Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish Decoding Survey Result
Human Cognitive Architecture tells us that humans have evolved to remember information that makes sense and to filter out information that does not — so we do not fill our minds with random noise. Words that can be decoded from their spelling make sense to the brain and can be learned in as few as 2 to 5 repetitions. Words that cannot be sounded out are treated by the brain as arbitrary information, and may requires as many as 20 to 50 repetitions to memorise.
About three in four English words cannot be accurately decoded by using English spelling. This is why English literacy takes so long to learn. It is not a failure of teaching or intelligence. It is an information problem.
Professor Philip Seymour demonstrated this with precision. He tested Year 1 children across 13 European countries on their ability to decode nonsense words — words they had never seen, which could only be decoded by sounding them out. Finnish children, decoded 98% of the words correctly because Finnish spelling has all the information needed to decode Finnish words.
English children decoded only 29% because English spelling is information deficient — it does not have the information required to accurately decode the sounds of English words. This is why English children need more than two and a half years of schooling to reach what Finnish children achieved in their first 6 months of schooling.
Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish solves the information problem directly. It adds the missing sound information to English spelling — what each letter sounds like when it does not make its usual sound, which letters are silent, where syllable breaks fall, and which syllable is stressed — without changing the spelling of any word.
In a recent test, 26 participants watched a two-minute video explaining the FE system, then decoded 20 nonsense words marked up in Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish. The participants averaged 17 correct answers.
After two minutes of learning, participants decoding English words marked up in Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish were outperforming English children who had been in school for two full years because Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish provides the missing decoding information.
TOTAL SUBMISSIONS
27
500 answers recordedCOMPLETED
27
100% completion rateAVERAGE SCORE
