http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/how-the-english-language-is-holding-kids-back/385291/
The article that I have picked for this week is an in-depth article about the way that English spellings affect students; specifically young students who are learning how to read and write the English language.
We all know that the English language as we know it is complicated. The morpheme rules that we follow are more like guidelines. There are so many words that do not fit into the typical guidelines of language and, as such, makes it a very difficult language to learn; especially when it comes to reading and writing the language. One of the things I found most interesting about this article is when the author talks about the English language, and how we cannot assume many word meanings or origins because there are too many unexpected sounds or things that appear to be prefixes, but actually aren't. What she specifically mentions is that because English is so memorization based, that we don't actually develop the cognitive ability to fully learn how to read or write the English language until the age of 8-10. Why is it then, that we put so much pressure on children as young as 4 to be able to read and understand what it is that they are reading?
Another interesting thing the author touched on was how long it takes to become a "fluent" reader and writer of English as opposed to many other languages. In Finland, it is not uncommon for a child to become a fluent reader in as short as 3 months! Most other European countries are right around a year or less. The United States, you ask? Three YEARS to master the written form of the language they have been speaking their whole lives.
And did you know that most of the "odd spellings" are not due to people trying new things, or wanting to be different. There are there because when the printing press was first invented used to print in English, it wasn't operated by English speakers, but rather by Belgians. Not only do they not know the language, so they won't correct mistakes, like bisy changed to busy, but they were also paid by the line, so they would throw in frivolous letters to "cushion the lines," changing frend to friend.
I absolutely agree with the article and the difficulties that come with learning English. I never personally remember struggling with reading comprehension, but I do remember when I was in first grade, and I was spending half the day in a Spanish classroom, I was asked to read things regularly, as with any classroom environment. I remember my teacher asking me to stay after class because she wanted me to read something to my other teacher in Spanish. It was about a paragraph long and I read it "perfectly," she told me. I had no idea what I was reading, but the fact is that I was able to read a paper in a language that I had only been familiar with for maybe 2 months. That would be impossible to do in English.
I always enjoy a bit of dispute about spelling. It would be really nice to have a true representative and uniform spelling for each of our sounds as it is with Spanish. I taught my brother to read Spanish in 10 minutes though like you he doesn't know the language. It was once explained to me that because the English language was written down and rules were created for a language that consistently borrows new words there are bound to be discrepancies. You used Spanish so I'll continue with that comparative, Spanish adds significantly fewer words and if it does there is a lot less borrowing you will notice a difference in Spain's Spanish and Central/South American Spanish. In Spain there is a much stronger transliterative quality whereas in Central/South America they maintain most of Spain's written rules but little of its pronunciation to written word consistency. At this point English is easily understood by any accent so we are stuck with the rules we have. Oh well.
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