Why Do Children Struggle

1. The big take-aways

This chapter discussed some of the problems children encounter when children are developing literacy. There are different categories the article discusses of main reason children struggle. The first reason children struggle is that letter names can be confusing. Sometimes a name of a letter is not exactly how the letter sounds. For instance, the book mentions “w” which sounds like “double u”. I was so shocked when I read that because I never made that connection before. The letter name “double u” does not translate directly into the sound that “w” actually makes. The next reason why children struggle to grasp the alphabetic principles and phonics is because English is more systematic than we think and the English orthography is very complex. The English language is complex and full of rules and exceptions, but they are complex for various reason. One of the main reasons the book give as an example of why English is complex is simply because English has a long history. It has borrowed many different words from other languages and also the English language has changed over time. The next reasons word can be confusing is that letters don’t always represent one sound. Sounds can be represented in many different ways depending on the other letters in word. Sounds are strongly influenced by the other sounds around it. Sometimes multiple letters can represent one sound. Likewise, some letters say a special “new” sound when they are in pairs. This includes diphthongs, such as “oi” in boy, and r-controlled vowels, such as “ir” in girl. All of these different characteristics of the English language tend to confuse children and can interfere with literacy development.

2.

What questions do you have after reading.

Given the information found in the section “English is more systemic than we may realize”, what are some additional ways to teach rare exceptions to grammar rules if they don’t fall into sound letter patterns or word