From
5-9 June 2006, the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
South Africa, is to host a five-day workshop to give delegates
from universities, associations and governments the
opportunity to debate issues surrounding the teaching of
English Phonics in the schools and universities of Africa. The
workshop is expected to be of particular interest to those
involved in the training of student teachers, speech and
language therapists and teachers of the deaf, and also to
government officials with regional or national
responsibilities for the teaching of English literacy skills.
The aim of the sponsored workshop, Time for a New
Phonics Approach for Teaching English in Africa?, is to
encourage collaborative research projects across Africa, to
investigate the relative merits of the ‘synthetic phonics’
(blending individual sounds) and ‘analytic phonics’
(looking at letter patterns) approaches for teaching the 44
sounds and the main spelling choices of English. Both the
British and Australian governments, as has been widely
reported in the international press, have recently published
reports stating that schools should use a ‘systematic
phonics approach‘ to teach English. However, there is a big
international debate about which is the best approach to use,
as there is no evidence that one form of phonics is more
effective than any other.
The week-long workshop in June will be led by British
educational psychologist Alan Davies, the pioneer of the
widely used phonics programme THRASS (Teaching Handwriting,
Reading And Spelling Skills). Davies strongly recommends a
combination of synthetic and analytic phonics, which is a
message that has been well received in thousands of schools
worldwide, mostly in the UK, Europe, Australia and, in recent
years, Africa. After keynote addresses on the first afternoon,
the workshop will include two days of training for the THRASS
Accredited Certificate, followed by two days of visits to
city, rural and township schools that are advocates of THRASS.
The final afternoon will include presentations on the training
of parents and the impact of THRASS in bilingual education, by
teachers and advisers from the UK.
The Botswana Government is to pilot THRASS and, if
successful, it will be implemented in all schools. In South
Africa, the THRASS Accredited Certificate is already a
compulsory module for Foundation Phase student teachers at
both the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and the
University of Pretoria, and other universities in Africa have
also expressed interest in making it a compulsory module.
The National Union of Educators (NUE) have invited Alan
Davies to address 1000 Foundation Phase teachers, as keynote
speaker, at their annual conference in Johannesburg on the 20
May 2006.
Further details and an online application form for the
Witwatersrand Workshop, which is being sponsored by THRASS UK,
can be found at www.thrass.co.uk/witsworkshop.htm
Issued by:
Chris Griffiths,
International Development, THRASS UK
Email. chrisgriffiths@thrass.co.uk
Tel. +30 266 203 1207 THRASS UK News Media Centre:
www.thrass.co.uk/nm.htm
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