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i.t.a. in a nutshell the initial teaching alphabet 
starting with phonic consistency
Advantages | Disadvantages | ITA | Discussion | ita-eval.html | Index |
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Thu Caampleet Alfubet - fortee foenugramz  A
key to the 40 sound signs: 17 vowels - 23 consonants
An alphabet is a grapheme-phoneme correspondence table: A collection of sound signs linking visible marks to speech sounds
Any word in the English language can be spelled with 40 phonograms |
The complete alphabet is twice
as complex as the ordered character set that is usually referred to as
the alphabet.
Most of the added complexity is with the vowels, 17 instead of 5. The consonants include five digrafic sound signs: ch sh zh th This alphabet, borrowed from Truespel, is almost the same as the New Spelling alphabet used for the i.t.a. Pitmans augmented alphabet had two more phonograms, ng and wh and used different digraphs for the long and short u sound. [more] |
Augmented Roman was based on New Spelling
. ITA's distinguishing characteristic was to turn digraphs
such as TH, CH and EE into ligatures. (See the
slate on the right which illustrates 14 i.t.a. ligatures or
connected characters). Short vowels and most consonants are spelled
according to the dominant pattern found in traditional English spelling.
e=eh, any=eny, g=gig not gem, phone=foen.
Unlike traditional English spelling, i.t.a. can be taught in two weeks. There are 42 i.t.a. characters plus a few duplicates for the 42 sounds found in English speech. This quickly enables children to make full use of their existing vocabulary in their writing. Young children like consistency and the confidence that their spelling is correct. With a consistent orthography, it is relatively easy to spell any word you can correctly pronounce and pronounce any word that you see spelled.
Most countries have an alphabetical system which enables them to get a year or two head start on English speaking school children. i.t.a. levels the playing field during the first three years of school. Eventually, the children have to learn to cope with the inconsistencies of English spelling. i.t.a. pushes back this day of reckoning until the child is better able to cope with the ambiguity.
Unlike New Spelling, ITA required a special ITA font. According to Dewey, the special font was cosmetic - it was part of the promotional packaging. Pitman argued that the ligatures allowed students to view digraphs as distinct sound signs. Dewey disagreed and advocated using the standard roman character set and New Spelling (ALC-fonetic) correspondences.
With New Spelling and ITA, the long vowels were spelled one way instead of 20 different ways.
| ace=aes | east=eest | ice=ies | oat=oet | use=ues | TO - i.t.a. |
| mate-maet | meat-meet | might-miet | moat-moet | mute-muet | TO-NS/ i.t.a. |
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Clearly it is easier to remember one way to spell a sound than 20. [There are 20 different ways to spell the English vowel sounds in T.O.] Not only do those learning the traditional orthography have to remember 20 possible spelling patterns, they have to remember which pattern goes with what words. Spelling is predictable only for those who have memorized the dictionary.
Since four spelling patterns account for about 75% of the spellings of each sound, the task is not quite as difficult as it sounds. Spelling in English is still a "linguistic guessing game" but knowing the four most frequent patterns gives one a 75% chance of spelling a word right in 4 tries.
An
analysis of the comparative learning tasks
suggests
that ITA should be at least 8 times easier than TO.
ITA should be at least 8 times easier than TO but this relative ease has never been documented. In most of the comparative studies, children progressed about twice as fast as those starting out in the traditional orthography. Initially, the i.t.a. group surged ahead learning at nearly 4 times the speed of their counterparts in the traditional class. After the transition, the advantage for the group that started out with ITA was still well ahead of the control group but their advantage was significantly diminished.
The
great mystery is why the research did not confirm a much greater advantage
for systematic spelling. Some cross cultural studies have indicated
that Spanish and Italian children seem to achieve in one year a level of
skill in reading and writing that takes English speaking children 4 years
to achieve.
There are clear differences between the ITA experiments and the cross cultural ones. In one case the child is learning to become literate in the traditional orthography, in the other the child is becoming literate in an orthography that is not understood by the parents and not supported by publishers. ITA merely postpones the difficult transition to TO to a time when the child is better prepared to deal with its lack of logic and consistency.
All
phonemic or alphabetic spellings of English will fail
to
match dictionary spellings about 60% of the time.
One alternative to i.t.a. is more tolerance for invented spellings. Children can write quite quickly when they are allowed to use their own versions of English spelling. Another approach might be to allow children to use any one of the 4 most common spelling patterns. This still sounds confusing but it is a viable alternative to insisting on one standardized phonemic spelling.
In his book, Alphabets and Reading, Pitman insisted that ITA was a medium not a method: and indeed countless methods were used to teach ITA including non-phonetic "Look-Say" approaches. It is interesting to note that countries with highly consistent or alphabetic orthographies often do not focus on "phonics." If the medium is consistent, then children will progress faster regardless of the particular method used to teach reading.
i.t.a. clearly helps children to learn what an alphabet is supposed to be. It introduces them to a logical system. It reduces the frustration that children often feel when confronted with inconsistency. It gives children a sense of acomplishment and postpones the inevitable two years.
Does it have any lasting benefit or lasting harm. Both have probably been overstated. Children do not have to be as smart or commit as much to memory to master i.t.a. The work load is only 1/10th that of the traditional writing system. Some children who were started out in i.t.a. never quite made the transition but they probably wouldn't have done any better if started off with the traditional alphabet. i.t.a. can mess up a few sight words such as [shoe and show].
In my of the book, The Art of
Spelling, http://www.unifon.org/spellingMVS.html
I include the following quote
by Richard Venezky [U of Delaware] [p.88]. Venezky is the author
of the American Way of Spelling.
"The claims that we lose one to two years of education because of spelling irregularities . . .are quite hallow and are rarely bolstered by any empirical evidence."
These kinds of statements by who should know were detrimental to the i.t.a. movement, especially in the U.S. There is quite a bit of evidence that children learning to read Spanish and Italian progress twice as fast and are able to write their languge better at the end of one year of schooling than English speaking children at the end of two or three years.
Chart
of 42 English phonemes
..Alternota
Chart for New Spelling (NS)
From
i.t.a.: An independent Evaluation. FW Warburton and Vera
Southgate. Pages 152-4
Back to Spelling Reform Page
Summary: The initial misgivings proved to be unfounded.
It should be emphasized that the majority of the verbal evidence collected in this evaluation weighted the advantages of using i.t.a. for beginning reading and writing with infants much more heavily than the disadvantages; the latter being frequently expressed as doubts or dangers rather than disadvantages.
When
asked about the advantages and disadvantages of i.t.a., more than half
the infant teachers who had used it approved of it so thoroughly that they
could see no disadvantages and, accordingly, were only able to list advantages.
Other teachers who basically approved of i.t.a. were nevertheless aware
of certain dangers. The same was true of H.M. Inspectors, local officials,
other educationists and parents, who noted a few disadvantages, even when
their conclusions were in favour of i.t.a.
Many of the misgivings originally felt by certain people, when the use of i.t.a. was first proposed, had proved in practice to be unfounded. Nevertheless, some of these doubts continue to be expressed by people who are lacking in personal experience of working with, or observing, children using i.t.a.
The main advantages and disadvantages put forward by all the different categories of people interviewed are summarised in the following lists. Those doubts or dangers which were mentioned by people who had seen little of i.t.a. in practice, and which experience had disproved, have not been included.
2 This early reading is not merely sounding words but is usually reading with understanding. .
3 Children soon find they can make successful attempts to read unknown words themselves, without help from teachers. As a result, young children choose to read individually more often than when t.o. was used, read for longer periods of time and read many more books.
4 The materials read by infants soon extended beyond those of a basic reading scheme into a wide variety of story books, information books and reference books, as well as comics, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and so on.
5 i.t.a. has brought about a reduction in the number of non-readers and struggling readers in infant classes and has consequently reduced the frustration and lack of confidence formerly experienced by children who found difficulty in reading with t.o.
6 The beneficial effect of the introduction of i.t.a. on children's free writing was listed as one of its main advantages quite as frequently as its effect on reading.
7 The comparative regularity of the sound-symbol relationship has resulted in children's early discovery that they can make good attempts at spelling any word for themselves. The result has been a marked increase in the quantity and quality of children's free written work.
8 Children who have learned to read and write easily and happily with i.t.a. tend to develop confidence and independence and to show initiative and responsibility in other aspects of school life at a quite early age.
9 The early mastery of the skills of reading and writing, together with the independent and confident attitudes developed by children, has led naturally to an increase in individual study and exploration which is in line with current heuristic methods of learning.
10 The use of i.t.a. has benefited work other than reading and writing in infant classes in two different ways. Firstly, children's earlier skill in reading and writing has been instrumental in extending their understanding of other subjects, for example mathematics and science. Secondly, the fact that children master the basic skills of reading and writing with greater ease and speed has enabled the teacher to devote more time to the needs of individual children and to aspects of the curriculum other than the language arts.
11 Teachers themselves obtain greater pleasure and satisfaction in children's progress in reading and writing. They spoke with feeling of the end of the 'long uphill grind' of children learning to read with t.o., and the abolition of long queues of children waiting to ask for help in spelling words.
12 Teachers also rated it as an advantage that the introduction of i.t.a. has stirred up a great interest in reading among themselves; attendances at lectures and conferences, as well as staffroom discussions have contributed to an increase in teachers' own understanding of children's learning, with a consequent increase in their teaching proficiency. This view was supported by head-teachers, local advisers and other visitors to schools, who also noted particularly an improvement in the proficiency of less able and less experienced teachers when they use i.t.a. rather than t.o.
13 Teachers and others counted it an advantage of i.t.a. that its introduction has resulted in an increasing interest by parents in their children's reading, often exemplified by closer co-operation between parents and teachers.
2 There were instances of parents reporting the frustrations experienced by children, who were not yet ready to transfer from i.t.a. to t.o., when they attempt to read t.o. print at home in books, comics, newspapers and other printed materials.
3 Certain parents find it a disadvantage to be unable to give the help requested by their children who are reading or writing in i.t.a. at home.
4 Many parents, teachers and other educators
are very conscious of the problem which
arises when a family moves and a child who is not a fluent reader in i.t.a.
has to attend a school using only t.o.
5 Local inspectors, as well as teachers themselves, are aware of the danger of infant teachers endeavouring to hasten children's transition in reading from i.t.a. to t.o. This problem is most likely to arise when slower infants are about to be promoted to those junior schools known, or thought, to be not very favourably disposed towards i.t.a.
6 Owing to publishers' doubts regarding the
possible extension of the use of i.t.a. the number and variety of books
and other reading materials available in i.t.a. for beginning readers is
still small compared with early reading materials printed in t.o. Furthermore,
experience with i.t.a. has not yet been sufficiently extensive as to result
in the most appropriate reading materials for the early stages being devised.
[This problem has been overcome to some extent
by the availability of e-texts which can then be run thru a ITA converter
- then the ITA font can be applied to create the needed materials].
7 Once children have mastered the initial
stages of reading, H.M. Inspectors, local advisers, teachers and others
do not consider that the quantity and quality of books available for infants
cater adequately for their expanding reading ability. This lack is felt
not only in i.t.a. books but also in suitable t.o. books for young readers
who have made the transition from i.t.a.
Comments [to
be added]
Pete,
I do not disagree with your statement. You make a good point.
You go on to say that you would not expect that
learning with an ITA would have any lasting benefits.
The early gains would be cancelled out when students
had to switch to T.O.
In the research literature, however, there is a clear
expectation of a transfer of learning and a gain for
those who learn the simple skills first.
I have indicated elsewhere that a task analysis would
indicate that children should be able to learn a
consistent system ten times as fast as TO. There is
that much less to learn. 50 spellings vs. 500+
spellings per sound.
There has been research indicating that children
progress twice as fast as TO trained kids but that is
no where near ten times as fast. Learning is not
matching the theoretical prediction.
At the time of transition - usually the third grade -
there would be a setback but the ita trained group
should be able to regain most of thier early lead.
This is what Downing found but it doesn't seem to have
been matched by the U.S. experience.
--- Pete wrote:
> Steve,
>
> Regarding the effectivness of ITA (see belo), hu du yu beleve?
The results
> so stated ar not contradictory. Wunse I got a computer and lernd
how easy it
> was tu re-rite, re-arrange and revise, I wood never go bak tu paper and
> pencil or tipe-riter tu du any sereus composishon. I call the computer
my
> enabeller because it led directly tu my erning a
> collej degree twenty-wun years after completeing hi skool.
Being abel tu
> poot my thots tugether on paper made me very smart. Trying tu du
so tuday
> with paper and pencil or on a tipe-riter wood set me bak tu the medeocrity
I
> experiensed thruowt hi skool.
>
> So, yes, ITA students advansed mor rapidly than "TO" students. And yes,
the
> transishon to TS (tradishonal speling) was difficult and strongly resisted.
> The owtcom, the ultimate acheivmant in litterasy by
> ITA students did not exceed that of "TO" students. Nor wood
I expect it
> tu. The tradishonal speling of English limits litterasy,
no matter what
> aproach is taken tu it. That sum manaj a hi degree of fasility with TS
in no
> way diminishes its limits tu litterasy for moast. The arguement
> sugjests that the students or the ITA was at fault. What
is clear from the
> perspectiv of a speling reformer is that the TS (TO) is at fault,
boath
> empirically and theoretically.
>
> Pete B
please send your comments to sbett@lycos.com
back
to the index page
alc
fonetic[new
spelling updated]
truespel
- truespel is 90% new spelling + a stress marker [check
it out]
see
also spelreit
for a detailed problem-solution explanation
RITEspelling
is a less than phonemic proposal that resembles the traditional orthography
Quick
Refrence
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Spanglish
Saxon-Spanglish |
