The motherload

[Kite-san]

*hath now been cursed with the unfortnuate image of the Cat in the Hat instead wearing a beerhat, trying to wank a gangrenous dick whle playing a hentai game*



*shudders*


sorry, but it's one of those things i had to share. giving it to others lessens the pain of knowing

[Irish Witch]

My ork mere is done..

*Begins an encore*
*Gets yanked off stage by the preverbial hook*

[RavenxDrake]

*hath now been cursed with the unfortnuate image of the Cat in the Hat instead wearing a beerhat, trying to wank a gangrenous dick whle playing a hentai game*



*shudders*


sorry, but it's one of those things i had to share. giving it to others lessens the pain of knowing

It's like Bleedin' Gums Murphy said about the blues. It's not about making yourself feel better, It's about making other people feel worse.


We could come out with a whole line of naughty Dr. Suess picture books... Green Eggs and Hentai; One Tentacle, Two Tentacle, Red Tentacle, Blew Tentacle; Horten Hears a *Squelch*....

It's gold I tell you. Pure Gold.

Edit: Gramar Nazi Moment. Self correcting even.

[Captain Tylor]

Would you drink it on a plane, would you drink it in the rain?
Would you drink it in your bed, Captain Tylor try your best.

I would not Drink it Irish chick,
It tastes like scum... Or Rotted Dick!

_____________

I have a weird sense of humour!

You know, I did have that "Sussian" feeling after I wrote it, but couldn't wrap my mind around how to achieve it at the time. Bravo!

[Infinity-Iz-Blue]

The cat in the hat is terrible at the best of times but...

[Toawa]

It is my understanding (by John Taylor Gatto) that "The Cat in the Hat" is basically the classic whole-language children's book. ("Whole Language" is the literacy technique that puts forward the idea that reading should be taught by memorizing the shapes of individual words. It is in opposition to "phonetic" reading, which teaches that individual letters represent sounds, and the sounds form words. I am firmly with the phoenetic camp. Gatto is almost militantly so; he blames (or seem to blame) the switch from phoenetic reading to whole language reading as one of the many, many reasons why the school system is collapsing. Of course, to him, its very existence is reason enough for it to be collapsing.)

Indeed, if Gatto is to be believed (I haven't checked his references concerning the claim yet), Dr. Seuss himself hated the book; he was handed a list of about 300 words by a whole-language person and told to write a children's book. He looked at the list and tried to figure out what kind of story he could write, and eventually just decided to pick two random words until the pair could be made into a reasonably coherent idea, and build off that. The words were, eventually, "cat" and "hat."

[Kite-san]

i dunno, i think the trouble is the fact there's areas where different systems all have strengths and weaknesses. like, i know i royally stank at sounding words out. i wasn't QUITE to the point of reading abridged sherlock holmes fine on my own, and being unable to read 'run spot run' out loud.... but i was pretty damn close.

[Toawa]

Well, (and remember this is more Gatto's words than mine), Whole Language was invented as an alternative to phonetics because learning the individual letters was "boring and repeatative." The idea was that by teaching some usable words first, children would be more interested in learning to read. Moreover, it was thought that the children would make the connections between individual letters and corresponding sounds on their own, so that they would be able to phonetically read words they hadn't learned. Unfortunately, when you're trying to work out the connections between letters and words, while in a class of 20 or 25 or 30 or 40 other kids, any mistakes made (and they will be made) will be delt with harshly (cause kids as a group are mean as hell), thus decreasing the overall effectiveness. (Actually, now that I think about it, Gatto blamed it for the literacy rate drop from 96% to mid-70% in the space of a few decades.)

[Kite-san]

they thought little kids would get that on their own with all the crap the enligh language has in it? okay, THAT is screwed up.

whole language reading is one thing, but they also need to have some 'whole language talking' done, too.

[Irish Witch]

I think te way kids learn to read is something specific for each child. There was some uni study done here in Aus though that sais girls learn better phonetically and boy by memorizing whole words. Least, I think it was that way around, I'm not totally sure. The concept dealt with the way boy/girls handle problems. The average girl instictively tries to break problems into smaller parts so Phonetics works well for them.

[Infinity-Iz-Blue]

Everyone has to find their own route to literacy, in my opinion. I also think that most of your language learning is done at home with parents, either consciously or otherwise, you simply cannot get it right for every child in a classroom.

Take my example. I tried to learn phonetically, and although I could tell you which letter that was and what sound it makes I was hopeless with whole words. That was until my dad started getting me comics (The Dandy, oh how I miss it now), suddenly I saw people saying the words on paper, as it were, and made the connection between letters, words, and the concept of communicating with paper. I am now a great reader, heavily into Pratchett, Asimov and Niven among others...

[Squidflakes]

Horten Hears a *Squelch*....

Thanks Raven for making me laugh to hard that class has been stopped so I can finish.

[RavenxDrake]

Thanks Raven for making me laugh to hard that class has been stopped so I can finish.

Would that be the one you're attending, or the one you're teaching?

[RantinAn]

speeking for myself phonetics still get me down. but whole words are my bizzatch baby yeah.
Of course this is coming from someone who lwent from alphabet to run spot run to john christopher;s tripods tirlogy inside the space of one month.

[Captain Tylor]

I had the whole phonetics thing happen in third grade. Before then we just "learned to read".
I do figure new words by phonetics, often with the problem that when I pronounce them I do it wrong. (but then no one else knows what it means anyway.) Normally, I think I do it by word shape.

For instance, earlier I was watching the debate on closed-captioning in the local bar. (The Brown Hotel in Indiana PA, where you'll find me on most any given Wed. evening between 8 and 10. Stop by if you're in town & ask where "Ben" is--they stopped everything and put it on the TV's, which is one of the reasons I like the place.)

Anyway, you can barely make out the words on the screen from accross the room, but the fuzzy shapes are how I read. I can also get roadsigns before most people.

Strangely I'm also slightly dyslexic and can't hardly spell without this spear checker to fix it.

I'm such a linguistics geek and could go on at length about this if I thought anyone cared.

[Ce6]

The interesting things I learn on this forum. I never really knew about whole-word reading until this thread, having learned many a year ago to read phonetically, and adapt from there for the ideosyncracies of English and a few other languages as far as pronunciacion goes.
One of my college roommates one time made the comment that he reads more by recognizing shapes of words than the specific letters (that was about a half-dozen years back), but until this thread here I didn't know anything further about that style of reading. It just seemed so odd to me that I didn't give it any further thought.

[RavenxDrake]

Maybe I'm just the odd duck out, but I honestly can't rember ever NOT being able to read... I mean, I was on first grade primers before I even attended Kindegarten, I was up to Hardy Boys by third grade, and by the time I finished Grade School I was reading at a highschool level. I mean, I can remember reading with my parents when I was little, but there was never any "Gee, NOW I get it!" moment for me. It just started working, like flipping a switch. That might have more to do with a semi-photographic memory..

[Ghastly]

I recognize words by word shape myself which is why I was able to read english on the blackboard without my glasses on but completely unable to read Japanese on the blackboard without my glasses on. The general shape of the word in english was recognizable to me without my glasses on even when I could only make out a letter or two, but most kanji and kana looks the same to me without my glasses on. Hell, a lot of the kanji all look the same to me even with my glasses on.

Of course my eyesight has deteriorated quite a bit since I first took Japanese so I can't read anything on the blackboard anymore without my glasses on.

[Irish Witch]

And that's not because you dont OWN a blackboard either!