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School writing by ear: Mother criticizes teaching methods at elementary schools

Isa Becker was very happy about the little boy's little presents. The problem: the many spelling errors. In their opinion, the 'writing to the door' method is to blame.

The teaching method "Writing after hearing" provides that the spelling errors of children are not corrected first.
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More than 8, 000 likes, 1, 832 comments and more than 8, 800 shares - this is the result of Isa Becker's Facebook post, in which the mother from Iserlohn vented her anger about the teaching methods at her son's elementary school. Their criticism revolves around the method of 'writing by ear' according to which the primary school students are currently writing and then learning to read.

The teaching method is for children to write words the way they actually hear them. Errors must not be corrected in the first learning phase. In the first grade, Isa Becker got sweet little notes from her son about "ch hap dij lip", for example. Her reaction: praise. At first, the mother was not allowed to improve. That would take the child to the fun of learning. But of course Isa Becker and her husband tried, if they helped their son with their homework, to pronounce the letters so accurately and slowly that they could be heard exactly.

Not always with success: "That sometimes worked less, sometimes it made for amusement while writing, but sometimes also for annoying eye rolling, if you had to clap a word then to make the double consonants even clearer , have you ever wondered why a "dumb h" means "dumb h" right - because you do NOT hear it, not even if you speak so clearly, I have the word "dentist" through the kitchen danced, from the door to the hearth, to show my son that the "a" is spoken very terribly long, I was not allowed to improve it, he was glad that his mother obviously had lost his mind and wrote "Zaanartz." Great. "

Gradually, of course, rules are introduced. Even with Isa Becker's son, mistakes are now corrected. But now in the third grader and certainly in many other children have some spellings easily impressed. As a result, dictates with many mistakes are returned and the fun of learning is slowly but surely lost. Something that, in the opinion of Isa Becker, is due to the 'writing by ear' method .

That's what makes it clear on Facebook: "So, thank you, dear inventors of this method, for a first year of schooling with joy, for a danced dentist, for flying pencils, stomping children's feet and childish desperation when it's erased again -" I never learn that ! "Today, my child crying wrote the correction of the learning target control and I ordered an exercise book on the internet - 100 dictations."

The mother's Facebook post receives encouragement from many parents who are also upset about the teaching method. In many comments you read "you speak directly to me from the soul" or "exactly these problems we have".

Experts have been arguing for some time about which method is the right one to teach children to read and write. While the Siegen Germanist Professor Werner Steinig already expressed his criticism of the 'writing by ear' two years ago, his colleague Hans Brügelmann, for example, contradicts him. In his opinion, there are studies that show that children even write better today than they did when they were still using the 'read after writing' method.

There does not seem to be a patent solution, but there are many angry mothers and fathers who share the opinion of Isa Becker from Iserlohn. What may now cause the public to the annoyance may have to show.

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