A brief introduction to the  initial teaching alphabet  -  a medium for teaching a writing way to reading
i.t.a. in a nutshell 1
the initial teaching alphabet  starting with phonic consistency

Many approaches to reading attempt to postpone the introduction of inconsistent spelling and irregular words.  Since over 60% of the words in English are not spelled consistently, this often results in a very reduced vocabulary.  With i.t.a., children  have immediate access to the over 3,000 words that are already in their vocabulary at age 6.  i.t.a. does not postpone vocabulary, it postpones exposure to inconsistent spelling.  In addition, an i.t.a. teaches phonemic awareness and eliminates the need for children to invent spellings.  A practice advocated in many non-phonic approaches.

If you make it easier to read and spell, children will learn faster --John Gledhill
i.t.a. chart
 

SUMMARY:Children who are fortunate enough to speak a language that has a transparent orthography learn to read and write in that language much faster than children who have to contend with an opaque orthography. In addition to attaining specific levels of literacy in less than half the time, children learning with a consistent writing system do not exhibit the same symptoms of dyslexia. Children with a graphic processing disabilities can usually cope with simpler codes.

The i.t.a. or initial teaching alphbet was designed to provide the early learning environment that childen enjoy in non-English speaking countries. It worked.  With a simpler orthography, children could keep pace with their age group in other lands. However, in the third year of school, English speaking children had to convert to the traditional orthography.  At this point they fell behind the children in other countries.

1. An inishul teeching alfubet maeks thu task uv lerning tw reed eezeer and mor enjoiubul
2. An inishul teeching alfubet maeks thu task uv lerning tue reed eezeeer and mor enjjoiubul
3. Ann inishal tieching alfabet meiks the tassk av lerning tu ried iezier and mor enjoyabl
4. an iniScl tECiN alfcbet mAks Dc task cv lcrning tu rEd EzEcr and mor enjoicbl

The 26 letters are not "the alphabet".  The real alphabet is the correspondence table used to encode speech [see below].  The alphabet is the complete set of sound-signs corresonding to the 40 or so basic speech sounds or phonemes.   An ideal alphabet would have a symbol for every significant  sound in the language.  With only 23 non-redudnant letters [c q x are not needed: c=k/s, q=kw, x=ks] for 40 or so sounds, it is clear that some of the letters are going to have to do double duty.  When two letters stand for a new sound-sign [eg, Sh, Ch] they are called digraphs. 

 ALPHABET: A type of writing system in which a set of symbols [letters] represents the important sounds [phonemes] of a language. 
 

DICTIONARY OF LANGUAGE & LANGUAGES

According to Downing [1990], the child should learn to read in his or her native language and with a consistent phonemic writing system first.  If the the first language is Spanish, there is not need to invent a phonemic alphabet and writing system, Spain adopted one in 1713 and have been using it ever since with minor reforms every 50 years or so. 

Literacy once learned, is a skill that can be transferred.  It is like learning to ride a bike with training wheels before learning to ride a motorcyle.  One can go immediately to the more complex task but it usually involves more effort, more failures, and more frustration. 

A consistent writing system can be learned in less than 40 hours.

The Complete i.t.a. Alphabet  An alphabet is a  grapheme-phoneme  correspondence table: A key to the 44 sound signs:  17 vowels - 27 consonants An alphabet A collection of sound signs [or phonograms] linking visible marks  to speech sounds [i.e., phonemes]

The complete alphabet [click to enlarge] is twice as complex as the ordered character set that is usually referred to as the alphabet. Counting digraphs, the traditional writing system actually uses 104 symbols. Only 26 appear in the alphabet. Unlike the i.t.a. alphabet, most of the 104 symbols refer to more than one sound. i.t.a. has over 6 phonograms that reference more than one sound. c = /k/ and /s/, depending on the vowel.  a = ae and @.  All of the short vowels are ambiguous in a similar way.  [/r] = @r and 3r but "her" is not spelled h/r. However, unlike traditional spelling there are no code overlaps. Most of the added complexity in the i.t.a. is with the vowels, 17 instead of 5.  The consonants include 9 ligatured digraficsound signs: wh ch sh th & th plus ng er oo & uu The i.t.a. alphabet is almost the same as the New Spelling alphabet. Pitman's augmented alphabet had phonograms, for ng, wh, the terminal z and syllabic r [more]

, the name attached to Pitman's augmented roman script, was the subject of a major educational experiment funded by the British government in the 1960's.  i.t.a.  or 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 to two months.  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.  [more on the importance of early reading success]

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. 

Long Vowels Spellings in TO and i.t.a. 

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. 

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.  However, Downing [1967] could not confirm more than a 200% improvement for the i.t.a. trained children.  Four months after the transition, the advantage for the group that started out with ITA was still well ahead of the control group but not by much.  Their advantage was significantly diminished by the 4th year of school.  An informal study in South Dakota indicated that by the 8th grade, i.t.a. children were no longer testing at a significantly higher level that their conventionally taught peers.

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.  Italian and Spanish children achieve a level of mastery in the 3rd grade that their English speaking counterparts do not achieve until the 6th grade.  

Downing's studies did not control the teaching method.  It was a study of the impact of changing the medium [the alphabet].  Some teachers used methods adapted to teach a consistent alphabet.  Most just taught the i.t.a. the same way as they had taught the traditional alphabet.  If they used the "look-say" method, they continued to use it with i.t.a.  

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. 

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]. 

The book, The Art of Spelling, http://www.unifon.org/spellingMVS.html  includes 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.  The Simplified Spelling society has compiled 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 four years. 

• Downing, John   (1967) Evaluating the Initial Teaching Alphabet, London, Cassell.

 
•                          (1962) to bee or not to be: The Augmented Roman Alphabet, London, Cassell

 
• Pitman, James and St.John. Alphabets and Reading, Pitman, London.

 
• Upward, Chris  (2001) - John Downing's i.t.a. Evaluation, JSSS 2000/2

 
• Johnson, Rachel (2001) - A cleer case of educational lunacie, Telegraph Weekend, 2.6.2001

 
• Research

 
• fonetic-keyboard.html

Comments   If you have comments, please post them on the saundspel forum. [post]
 

[SB]  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 or when the school ran out of i.t.a. books - there would be a setback but the i.t.a. trained group should be able to regain most of thier early lead. This is what Downing found in the UK but it doesn't seem to have been matched by the U.S. experience.

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BBC 40 Anniversary of i.t.a. broadcast [transcription]
www.itafoundation.org/bensbook.htm
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alc fonetic [new spelling updated] see also Zachrissen's Anglic]
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
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