"Is English a Dreadful Language?"

Reading Development and Difficulties - Chapter 1

While reading this chapter I came across a poem I have never read before, but must post in my classroom next year.  The poem is called "Is English a Dreadful Language?"  I feel as I must share it as well as the youtube link of people singing this poem.

I take it you already know

Of tough and bough and cough and dough?

Others may stumble, but not you.

On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,

To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word

That looks like beard and sounds like bird,

And dead: it's said like bed, not bead - 

For goodness sake don't call it 'deed'!

Watch out for meat and great and threat

(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth in mother,

Nor both in bother, broth in brother,

And here is not a match for there

Nor dear and fear for bear and pear;

And then there's dose and rose and lose - 

Just look them up - and goose and choose,

And cork and work and card and ward,

And font and front and word and sword,

And do and go an thwart and cart - 

Come, come, I've hardly made a start!

A dreadful language?  Man alive!

I'd learned to speak it when I was five.

And yet to write it, the more I sigh,

I'll not learn how'till the day I die.

Now for chapter definitions from pages 22-24:

Ability match or reading-age match design	§  Research design in which the performance of a group of kids, such as poor readers, is compared with that of group of children (typically younger) who are at the same level of reading ability
Alphabetic writing system	§  A writing system that represents the phonemes of a language
Clause	§  A group of words comprising a subject and a predicate, which must contain a verb “The cake (subject) was very tasty (predict with verb).”
Content words	§  Words that convey meaning such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
Cross-sectional design	§  A research design in which the performance of different groups is compared.
Decode	§  The ability to translate letters and letter strings into pronunciations.
Developmental dyslexia	§  A condition in which the development of word reading and spelling abilities is impaired.
Function words	§  Words with a grammatical role, such as preposiions (at), determiners (the) and pronouns (it)
Grapheme	§  A letter or group of letters that represents a phoneme i.e. “sh” in the word shop
Homophones	§  Words with different meanings that sound the same i.e. bark of a dog and bark of the tree
Inference	§  The process of going beyond the explicit information in a text to make links between different parts of the text or between the text and general knowledge
Lexicon	§  The mental store or dictionary of words.  Also referred to as the mental lexicon.
Logographic writing system	§  A writing system that represents the meaning (words or morphemes) of the language.
Longitudinal study	§  A research design in which measures are taken for the same individuals at different time points and analyzed to assess whether some variables predict later ability and/or growth ability
Morpheme	§  The smallest linguistic unit in a word that carries meaning.  There are 3 morphemes in unreadable (un-read-able)
Nonword	§  A letter string that does not form a form a word.  Can also be referred to as a pseudo-word.
Orthography	§  The writing system of a language.
Phoneme	§  The smallest unit of speech sound, which can change the meaning of a word.
Phonemic awareness	§  A type of phonological awareness, specifically the ability to reflect on and manipulate the phonemes in the spoken language
Phonological awareness	§  The ability to reflect on and manipulate the spoken sounds in the language.
Priming	§  Occurs when 1 stimulus influences a person’s response to a later stimulus
Sematic priming	§  Involves the presentation of 2 stimuli related in meaning.  i.e. “prime” dog would lead to a faster response to the subsequent target word bone.
Sentence	§  A grammatical unit made up of one or more clauses.
Syllabic writing system	§  A writing system that represents the spoken syllables of language
Syllable	§  A unit of a word that can be spoken without interruption comprising a vowel or a vowel plus consonants.
Syntax	§  The aspect of grammar that specifies word and phrase order in language.
Training and intervention studies	§  A research design in which at least 1 group of individuals receive tuition in a type of knowledge, skill or strategy, thought to be casually implicated in the development of the skills of interest such as reading
Vowel	§  A letter of the alphabet that stands for a spoken vowel, which is a speech sound made with the vocal tract open.
Word recognition	§  The ability to derive a representation of a printed word that enables access to its meaning.

(Cain, K. (2010). Reading development and difficulties / Kate Cain. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. : BPS Blackwell/John Wiley, 2010.)