Natural spelling is a name given by China people, and its original English name is PHONICS. The general explanation of PHONICS is "the method of teaching people to read and pronounce words by learning the pronunciation of letters/letter combinations/syllables". The original meaning of phonetics is pronunciation. As the name implies, phonetics is also a method of teaching pronunciation. China has a tradition of beautifying the West, which can be seen from the translation of country names such as the United States, France, Germany and Britain. It is natural to translate plain and simple spelling into high-end foreign-style "natural spelling" Although it has been disputed with the whole language, natural spelling is indeed a way for many children in English-speaking countries in the United States and Canada to learn from english introduction.
Some organizations and individuals advocate "mystery", "high efficiency", "advanced" and "science" in natural spelling for commercial interests. I found a textbook of natural spelling and studied it for a few days. I found that natural spelling is not so mysterious, efficient, advanced and scientific. It is nothing more than a method of literacy, teaching children to read, and then being able to read. According to my limited knowledge, there are similar methods in Chinese. I'm afraid someone will scold me for playing the game of "spiritual victory" and "since ancient times". Is there a literacy method similar to that of high-end foreign teachers' English in rustic Chinese? Ridiculous!
It's not funny. Just make a careful comparison. Natural spelling is to teach children the pronunciation rules of various letters and letter combinations. Learners have mastered the pronunciation of letters/letter combinations, can read words when they meet them, and can spell letters when they hear the pronunciation. In Chinese, the language units similar to English words are words, and the language units similar to letter/letter combinations are strokes and radicals. Pictophonetic characters use roots to represent pronunciation. Isn't it a common literacy method to teach learners the pronunciation of radicals to help them learn to remember the pronunciation of pictophonetic characters? It is also true that a scholar can read words and read half.
English is not a language whose pronunciation is completely corresponding to the spelling of letters, and the most optimistic textbook of natural spelling can only admit that its rules only cover 80% of the vocabulary. Generally speaking, natural spelling can only cover 60% of English words. Even so, natural spelling is very useful for children in English-speaking countries to learn English, that is, to read. Natural spelling has existed for decades. Existence is reasonable.
Why is this? There is a simple reason. A language must have three elements, pronunciation, meaning and font. What does a native English-speaking child mainly study when learning English? I mainly learn to read and write, that is, to establish the connection between font and pronunciation/meaning. More popularly speaking, it is to learn to read and write. Natural spelling teaches children the pronunciation of letter/letter combinations, and they can spell the pronunciation. As English is the mother tongue, children can spell the pronunciation and know which word this word corresponds to in daily life. They have said these words thousands of times in daily life, but they just don't know what it looks like to write them on paper. With natural spelling, children can automatically associate words in daily spoken language with words spelled on paper, which is the process of literacy. In this case, the inaccuracy of natural spelling is not very prominent, and children will automatically correct spelling mistakes according to spoken English. From this perspective, natural spelling is a good way to help English-speaking children learn English.
For non-native English learners, natural spelling is not so useful. Because for non-native English learners, the three elements of language, such as pronunciation, semantics and font, are unfamiliar. Even after learning natural spelling, seeing spelling on paper and spelling out pronunciation (probably wrong), learners still don't understand the meaning, and reading still can't be done. Learners still need to consult a dictionary to understand the meaning of words. Instead of this, it is better to look up the dictionary at once to understand the pronunciation, spelling and meaning of words. Asking children in China to learn English by native English speakers' literacy methods is as ridiculous as asking children in Britain to learn Chinese characters by "one scholar reads half a word" instead of pinyin. Isn't this an effective example of the new era?