What is segmenting?

Segmenting is an essential skill in learning to spell. 'Segment' means 'break' or 'separate'. When we segment a word, we break the word up into its individual sounds.  This video shows how segmenting is taught in Unik’s Phonics Fun programme.

Click here or Chinese version of this video.

What is blending?

Blending is an essential skill in learning to read. 'Blend' means 'join together'. Blending letter sounds means joining the sounds of letters together. We blend sounds to make a word.

For your better understanding, we have made this video to show how blending teaches reading.



Click here for Chinese version of this video.

When is a bungalow not a bungalow?

In Malaysia, a 'bungalow' is a large detached house, often with more than one storey. The operative word here is 'large'. Sure, we have mansions in Malaysia, but we hardly call them that - they are all huge bungalows. We of modest means often look at bungalow-dwellers with some envy, and bungalow-dwellers are understandably proud that they live in such grand houses.

An Englishman, however, would probably speak with more than some humility when he admits to living in a bungalow. That's because to an Englishman, a bungalow is not the abode of the rich. A bungalow is a low detached house having only one storey (Oxford Dictionary definiton). 

It's perhaps unfortunate that Malaysians associate bungalows with the rich. This opens up many opportunities for the word to be misused, mangled and corrupted. The property development fraternity is especially guilty of this: pamphlets abound that unabashedly advertise double-storey bungalows, 3-storey bungalows, semi-detached bungalows, linked bungalows, cluster bungalows, zero-lot bungalows - the list goes on. There are even 'sky bungalows' reported to be under development in Penang. I can only hazard a guess that these are 'bungalows' built on top of high-rise buildings.

So, when is a bungalow not a bungalow? Actually, we should rephrase it thus: When is [a house that is] not a bungalow a bungalow? When it is in Malaysia.

Note

Origin of the word: late 17th century, from Hindi baṅglā, meaning 'belonging to Bengal', referring to a type of cottage (in the style of a Bengal house) built for early European settlers in Bengal. 

Why is reading especially difficult?

For this topic, we have made a 11-minute video so that audiences can get a clearer picture why reading is difficult: reading is not a skill acquired naturally, and it must be taught correctly!

This video links neuroscience to the teaching of reading with the systematic synthetic phonics approach.

Why use the systematic synthetic phonics method in teaching to read?

Research has shown that phonics taught in a systematic or structured way - starting with the easiest sounds, then progressing through to the complex ones - is the most effective way to drive up standards in reading. This approach aligns with our brain’s ability to learn.

Additionally, as pointed out by neuroscientists and researchers of human cognition, the foundation of reading is speech, and the organization of reading skills in the brain must be built on this foundation. This is important because recent brain research suggests that we must set right any incorrect teaching methods used, since early instruction determines how the brain organizes itself for reading. The systematic synthetic approach builds on these findings, by teaching sounds before letters. 

Evidence from the Clackmannanshire Study (1997-2003) conducted in the United Kingdom showed that children who used this method became better readers much earlier compared to children who used the analytic phonics approach.

What is Phonics?

'Phonics' has become a hot topic amongst parents over these few years, especially when it was integrated into KSSR curriculum. There are a few types of phonics in the market, yet many parents are unaware of what type of phonics their children learn in kindergartens or schools. This post aims to give more insight about phonics and hopes to clear the confusion created by the different types of phonics.

What is phonics?

•  A system of relationships between letters and sounds in a language
•  A method of teaching reading by correlating sounds with letters

Phonics as a method of teaching

There are several approaches that use phonics as the basis of teaching reading: synthetic phonics, analytic phonics, analogy phonics and embedded phonics.

Synthetic phonics

-     The teaching of reading in which phonemes (sounds) associated with particular graphemes (letters) are pronounced in isolation and blended together (synthesised).

-     Children are taught to take a single-syllable word, e.g. “cat”, apart into its three letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn /k, æ, t/, and blend the phonemes together to form a word.

-     This method is currently adopted by the Malaysian Ministry of Education in the KSSR syllabus.

Analytic phonics

-     The teaching of reading in which the phonemes associated with particular graphemes are not pronounced in isolation.

-  Children identify (analyse) the common phoneme in a set of words in which each word contains the phoneme being studied. For example, teachers and pupils discuss how the following words are alike: pat, park, push and pen.

Analogy phonics

-     A type of analytic phonics in which children analyse phonic elements according to the phonograms in the word.

-     A phonogram, known in linguistics as a rime, is composed of the vowel and all the sounds that follow it, such as –ake in the word cake.

-     Children use these phonograms to learn about “word families”, e.g. cake, make, bake, take.

Embedded phonics

-     An approach in which phonics forms one part of a “whole language” programme.

-    Embedded phonics differs from other methods in that the instruction is always in the context of literature rather than in separate lessons, and the skills to be taught are identified incidentally rather than systematically.

To b or not to b?

Most Malaysians would've learnt about silent letters in school and are probably familiar with silent 'k' words (e.g. knife, knee, knight, knack, knob), silent 'p' words (e.g. psychic, pneumonia, pneumatic, psalm, pseudonym), and silent 'g' words (e.g. gnash, gnu, gnarl, gnaw, gnat).

There are many other silent letters, of course (practically all the letters of the alphabet are silent in some words), but one letter I think many Malaysians fail to keep silent when required is the letter 'b'.

In all of the following words, the 'b' is silent:
  

	aplomb	/əˈplɒm/
	bomb	/bɒm/
	catacomb	/ˈkætəˌkoʊm/
	climb	/klaɪm/
	comb	/koʊm/
	crumb	/krʌm/
	debt	/dɛt/
	doubt	/daʊt/
	dumb	/dʌm/
	jamb	/dʒæm/
	lamb	/læm/
	limb	/lɪm/
	numb	/nʌm/
	plumber	/ˈplʌmər/
	subtle	/ˈsʌtl/
	succumb	/səˈkʌm/
	thumb	/θʌm/
	tomb	/tum/
	womb	/wum/

Are you guilty of not keeping the 'b' silent when pronouncing the words above?

Me and I

Some years ago, I heard a jingle for an air conditioner over the radio.

The last line for the jingle went like this:

"Brand X, for a healthier you and I."

That line is grammatically incorrect. It should be:

"Brand X, for a healthier you and me."

Do you know why "me" should be used instead of "I"?

Here's the answer:

"for" required the object form of the pronoun. The object form of the pronoun "I" is "me".

If we remove "you" from the sentence, leaving only the first person "I", we can notice the mistake better:

"...for a healthier I."  --> Incorrect

"...for a healthier me."  --> Correct