Children in English-Speaking Countries
On this page we will compare several approaches aimed at making English reading easier for native speakers, and find out PIE's unique advantages.
1. Spelling Reforms
In history there have been quite a few attempts to reform English spelling so that spelling can conform to pronunciation. One notable example is the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA), which is a reformed alphabet intended to teach English-speaking children to read. Children are expected to switch from ITA to normal English orthography at a later time. However, because all these reformed alphabets produce texts that are visually very different from traditional orthography, written communications between users of traditional orthography and users of a reformed orthography are almost impossible, and it's very hard for one to switch from one orthography (e.g. ITA) to another (e.g. traditional).
2. Pronunciation Reforms
A much less noticed approach than spelling reform is pronunciation reform, which says instead of making spelling conform to pronunciation, we should make pronunciation conform to spelling, because spelling seems to be a "more enduring value" than pronunciation and therefore should be better honored. Unfortunately, in practice, changing pronunciation is as hard as, or even harder than, changing spelling.
3. Phonics
Phonics, or the instruction of pronunciation rules, is the most widely used approach to teach English-speaking children to read. It starts with simple rules such as closed syllables (e.g. "bat", "bet", "bit", "bot", "but") and the "vowel + consonant + e" pattern (e.g. "take", "eve", "nice", "mode", "cute"), and gradually introduces more rules. However, phonics also has big problems because English has:
- Many rules: English has hundreds of pronunciation rules and patterns, as enumerated in the Wikipedia article "English spelling".
- Many exceptions: Where there is a rule, there can be many words that defy that rule. Also, multiple pronunciation rules can conflict with each other over the same spelling pattern. For example, the spelling pattern "ea" in "speak", "steak", "bread", "Korea", "reality", "create" and "ocean" has different pronunciations.
4. PIE
Unlike phonics which teaches you English pronunciation rules, PIE directly shows you every English word's pronunciation data. This frees you from memorizing many rules and exceptions and conditions on which a rule can apply. This also enables a young reader to immediately engage in extensive reading at an early age and therefore develop his/her mind early!
Another strong argument for PIE is the successful use of pinyin in Chinese reading education over five decades. Pinyin is PIE's counterpart in Chinese reading education, and it has helped China to achieve a high literacy rate, for the most difficult language in the world!
