twelve??

And who raised him anyway?? A rotating cast of nineteen-year-old demigods?? His bunkmates in the Fifth?? If he was a young teenager I could see that, but he arrived when he was three, was he even potty-trained??? Did he just grow up being educated by bored teenagers and ghosts, watching as demigods arrived and served and retired, being told that he had to be the greatest of them all?? Did he have any other children to grow up with?? Did the legion even consider him different than the other recruits, or did he have to shovel unicorn dung when he forgot his phonics and live with the constant threat of perhaps being sewn into a bag of weasels??

I find it odd that Jason, as a demigod who grew up in a demigod's world, doesn't have his unique perspective explored more. I find it especially odd that the difference between his childhood and everyone else's is ignored. However difficult and varied everyone else's backgrounds are, they've at least attended a school. They had parents, and family, and a home, at least at one point. They had mortal toys and dwellings and communities that weren't merged inextricably with the myths. They knew where they came from. Do you think Jason, with his powerful, kingly father and impending destiny, ever felt like he didn't know who his family was?

I also find it strange that he doesn't seem to have a very wide network of friends from Camp Jupiter? He has Reyna, who he trusts and works with and depends on. He lists Hazel and Frank among his friends, but they look up to him as a role model. He mentions Bobby and Dakota familiarly, but never again. He's familiar and on good terms with basically everyone—but the only person he seems to consider as a close friend is Reyna. And that wouldn't be odd if he hadn't grown up at Camp Jupiter. He doesn't seem to have any constant companion—anyone he considers his family until he meets Leo.

Maybe he and Leo bonded so well because they both knew what it was like to grow up transiently. To have any constant in your life, and know that the day you would move on or they would move on was fast approaching. Maybe the reason he looked at Camp Half-Blood and admired how united and familial they seemed, and wished Camp Jupiter could be similar, was that he could see in them the family he wished he had.

Honestly, I feel like meeting Thalia should have left him in a lot more turmoil than it did. He grew up with no family but a god for a father, and here's a person who wanted him. Someone who always wanted him because he was Jason, and not the demigod son of Zeus. Maybe even someone to whom he mattered more than his destiny.

I really, really wish we'd gotten to see more of the contrasts between him and Percy. He is explicitly the Romans' version of the hero Percy is, except he's the hero first, and the person second. Jason did everything right! He did everything perfectly, and Percy still got where he did without being trained for it his entire childhood. He's got such a better reason to resent him than "bad vibes". They could have been foils for each other hhhhhhhrngh.

Just. This lonely, idolized, child soldier's life hurts me.

[swiftthistletea]

I really do not believe that alternative pedagogies are worth it over traditional schooling. There are plenty of problems with traditional schooling sure. And I think that the only alternative type of schooling that has any sort of merit is Montessori but there are still problems with Montessori that I do not like. I like the focus on independence and calm environments within Montessori, and I think Montessori toys and furniture rule. My lead teacher/mentor came from a Montessori background and its been really interesting listening to her describe why she decided to leave. For example, if youre doing Montessori properly youre not supposed to praise children when they achieve something. Self motivation is a big part of it. Personally I believe children thrive when praise that's earned is given. It's not a bad thing to hype up a kid when they zipped their coat up for the first time, especially if its something that they've been struggling with for a while. Now Waldorf is just a fuckin mess. I think the method and schools lull a lot of parents in with the anti-tech sentiments, the focus on art and imaginative play, and heavy reverence and importance placed on nature and children experiencing nature. But Rudolf Steiner was a big esoteric occultist theosophy head before there was a schism and he formed his own philosophy/spirituality. This philosophy/spirituality informs the Waldorf teaching method even if it doesn't seem so overtly. The delayed academics and importance placed on Preserving the Magic of Childhood seems nice. Until you learn that they believe children should not be introduced to any kind of reading readiness (aka letters and phonics) until their baby teeth fall out; which means children that go through Waldorf education will not learn how to read until 1st through 3rd grade. That is way too late from a developmental standard imo; it wont fuck them up but if they switch to a traditional school they will be behind their peers because well, they ARE behind and this is intentional. Teachers and parents are told to discourage children from seeking out more academic pursuits until they are deemed to be old enough. How is that "child focused"? Also a lot of the things they teach like their specific obsession with wet on wet watercolors and eurythmy IS occultic in nature, the Waldorf true believers will tell you this. They believe that preschool children shouldnt use the color black in art or use any sort of "sharp" art tools like regular crayons and pencils until a certain age because it it's damaging to the soul. Preschool children forming basic shapes and symbols in art like hearts and smiles too early is considered an attack on their innocence. How could an educational method that bills itself as being "imagination and arts focused" say that while herding children into making very specific types of art with very specific colors? It's interesting that a lot of big tech people send their kids to Waldorf schools, Hollywood families as well. It's getting more popular recently. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donates to Waldorf organizations. I still believe that parents have a fundamental right to seek out schools they think is best for their children, and they have a right to raise their children as they see fit barring like, abusive situations or whatever. But I think parents should also be cautious. And I 100% think Christian parents who are interested in Waldorf/"Forest Schools" because of the anti tech and nature walks need to be extra cautious. Anthroposophy and eurthymy ARE absolutely spiritual in nature and Waldorf is NOT "just about nature and art".

[reblogandlikes]

Dyslexic Feyre

Probably already stated, but dyslexic Feyre would have been a vibe. Her being dyslexic would have explained how she was illiterate at 19 when she still would have access to formal education before their family wealth got totalled. Perhaps she found difficulties due to her dyslexia and instead of focusing on her studies, her being a child, found other things that made her happy e.g. exploring as a way to distract from things that made her feel different. Another barrier between her and her sister's upbringing.

Would have been even better if her dyslexia had stayed after turning fae. Now she's an adult without the distraction of her "duties to her family," she could have taken the time to find her own mode of learning that's accessible to her - maybe something the humans didn't know about. Because writing random self-important sentences about a dude for a few weeks does not suddenly remedy illiteracy. If that was the case, then it could be said that she held herself back if learning became so easy. She was her own barrier, narratively seen when she refused Tamlin's offer to help initially with poetry due to...embarrassment? Clearly it's something she hides well if even she own sisters weren't aware.

Either way, having her so vocally forward when speaking with other HL's but still stammering when trying to read Nyx's children's book would be so real. Don't know how she can suddenly grasp courtly documents, though. Let alone her level of comprehension to internalise that would lead to solutions.

If there wasn't a clear reason why she couldn't read before, then it shouldn't have been a plot point, is all I'm saying. Create another reason to have Lucien in a cage that wasn't reliant of Feyre knowing basic phonics and blending. I dunno. Test her stamina where she has to hold the rope attached to the mechanism that would skewer him. His survival dependant on her frail strength and pure determination to save a fae. A testament of character. Make it more twisted with having another fae she knows and then having to choose which survives and which dies.

(Came across a man teaching himself how to read on insta and I was honestly so proud of his progress. His frustration, his joy, his focus and dedication - amazing. Then I got reminded of Feyre and how reading is randomly no longer a barrier, so I came here to rant.)

[bottombaron]

for some reason every time I tried to add this to the tags of my last post about the Vampiric Transmogrification Ceremony, BUMblr had a fit and wouldn’t show my post in the official tags and I had to delete and re-post it, like, 5 times

most of this stuff I have been sitting on since the finale aired (like the alchemical symbols, thank you FMA), but here's some additional thoughts on my research journey for The Transmogrification Ceremony (part one):

startingggg with...

how Nandor knows how to read and write Ancient Persian Cuneiform…which would have been out of use roughly a THOUSAND YEARS before he was born 👀 👀

(not for the first time I have a very small suspicion of Nandor being older than he says he is…)

and he definitely knows what the basic alchemical symbols are b/c there’s no way he put the accurate corresponding cuneiform letters spelling english words for those elements on top of the symbols by accident!

the fact that the banners are all properly labeled, with the possible exception of one, is quite frankly both Doylistly and Watsonianly amazing

Nandor knowing at least the basics of alchemy isn’t actually that surprising. The Middle East, specifically Bagdad (which is located on the Tigris btw), was the foremost center of cultural and scientific knowledge (including big developments in alchemy) before the Mongols sacked Bagdad 4 years before Nandor would have been born.

Even after the sack, that knowledge and cultural need for learning didn’t just immediately dissipate and it would have still been an important city. Nandor, probably being born into a noble or middle class family, would have been educated in the sciences which would have included Alchemy. and if he wasn’t, as a ruler he would have had access to teachers and books to learn from. Nandor has always been curious, studious, and likes to read.

transmogrification is an actual alchemical term (webster's dictionary quote: transmute implies transforming into a higher element or thing. convert implies a change fitting something for a new or different use or function. transmogrify suggests a strange or preposterous metamorphosis) there's significance that can be read into this as the chosen title of Nandor’s made up ceremony if you’d like (other than it just sounds funny)

I was really impressed that the crew used actual Old Persian Cuneiform instead of the more popular Sumerian or Akkadian Cuneiform. technically Old Persian is just written with cuneiform-style symbols (much like modern Persian using Arabic-style symbols for their alphabet) and isn't cuneiform proper since it has it's own independently developed alphabet

a little disappointed that the cuneiform translated, not into Persian words, but to a rough spelling of English words for the elements already represented by the alchemical symbols (Earth, for example, would be būmiš = 𐏏, and instead here is just the symbols for 'I-A-R-T/th'. there is no 'E' in Old Persian cuneiform so 'I' substitutes)

tho I was delighted by the discovery that the cuneiform on the 'WATER' banner is close enough to اتر or ‘etir’, Persian for ‘ether’, that I don’t care if it’s a coincidence, i’m taking it

and you may be asking yourself if all the other banners just have rough phonic spellings of the elements the banner represents, why can’t ‘A-T-I-R’ (𐎠𐎫𐎡𐎽) just be a funky 'WATER' without the ‘W’? To that I say: yeah, maybe. There isn’t a corresponding cuneiform symbol for ‘W’ in Old Persian and the substitute of ‘I’ for ‘E’ is also used in ‘Earth’, so that isn’t a huge stretch. However, why not then use a ‘V’ 𐎺 or 𐎻, for 'W' instead of leaving the sound out completely?

Personally, I find the fact that the cuneiform translates more cleanly to an actual Persian word, and one that has huge significance to alchemy and the basic elements, too delicious to ignore. Unless wwdits crew clarifies that (which I would go feral for the opportunity to interview for all the little beautiful details and great work that they do), I’m going with the 'WATER' banner having ‘ETHER’ in cuneiform instead

(and yes i’m aware that ‘A-T/th-I-R’ could just be ‘E-T-H-E-R’ on it’s on and have nothing to do with the Persian word ‘e-t-e-r’ but why ruin the fun?)

I'm using a very loose interpretation for Ether = The Soul which also describes it as the 'Fifth Element' (insert Multi-Pass joke here), or quintessence, and kind of develops into a 'heavenly spirit' kind of essence later. Strictly speaking Ether describes a 'void or nothing, is the material that fills the region of the universe beyond the terrestrial space' but describing it as The Force isn't as significant in the wwdits universe than representing Guillermo's soul

in mythology Aether is the 'pure, fresh air that the god's breathed', different from the air mortals breathed. In Greek mythology he is the son of Darkness and Night and is the primordial personification of the bright upper sky. In Orphic cosmogony he was the son of Time and the brother of Chaos, and he was basically pregnant with the Great Cosmic Egg, of which Phanes the 'First Born God of light and goodness' came from

so there's...that

the use of the cuneiform symbol for ‘new word’ ( 𐏐 ) in front of ‘A-T-I-R’ is interesting and i’m not sure of the significance of it. In cuneiform there is no space between words, so each new word is signified by this symbol, but obviously there is no use of the symbol when each banner only has one word each. and there isn’t any other cuneiform symbol that looks like it either (which makes sense since it’s used for clarification not create typos). it’s an interesting little bit that i’m fascinated with

i did check to see if the (𐏐 ) symbol has a phonic sound to it that might have represented the ‘w’ in Water, but found nothing.

my reading is that it’s being used in the spirit of the meaning and is signifying that the following cuneiform is not related to alchemical symbol of water, like the other ones are. which would track if the cuneiform is translated as ‘ether’ instead

Old Persian cuneiform is read left to right like english, unlike modern Persian, that is read right to left. so that originally confused me, especially since I started with 'AIR' which is backwards to begin with lol

the banner for 'AIR' being backwards is literally only noticeable by the cuneiform symbol for A being inverted 𐎠 (it's the last symbol on the right and has the triangle head starting from the right instead of the left). The same symbol is seen in the 'EARTH' banner turned right. There is no symbol in Old Persian cuneiform that would look like that and sure enough, when flipped, the translation only makes sense as 'AIR'.

that was either a mistake by Nandor, the crew. or on purpose by Nandor, the crew. or some combination thereof. (alchemy having significance with things being backwards does not make that choice easy tbh, but what that significance would be if on purpose ??? idk)

if you’re wondering, I did check to see if anyone else had their bondage-rope-capes-things tied into a bow around their necks like Guillermo. from what I can tell only Nadja and Derek do? Nadja has a big lovely bow which would have been tied by her husband and I’m assuming the awkward limp bow Derek wears is tied by himself. everyone else does not have the Shibari rope completely tied around them. i’m assuming there is wire around the collar holding the shape of them. again, looking into that little detail, if we are taking the Suspiria bondage costume more literally, tracks as Nadja has her loving husband Laszlo to tie her in a beautiful piece, and Derek with his s&m collar, is the picture of a sad sub tying himself up because he has no one else to do it for him

Most importantly however, is that Nandor does not have a tied knot, which confirms to me that he dressed himself without any help from Guillermo and that makes me sad. but then also adds significance to Guillermo being tied in so lovingly:

Nandor makes every last detail here about Guillermo and not himself. it’s almost too much, with how selfish Nandor is in the previous seasons. season 4 especially, what with that ‘you have to make everything in my life about you’ line from Guillermo. but here Guillermo is the special one and Nandor makes sure that every single bit of theater is for, and about, him.

the symbols that I think Nandor is referring to when he says he doesn't know what they mean, are the top symbols, which I will be getting to in my part 2 👍

[i-smoke-chapstick]

AAA thank u for writing my request ♡ !! im rewatching workaholics so the brainrot is so real. could you please write anders x reader where he tries to seduce (se-ders) the reader ? ur choice either sfw or nsfw !! thanks in advance 😽

‘GORGEOUS,

-ANDERS HOLMVIK X READER-

⋆ 𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒 ; Anders Holmvik is horrible at flirting…but it somehow works.

⋆ tags/warnings. Anders Holmvik x female!reader! FLUFF!!!! Anon I am SALIVATING for workaholics requests please keep them coming!!! I LOVE this idea btw, (se-ders is incredibly accurate!!) Made this SFW since i was getting tired but anon PLEASE send in some more NSFW or SFW requests for the boys if you’re comfortable i feel like i’ve missed an opportunity to make this smutty >.<

♫ “You should take it as a compliment that I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk. / You’re so cool it makes me hate you so much.” Gorgeous by Taylor Swift

The moment you caught his eye at the party, he’d called dibs.

It was some house party you were invited to by your friend. You can’t say that the place is put together…but it’s certainly unique. And you’ll never pass up a chance to drink and give some guys a good flirt. You’re friend said she was invited by a group of guys who were appearently the hosts. She said they were weird as hell, and that you just had to see it for yourself.

Well, you’ll bite! Parties were never not fun, and almost immeadiatley upon entry, you understood exactly what she meant.

You and your group of friends were probably the only girls there. The rooms were cluttered up with junk, which was surprisingly unique. A Juggalo tapestry (interesting…), a whole ton of magazines, and the distinct smell of weed. You kinda liked it. It was homey.

Scanning around the room, you finally got a drink, and sipped on it lazily. You wandered from bathroom to bedroom, ignoring the commotion in the living room. One of the hosts, the short one, was trying to do a backflip on the dining table. You’d prefer not to see someone break their neck in person.

A voice grabbed you out of your thoughts, nearly scaring you half to death. You probably shouldn’t be snooping. Oh well. You looked up to find him. The tall one of the party hosts. He was wearing a polo, odd party attire you noted. You mentally prepared him to ask just what the hell you were doing, wandering around in his house.

Instead, he came over, wearing this god awful smirk.

Little did you know, he’d already been watching you carefully. RA instincts from back in college. He wondered why this super duper hot chick was sneaking around the house, but he didn’t really mind. Why not give it a shot? You were so pretty, in fact, that he was sure you only talked to, like, model looking guys. Which yeah, threatened him a little.

But he kept imagining how your kids would look like with him, and how that party dress hugged your waist, and how you laughed like a literal angel. So, he got a cup ready for you and walked over.

“Hey, uh, do you want a drink?” He asked, looking down on you, clearing his throat. Oh. That’s why he came over. You were used to getting hit on at parties. You wondered what pick-up line he would use, curiosity peaked. “It’s, uh, a special concoction I made. I call it… Anders’ Elixir of Love. Pretty impressive, huh?”

Well, wouldn’t hurt to humor the guy. Your red solo cup had been drained empty minutes ago anyways.

“Anders’ Elixir of Love?” You repeated, mildly confused and intrigued.

“Actually, it’s Anders. Like, Ahn-ders,” He quickly waved off and corrected you. “Not “Ann-ders,” like you’re struggling with basic phonics. But it’s cute you tried.”

You nodded in understanding, a bit impressed by the…confidence (?) to correct you. Not to mention the blunt insult. For some reason, whatever technique he was poorly aiming for was working.

“Okay, Ahn-ders. What’s in the drink?”

“Oh, you know, just a bit of this and that. Mostly, uh, vodka and… more vodka. But it’s all in the wrist action when you mix it. Really important. You look like you could use some of my, uh, mixology expertise.”

You’re eyebrows scrunched together, and you couldn’t help the small smile playing on your lips. You take the drink from him, taking a sip. Yep, thats all vodka. You fight the urge to make a face.

“Thanks,” You respond. “Do you normally host parties like this?”

He seems like he’s pysching himself up, and attempts a painfully awkward smirk.

“Oh, yeah. I’m, uh, kind of a big deal at parties. People just, you know, can’t resist my charm and my��� face. I mean, look at this jawline. It’s like chiseled from marble.”

He immeadiatley bends down and shifts so you can see his side profile.

That illicts a chuckle from you, and you see his eyes brighten up.

“Is that your friend out there? On the table?” You reference the short one, with an eyebrow raised. These guys are certainly…interesting.

“Oh, Adam?” He looks back, before his attention turns to you. At the name, he seems tired. He waves the guy off, a roll of his eyes and a huff. “Ignore him. He’s insane.”

So maybe he’s the sane one? You think.

“But back to you, girl. You got a body like Pamela Anderson in Baywatch and I’m tryna ride that waaaave.” He leans against the door frame and slowly strokes his chin, biting his lip and squinting his eyes.

Ah, and he’s ruined it. He speaks with a tone of superiority and a he’s bit overly-confident. He gives an awkward, almost manic giggle when he realized you’re silent. Maybe he’s not the sane one, but he’s got a charm to him. You could do worse. You shrug.

You carefully inch closer towards him, and put a hand on his shoulder. His confidence almost immeadiatley slips, and he stands up straight, correcting his posture. At the contact, his mouth drops open, and lets out a small gasp. He quickly attempts to recover with a hard swallow, as though he can’t believe this is actually happening. Like really, for real, actually happening.

“Show me what you can do then.”

Before you know it, his hands are on your waist- like magnets connecting, and he’s holding on a bit too tight.

You love parties.

[mystacoceti]

and since it's on my mind now I guess I want to say something again about the Science of Reading/Whole Language debate

it's obvious why Republicans have fixated on whole language pedagogy for a few decades now. it's couched in hippy dippy rhetoric about allowing each individual child to flourish in their own unique way free from the ruinous and stifling influence of authority/the teacher/phonics drills. but that's the rhetoric, which doesn't necessarily have much to do with actual practice. for all the talk about supporting each individual child to become each of their realized, individual selves, the whole language proponents can actually get really fucking shirty when the question of learning disabilities and difficult students comes up. the kids are seen as drags on the other, better students, and, at the most callous, as wastes of resources. and often these programs aren't even set up to give struggling students meaningful support in any way. but still, it's "progressive" education so it divided a lot of people in that same old knee-jerk way

then you get some big, national moment and everyone can come together and say that was bad, with the pseudo-objectivity of longitudinal studies and cognitive science to support the superficial agreement of people all across the political spectrum, from left-wing substack scholars who promote progressive education to far right legislators who believe public education and teachers unions are nuisances.

in the United States, we're already moving on to the Science of Reading as the paradigm, and we can already see it will probably come with a needlessly strict blanket focus on phonics — in spite of what researchers suggested, regardless of what individual students need, political value of whatever it is we're doing be damned. the contradictions of why seemingly disparate groups would come together on this issue gets lost or brushed aside with the truism that "we're doing this for the kids." but that's okay, because when all's said and done the most important thing, whether in OECD rankings or SAT scores, is sticking it to the Chinese

[navy-heart]

Yeah I was thinking of all that too! But thank you for summing it all up as well its good to see it written down and assured HDHAHS. I'm thinking of going to my old hs and leaving an advertisement there amongst others, but I wanna go there and ask about doing it first. And figure the other stuff out in the meantime

And yes ineed I'm thinking of starting with English ^^ so I'm all ears about all you'd want to say about it 👀

Rest assured this is very much the way!! We don't do anything at High Schools so I don't know anything about that but I hope it works out!

For English specifically you'd do well to research into following:

1) Common European Framework of Languages. If you ever heard about like "oh my level is B1/A2/C2", it's assessing language levels using that exact framework. It's generally something that's good to understand and look into because it's simple at the surface level but it allows for clearer communication of educational goals and needs, especially with parents.

2) Language learning vs language acquisition. It's more theoretical in nature but the difference is important to understand to properly construct lesson plans. This is also where Three Schools of Language Learning discourse come in (very fascinating stuff in general), you can to know which the students and schools use and where to go from there. Especially useful with older students and adult beginners who Really want to learn the language fully but don't know where to start.

3) School curriculums! Unless we're talking adult beginners, you'll most likely get students who know something from school but are equipped something we call "educational gaps" because fucking Covid. These will most likely be your students. You'll need to study national schools curriculums, their educational goals and projected vocabulary/grammar/comprehension levels to later test and catch up on these. It can be as severe as not knowing the alphabet in 7th grade or like, not understanding constructed tenses at the same level, both count as a gap but but are obviously dealt with differently. These national plans are usually in open access on some government websites, for me at least.

4) Just like basic English grammar. Know what tenses are there, why they are there, how they are formed, be able to explain it. Very basic stuff and it is Not hard to learn once you're proficient enough. Also phonics would be good if you're planning for younger kids.

5) Language gaaames. It's all about gamification especially for younger students. They're not hard to find, it's like matching cards and memorising games, very simple stuff but you'll need to be prepared to use those and spend some time on handiwork.

If you want to I can send you the pdf files for my Methodology textbooks, they're VERY well-made with few pseudoscience bullshit moments that you needn't pay attention to. You'll just have to promise not to doxx me because our uni profs wrote those and they're both one of a kind, unique, and technically illegal to share lmao. 👀

[incognito-princess]

We have a teacher at our school who has taught for like 17 years, but all of them in a parochial Catholic school. Therefore she has very little experience of teaching special education students. She keeps asking why, "They (sped teachers) can't just keep them (sped students) in their room." I keep telling her, "Because those kids are our students, and they not only deserve, but are entitled to a fair and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment! It would be completely against the law!!!"

And here is why it's important to have students with learning differences in the least restrictive environment. I have 3 students who have specific learning disabilities. They struggle decoding words to read. They cannot seem to remember the phonics of the English language from week to week, day to day, often hour to hour. They can't functionally read. So they have their sped hours met by a sped teacher. They are in my general education class for 60%-80% of their day. They were in my room for whole group reading instruction when we were learning about Literary Elements- specifically Major and Minor Characters.

The other day, I had these boys in small group at the reading table. We were reading a decodable text for short e. It was simple 1st grade sentences- "Meg see the fox? The fox sleeps in the den." etc. The pictures show a little girl and her dad at the zoo. As I turn away from the group to address another student this is the literary conversation that ensues- "Meg is the major character, because she's on every page." "Right, and dad is the minor character. He's just there to tell what Meg sees." "So it's 3rd person, because Meg isn't telling her own story."

You're going to try to tell me that those special education students didn't benefit from being in my general education class? BS!!!! Those boys have a decoding glitch, but they are just as smart as anyone else in my room!

[otatma]

okay, so neopronouns.

lemme get my bona fides in the open first. your neopronouns are valid, likely to have more historical precedent than you think, and you have every right to be called with the words that feel good to you.

that said.

what I want to talk about is the regressive / conservative hostility to neopronouns.

even that is too much for me to cover exhaustively, but there's one particular aspect of it that I want to dig into a little bit.

the aspect in question is a problem I'll call the Regal Couch problem. Stay with me for a bit.

there's a game children play. It has no name that I know of, so I call it Regal Couch. Regal Couch is a game about phonics. The goal of this game is to ambush a child and get them to utter curses as fast as possible, with large bonuses for making this goal within earshot of an overbearing adult. The speed is important, because if you get slowed down in any way then the intended victim's thoughts catch up and they begin to figure out that they're being pranked.

Yeah, this is the game people were playing when they tried to get you to unwittingly say "so fucking" or "I see you pee" or whatever low-hanging profanity felt the most fun on that day.

(This was a very frustrating thing to encounter as a neurodivergent fun-hating kid, but I digress.)

So, there's a lot going on here. It's almost a template. The important thing about Regal Couch for the neurodivergent person is the particularities - the phonics, the speed of the hustle, the proximity to gullible authority figures, the viscerality of the desired curses, etc.

It's important to outline these particularities because it's important not to be distracted by them. The important thing about Regal Couch for the perpetrator is that if your hustle is good enough, you get a pull on a slot machine. The prize you get when those reels line up is someone else feels bad, ragefits, gets in trouble, or all of the above. Which is to say, some agency and control over another human. (Kindly remember how these can be potent rewards when you're eight and every adult thinks they have to train you like some kind of dumb animal.)

Despite being neurodivergent, I'm not (just) bringing this up to fulminate about how kids can be monsters sometimes. It's relevant to the neopronouns thing. It's relevant because it captures an important aspect of regressive praxis, and that is the relation it establishes between hustling and speech and power.

When we ask people to use pronouns unfamiliar to them, it shouldn't be too surprising when the more regressive ones react as if we're playing Regal Couch. And they often do. Many of the same elements are there. They don't know what these sounds mean. Etymology doesn't get as much traction on neopronouns. They're already in a tenuous situation (learning about a new person living in a category that they feel is a threat). For the same reasons they're much more likely to be preoccupied with the precedent and power relations that Regal Couch is actually about. (And of course there's a massive raft of regressive preoccupations that don't relate to Regal Couch in any way, which I still refuse to treat with exhaustively today — but they're there and I do see them.)

The difference of course is that neopronouns are not about establishing who can play dirtiest for stakes, they are about courtesy and comfort and acceptance. If I was going to compare neopronouns to a game that it's actually similar to, I'd probably say it's got more in common with a trust fall.

Q: So what? Why make this comparison in this kind of detail?

A: There's one grain of truth here. The meaning of these words - the neopronouns themselves - is often unclear.

We therefore shouldn't have any trouble asking "Okay, and what does that mean?" This does a few useful things - it seizes on an opportunity to learn, it creates more detailed patterns to remember the neopronouns with, it proves we're not regressives*, and it models the right behavior for the situation.

It isn't without risk though, because of tone. If someone asks you in sincerity to practice a trust fall and your reaction is suspicious and hostile in tone, you probably don't ever get to know that person. Also asking people to do any extra work at a time like this will never be ideal.

That question "What does that mean?", then, should be as soft as the circumstances allow for. Make it a real and vulnerable request for information, not a micro-aggressive riposte on the entire project of neopronouns. Listen hard to the answer, even if it was nothing like you expected. Ignorance is curable, if you want.

* — for various reasons which I don't have time to list, regressives consider this kind of earnest vulnerability in any social situation to be literal suicide.

[astroyongie]

Formis 9 August Reading 2023

note: please take it lightly 

Saerom

Love: She isn’t entirely in a relationship but she is starting to built something with someone. Saerom has spent a lot of time talking with this person and they still flirt a lot through text and phonically. She is quite all giddy about this person and definitely wants to turn it into something serious

Career: Everything seem to be doing okay for her, she is very determinate to work hard for her career and for her own good. She is also not worried about what the future holds for her

Self: Her energy is very bright, very joyful (quite nice to be around), she is being spontaneous about things and doing all sort of activities that she wants and that brings her joy

Hayoung

Love: I believe that Hayoung has been cheating on her partner and haven’t been honest with them nor about what she does with other people. For some reason she doesn’t want to lose the person she is in a relationship with, which is the reason why she cheats and doesn’t want to tell them

Career: Everything is okay, she has been working on herself and on her appearance to reach a more ‘idol like image”. She is very positive about her career and her future at the moment

Self: She is rather stable on her self and on her life, nothing worries her, her health is all okay and she isn’t suffering form anything that is disturbing her peace

Jiwon

Love: She is single but Jiwon spends a lot of time with her friends and partying whenever she can. Her social life is very important to her and she is trying her best to open her social skills and agenda in order to secure her idol place in the industry

Career: I believe that she suffers quite a lot inside the company but she hides it very well. Jiwon tries her best not to complain and do what she is told but there’s a lot of things that happened to her inside that industry that scare her

Self: at the moment she is rather on a calm energy, doing a lot of self introspection about herself, on what she wants for her life and what she wants to become

Jisun

Love: She is in a relationship and for now everything seem to be going well. She is quite an helpless romantic since she believes that her person will be hers forever and the person she ends up her life with (or at least that’s what she hopes)

Career: not the best energy around here either, I believe that Jisun is very dependent on her sponsors to everything and she hasn’t the freedom to do what she wants without their consent. Her idol life is also everything she has, without it she feels like she is no one

Self: other than that, she is rather happy with her life. She is having fun and luck, she feels that the money she has is enough for her expenses and she is just happy overall

Seoyeon

Love: she too, is in a relationship at the moment. Seoyeon however is the one that takes care of her partner financially, she pays for their rent, for their things and she believes that she is being nice and taking care of the person she likes. I wonder if she is being gaslighted or if the person is truly honest

Career: she doubts herself a lot, she believes that she doesn’t have the most perfect image for an idol and she wished to be pretty like most visuals of other groups. She also doesn’t have her place inside the group it seems

Self: she is very calm, and pretty smart if I may say. Seoyeon self is currently in a soft mood, I don’t have much info on it

Chaeyoung

Love: She left her partner a few time ago, because their schedule and hers weren’t the same and they spent too much time apart which annoyed her a lot. So she ended up breaking up with them and moving on with her life

Career: I don’t understand very well what’s happening in her career at the moment, it seems like there’s a lot involved concerning shamans and managers and sponsors and it’s honestly way too weird to interpret it

Self: she has been focusing herself on meeting other people, spending time with new people and just making new friendships. She is on a social mode

Nagyung

Love: she is definitely seeing someone but they aren’t on an official relationship yet. Nagyung is full of seduction, like she flirts a lot with this person, she puts a lot on her seduction tactics to get them close to her. She is delivering her feminine energy in all ways and really playing a “libra” energy on that person

Career: everything seem to be doing alright, she is very well supported by her company and her sponsors and she has the strength needed to survive in the company. It also feels like despite being young she holds a strong authority among her teammates

Self: she is definitely in love with her person and right now everything on herself and her energy is just screaming love.

Jiheon

Love: she is single and all by herself and in no mood to find someone or to share her love side. At the moment she is mostly focused on herself and on her career and her heart is kinda close

Career: I believe that Jihoon wants to leave the company and go somewhere else, probably someone has contacted her for some projects because she doesn’t want anything dealign with the group

Self: she has a high self esteem and she trusts herself a lot when it comes to being an idol. She knows what she has to do in order to get what she wants.

[chavisory]

The teachers had no idea how kids actually learned to read. "It was just that they do," Ibarra said.

https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-american-kids-arent-being-taught-to-read

See, I read stuff like this, and...not to devalue the importance of teacher training and actually knowing how to teach...but part of me goes “But don’t you remember learning how to read?! Don’t you remember how you learned to read?!”

Because I do! They didn’t call it “phonics” to us as first-graders, they just called it “sounding out,” but I remember vividly sitting around the reading table and being taught to do that. Like what do you mean you have no idea how kids learn to read...how did you learn to read???

And then I remember again that most people do not remember very much from before they were six or seven years old.

And it explains so much.

[trilobiter]

What is funny to me is how English spelling, while loaded with traps from a writing standpoint, is relatively straightforward from a reading standpoint. It's not regular, but it would be unreasonable to say that letters have arbitrary values, especially the consonants. Virtually every word that starts with a consonant is pronounced beginning with the logical corresponding phoneme. That's somewhat less true when the consonant is in the middle of a word or at the end, but even then it's more common for those consonants to be silent or just shift in voicing than to take on radical new sounds. Yes, "t" sometimes sounds like /ʃ/ in combination with "i," but it's not like it ever sounds like /ŋ/ or /k/ just for shits and giggles.

As for the vowels, they are substantially less reliable in indicating the correct phoneme, partly because there are so few of them, partly because the correct phone varies so much between accents and dialects and national standards, and partly because the version of English that today's English vowel spellings more or less accurately record hasn't been spoken in centuries. But even the vowels are regular enough most of the time in the contexts where they appear.

That's why constructions like "ghoti" are funny, but don't actually represent a real problem from a reading standpoint. "Gh" sometimes indicates /f/, but not very often and never at the beginning of a word. It's possible for "o" to represent /ɪ/, but it pretty much only ever happens in "women." As for "Ti," we all know there needs to be another vowel before we can take it as /ʃ/.

All of this is to say that not only is teaching phonics a good way to teach reading in theory, English in practice is not particularly ill-suited for that approach. It takes time and patience, but the numerous exceptions can be mastered - even the weird ones.

If there is a real weakness in English orthography, it's the glaring lack of a way to reliably indicate stress in formal writing. For a language where stress is critically important, we usually have to guess at the stress when we come across a new word, and we all know how that goes.

[beardedmrbean]

Oh yeah Ronald Erwin McNair, sorry I thought he was on that other space shuttle that fell apart during launch.

Also that program with Nichelle Nichols, I recall a lot of space exploration and travel polices were created to prevent another colonial empires power struggle which gave us the world wars and the eugenics horror show.

So space was showed to be “EVERY HUMAN CAN BE IN OUTER SPACE!” Now of course only humans of peak condition can be astronauts but stuff like Star Trek suppose to show a possible future where we all can coexist with each other.

Of course NASA was like “okay let not pull a Nazi and show that non whites and women can be astronauts too” but when most of your organization made up of geeky white people…

I can see why Nichelle Nichols was chosen as she inspired many people especially in the blacks and women into science with her uhura role.

And the whole racial tension that she of all people understands. So she basically help convince a lot of black people and women who you know grew up in segregation and heavy gender roles so NASA definitely felt like an out of reach idea for them.

Sorry you are a bigger NASA fan than me. I’m just curious how da fuck is math racist when we had a black astronaut that grew up in the Deep South?

🤨

He was, that was his 2nd flight, Challenger, Jan 28 1986. That's a day embedded in my memory.

NASA has pretty much always been THE government agency that didn't care about anything other than if you can do the job, obviously politics still showed up and they weren't going to send a woman or black man to the moon, woman bit was less sexist than it was a technology and biology thing, going potty and all, still sexism but it was really more cost effective to not have to worry about the other bits.

Nichelle Nichols thing, I hope she fully grasped how important she was to women in general and black women especially. This is the best anecdote about her, at least that fits the theme.

Roddenberry knew what he had created already, why else have a black woman and a Russian on the bridge crew, Nichols found out when Dr King let her know what she meant.

She also wrote that she had "a short, stormy, exciting relationship" with Sammy Davis Jr. in 1959.

GIRL!!! lol

>Sorry you are a bigger NASA fan than me. I’m just curious how da fuck is math racist when we had a black astronaut that grew up in the Deep South?

And a physicist at that.

It's not, I think the issue is that people don't like that there's going to be a right and a wrong answer for math, 1+1 will always equal 2 is problematic somehow.

There's also claims that the way it's taught is geared toward white students, which I'm not sure how that works, but even if that's true they're playing to the majority which sure would come out discriminatory but that's a no win situation unless you bring back segregation.

It's reading but, I think we may be in the market for this happening in math too.

As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”

The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.

Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. “In Oakland, when you have 19% of Black kids reading—that can’t be maintained in the society,” says Weaver, who received an early and vivid lesson in the value of literacy in 1984 after his cousin got out of prison and told him the other inmates stopped harassing him when they realized he could read their mail to them. “It has been an unmitigated disaster.” In January 2021, the local branch of the NAACP filed an administrative petition with the Oakland unified school district (OUSD) to ask it to include “explicit instruction for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension” in its curriculum.

From a different article same subject

I like that they put the numbers in this one,

But ya, they didn't like the system they had and even though they were getting year to year improvements with it they changed it because why not throw students under the bus.

Maybe they should learn from Ron McNair, but that would be the students taking the initiative and learning on their own, which might require a sea change in the community as it relates to education.

There's a reason this program has kept going since 1987, but ya colonization of students minds, there's a math one too not sure how good that is.

And there's people who just can't get some math honestly, I know I'm one of them, full spectrum dyslexia is not something I'd wish on anyone.