This blog looks at phonics, the system of teaching reading to young children that has been adopted by schools in Britain.
Synthetic Phonics
Background to Phonics
In the 70s and 80s a “whole language” approach to reading became dominant. This method relied on children being exposed to books from an early age. Children were encouraged to read in context and to use a range of strategies for decoding unfamiliar words, including guessing the word from the surrounding context. This approach was, according to REF, ‘anti-formal reading instruction, anti-phonics teaching, anti-dyslexia, anti-testing and anti-formalism’. This method of teaching reading developed into the ‘searchlight method’ which advocated a range of strategies that could be ‘depicted as a series of searchlights, each of which sheds light upon the text’ (DfEE, 1998: 3). By the early 1990s, a drop in reading standards in Britain had led many to question this approach to teaching reading and phonics gained more recognition. In the 2000s, phonics became even more popular in 2004 Woodhead argued that ‘in the crucial early years of a child’s education we need phonics and only phonics’ (Woodhead, 2004). The Rose report in 2006 recommended the wholesale adoption of synthetic phonics as its main reading approach in early reading education and in response all schools in England ‘have been told to put in place a discrete synthetic phonics programme as the key means for teaching high-quality phonic work (Wise & Goswami, 2008). (Contrast this to the opposite path that New Zealand has taken where the whole language approach remains popular and phonics occupies a marginal position (Soler and Openshaw, 2007).
What is synthetic phonics
There are two types of phonics: synthetic and analytic. Here we discuss synthetic phonics first:
- Synthetic phonics involves the development of phonemic awareness from the outset. As part of the decoding process, the reader [child] would learn up to 44 phonemes (the smallest units of sound) and their related graphemes (the written symbols for the phoneme). One phoneme can be represented by various graphemes, e.g. ‘oa’, ‘ow’, ‘ough’. This is, of course, one of the reasons that the English language can be so difficult to learn to read and spell. The reader would be expected to recognise each grapheme then sound out each phoneme in a word, building up through blending the sounds together to pronounce the word phonetically. This approach works well with phonetically regular words. (LTS, 2008)
According to the Dept. for Children, Schools and families,
- High quality systematic phonic work teaches children the correspondences between graphemes in written language and phonemes in spoken language, and how to use these correspondences to read and spell words. Phonics is systematic when all the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in a clearly defined sequence. Research shows that systematic phonics teaching yields superior performance in reading compared to all types of unsystematic or no phonics teaching.
A grapheme is a symbol of a phoneme, that is, a letter or group of letters representing a sound. There is always the same number of graphemes in a word as phonemes. The alphabet contains only 26 letters but we use it to make all the graphemes that represent the phonemes of English.
- We convert graphemes to phonemes when we are reading aloud (decoding written words). We convert phonemes to graphemes when we are spelling (encoding words for writing). To do this, children need to learn which graphemes correspond to which phonemes and vice versa. In order to read an unfamiliar word, a child must recognise (‘sound out’) each grapheme, not each letter (e.g. sounding out ship as /sh/-/i/-/p/ not /s/- /h/ – /i/ – /p/), and then merge (blend) the phonemes together to make a word.
Segmenting and blending
Segmenting and blending are reversible key phonic skills. Segmenting consists of breaking words down into their constituent phonemes to spell. Blending consists of building words from their constituent phonemes to read. Both skills are important. The skill of blending (synthesising) phonemes, in order, all through the word to read it, tends to receive too little attention in the teaching of phonics; it is very important to make sure that children secure blending skills.
Arguments Against Phonics
Some arguments against phonics are:
- One sceptic is Bethan Marshall, an ESRC-funded education researcher at King’s College, London. She says that the evidence-base for phonics is confused and small. Marshall also points out that an energetic educational materials industry stands to make money out of phonics, as it can from any significant change in the way millions of children are educated. (Ince, 2007)
- Dr Bethan Marshall, from Kings College, London says that the decision to back phonics has been influenced by “a very, very powerful lobby with enormous commercial interest who are set to make a great deal of money out of schools having to change their reading schemes”. Dr Marshall told the BBC that a ‘one size fits all’ approach to teaching reading is not appropriate because children do not all learn to read in the same way. She says: “If you give young teachers only one method, and then they come across children who just can’t learn in that way, they have no other strategies to help them read. The end result is that you disadvantage as many children as you advantage”. (Ince, 2007)
According to Readhead:
- In an article for Educational Psychology in Practice, Professor Usha Goswami from the University of Cambridge says that the complexities of English pronunciation and the inconsistency of English spelling are far more difficult to master than those of Finnish, Spanish or Italian. She says: “This makes it inherently unlikely that one method of teaching phonics will suddenly cause English children to perform like Finnish children – who typically learn to read in 10 weeks”.
‘Phonics is killing picture books’
Article | Published in The TES on 23 November, 2007 | By: Helen Ward
Phonics fever could be killing the picture book in schools, Michael Rosen, the children’s laureate, has warned.
Mr Rosen said: “Those crucial years of four to six are when the picture book is the ideal reading and sharing material. These years have become clogged with anxiety, reading schemes, programmes, panic and the obsessive attention to individual letters.”
Huw Thomas, co-editor of Picture Books for the Literacy Hour, said that in some schools funding is being directed towards phonics rather than making sure children get good-quality picture books.
Anthony Browne, author and illustrator of Gorilla, Silly Billy and Into the Forest, said: “We think that growing up and being educated is about leaving things like pictures behind and moving into words. Children are encouraged to read books without pictures much earlier than they used to be. I’ve heard parents say, ‘Don’t get a picture book, get a real book’ – as if there is a difference. I think it’s a shame for children and for the country.”
Michael Foreman has illustrated more than 170 books, including Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. He said: “There have been one or two golden ages during my time but this is the first time there really is a serious threat, because there is less choice.
“It seems to me that if you’re not doing a book about snot, bogies or underpants, you have little chance of getting published. We need more poetic, different books that extend the child’s experience.”
A survey of 1,200 teachers by the UK Literacy Association earlier this year revealed that most primary teachers could not name more than three picture-book authors. Almost a quarter were unable to name a single one. (source: TES)
Analytical Phonics
Analytical phonics is a method of teaching reading which differs slightly from synthetic phonics. In analytical phonics, words are divided into constituents parts such as onset and rhyme and children are encouraged to find the pronunciation of a word by looking at the initial syllable.
- In analytic phonics, children are taught whole words and later analyse their constituent parts, such as c-at or str-eet. // In synthetic phonics, the key is to teach them sounds of letters and letter combinations first, then combine those to form words: c-a-t or s-t-r-ee-t. … With synthetic phonics, children learn 44 sounds of letters or groups of letters before being allowed to look at books which have those sounds in them (Source: BBC).
| Analytical Phonics | Synthetic Phonics | |
| Importance of each sound in the word | Emphasis on the initial sound in the word, e.g. the ‘s’ of ‘sun’. This rule works for short words but is problematic for longer words and encourages guessing as an initial reading strategy. | Each phoneme, in every position is important. We care about the /s/ as much as the /u/ and the /n/. |
| Position | Emphasis on initial sounds, onset, rhyme and word families. | Emphasis on hearing and identifying the phonemes in all positions. |
| Role of guessing | Encourages guessing. As mentioned, the emphasis is on the initial sound so the ‘n’ in the word ‘sun’ is ignored. This is fine for short words that can be guessed, but it makes spelling more difficult for the longer words. | The English language is far more logical than people first believe. It doesn’t need guessing for successful reading and spelling, it just needs systematic teaching. |
| Role of the alphabet | The alphabet is central to analytic phonics – concentrating on those 26 letters and their corresponding sounds. Think about these words: ‘place’, ‘kiss’ and ‘sell’. All words have an /s/ phoneme but are represented by different letters. Not very easy to understand, or, worse, to explain! | The letter names are not taught initially. Children are learning 44 phonemes and how each can be represented. This enables children, when they come across: ‘place’, ‘kiss’’ and ‘sell’, to understand that phonemes /s/ can be represented many ways: ce, ss and s. |
Bibliography
Dept. for Children, Schools & Families, http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/phonics/ for download of Phonics manual
Ince, M (2007) Learning to read the phonics way. Society Today, ESRC. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/about/CI/CP/Our_Society_Today/Spotlights_2006/phonics.aspx?ts=1
LTS (2008) Learning & teaching Scotland
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/5to14/specialfocus/earlyintervention/issues/phonics.asp
Readhead, P. (2007) It’s time for a balanced approach to phonics. Society Today ESRC. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/about/CI/CP/Our_Society_Today/News_Articles_2006/synthetic.aspx?ComponentId=16071&SourcePageId=16237
To be or not to be?’: The politics of teaching phonics in England and New Zealand Janet , Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 2007; 7; 333
Wyse, Dominic, Goswami, Usha, Synthetic phonics and the teaching of reading. Source:British Educational Research Journal; Dec2008, Vol. 34 Issue 6, p691-710, 20p
SUE ELLISPolicy and research: Lessons from the Clackmannanshire Synthetic Phonics Initiative Journal of Early Childhood Literacy vol 7(3) 281–297