That is fascinating. I thought I learned to read early because my mother got ladybird books and read to me, so I asked, how does it say that, she told me and i started delving into more and more. My dad had been sent to Grammar school (in the days when you had to pay) and his dad had to buy books for him… see why poor kids couldn’t go back then? Anyway, i read his history book and got hooked on History. But your experience says most kids could read with a bit of a hint. Alphabet, i guess. Friend raised Welsh speaking was very confused by a poster of words starting with different letters. Most meant nothing to him, but he could spell out ‘hen’ and wasn’t at all sure why the picture showed a chicken, and not an old looking one at that!
p.s, he was my generation and was sent staright into English medium education, that being all there was!! It didn’t seem to bother adults in those days that kids of 5 were confused!
It amazed me, but I wasn’t suggesting that they don’t need guidance on reading or how to write, but they do very easily and rapidly transfer the skills they acquire in Welsh into English and I think the initial little stumbles and mis-spellings, because of the different letter pronunciations etc and alphabet differences, seem to re-enforce their learning and awareness of word spellings etc and the different English letter sounds. I honestly believe that it may also, quite possibly, be a better way of learning English in the long run.
I do miss not seeing Welsh phonetic spellings of English words anymore - trying to decipher the code was a good game.
I agree, it’s easier to pick up English anywhere in Wales because there is enough of it encountered to learn from than it is the other way around. This is another reason for all Welsh medium schools. This person whom I met that didn’t speak English until they were 7 may be a lot more common than I thought it was.
In my brief sojourn as a Primary School teaching assistant, one of my tasks was to sit and listen to children read one to one and help the strugglers in English lessons (this was in England). That exposure to reading isn’t enough and needs bolstering outside of the classroom. I don’t think it would be enough for learning Welsh, it’s the immersion that is key in Welsh medium schools for those that don’t have immersion outside of school.
I was a very bad teaching assistant because I have no idea how I learned to read in English, certainly not with phonics, which was very hard to get my head around, are they still using phonics in schools? My parents were not keen readers, but I always was and was able to read reasonably well before I went to school. It may be that and just enough exposure to written Welsh that I never had to make a conscious effort to study how to read and write in Welsh, it just came along with learning to speak Welsh.
I think that may be the key element, doing grammar exercises helps no-one. The key is perhaps to provide enough exposure to the language outside of formal learning so that people can pick it up themselves.
We did have ‘Welsh Assemblies’ on Thursday mornings at my school. These consisted of a Welsh hymn (that still happened in my day) and a talk from the Welsh master, where he would bellow out a single Welsh word three times and then make that word the subject of his talk. It would have been much better if we had had ‘Welsh assembly’ in Welsh for the exposure, with perhaps the odd word of English for a little context and attract focus.
Oh I totally agree formal grammar only useful for learning how to write original material, not needed to chat to friends and teachers. Teachers can toss in the odd hint about the best way to say something. My friend who met English at Primary school ended up speaking very correct English, so it can be taught that way. I used to have to tell him when ordinary English folk would not catch on… inflammable, flammable… that was one example. I know a flammable liquid is very likely to burn but he couldn’t catch that our tech staff thought inflammable = burns, flammable = ???
I was just wondering if an interesting angle from a research perspective might be actually assessing the competency of the teacher and how dependent the resources are on the teacher (or not?).
I think you might have an advantage in being a native German speaker.
Creating a lesson incorporating an SSIW element, but developed by you in German, which would be in your comfort zone and doing an equivalent lesson in Welsh.
If the resources stand up then both lessons should deliver the same degree of learning, allowing for any previous knowledge of Welsh by the pupils. If there’s a stark difference in favour of German, then it shows how important the language competence of the teacher actually is and the lmitations of the resources??.