I really like the way, in this method, how the kids can write phonetically and then when we work on writing directly, after the story and after the reading, it all cleans up really nicely.
Unless they have heard it first with lots and lots of reps with full meaning to them, they can’t write, nor should they be expected to. This TCI kind of writing – with big platform of listening and writing on which the writing can sit – cleans up real well because it is based in sound.
The other kind of instruction in writing, the old kind, in which traditional teaching is used (not based on comprehended input first) doesn’t clean up at all. It can’t, because the student has no foundation on which to base the writing. It’s all intellectual hieroglyphics and emotional frustration for the student.
Maybe over the course of the next one hundred years we won’t make that same stupid mistake about writing. We base our instruction in writing on listening and reading, and that is why the three steps of TPRS rock the house.