Learning to Read with i.t.a.

One Sound-One Symbol

In regular orthography a child  cannot depend upon letters and sounds to remain constant in words.  For example, "ate," "eight'" "wait," and "they."  The 26 letters of our conventional alphabet are combined in numerous ways, making learning to read and spell very complex for young children, people with dyslexia, and those learning English as a second language.

The initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.) has been specifically designed to present the beginning reader and writer with a logical and reliable system.  Each symbol has one visual form  that represents one spoken sound. There are 44 sounds in spoken English; therefore, i.t.a. has 44 symbols.  The initial teaching alphabet uses 24 of the conventional 26 letters and adds 20 more symbols to represent the additional speech sounds of English.  Fourteen of these additional symbols are made by joining two letters, for example, "a" and "e" together (A) to represent the long "a" sound. Capitals are represented by making the i.t.a. symbol larger.

When children understand that print is speech written down, that words are made up of speech sounds and that the symbols and the speech sounds agree, they can read anything that they understand.  When they know how to form the symbols, they can write anything that they can say.  They are no longer restricted to beginning reading programs that use decodable text  (The man ran.) and can use their vocabulary of thousands of words to write complex sentences in motivating personal stories.

As children read and write in i.t.a., they become aware of conventional spellings.  Approximately one-third of English words are the same in i.t.a. and t.o. (traditional orthography).  Children quickly learn that they need to change slightly certain symbols that are visually similar such as the "L" in "round."  They also quickly learn to spell words that are visually dissimilar:  "once" for "wuns."  The initial teaching alphabet allows them to crack the phonetic code of English and become proficient readers and writers without struggling with complex sound-spelling patterns at the beginning stage of literacy development.

Adapted from Learning to read with i.t.a. 

For More Information Contact:

betita@optonline.net

http://www.itafoundation.org

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Last modified: October 17, 2001