[kvmet]

Phonics certainly doesn't _feel_ like the best way to teach English, but hopefully we now have enough data to show that it is at least acceptable. A big factor too is "can it be taught at scale". You don't only have to teach the students, you have to teach the teachers how to teach the new methods. Much like NCLB, these changes are well-meaning but we really need to stop rolling things out nationally only to find out they harm outcomes.

[zozbot234]

> Phonics certainly doesn't _feel_ like the best way to teach English

Phonics is not about "teaching English" in some fuzzy generic sense, it's specifically aimed towards teaching English written orthography, starting from its phonetics. I.e. teaching fluent speakers of English to read.

[anon291]

Why doesn't phonics _feel_ like the best way to teach English? This is a minority opinion I would think.

[lkbm]

Probably because English is so very non-phonetic. To repeat an ancient joke, "Hookt awn fonix werkt fer mee".

I could also see it resulting in more subvocalization, but my assumption is that subvocalization is actually a very important short-term strategy that almost always goes away quickly.