Phonics

Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing to beginners. To use phonics is to teach the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters (graphemes) or groups of letters or syllables of the written language. Phonics is also known as the alphabetic principle or the alphabetic code. It can be used with any writing system that is alphabetic, such as that of English, Russian, and most other languages. Phonics is also sometimes used as part of the process of teaching people from China (and other foreign students) to read and write Chinese characters, which are not alphabetic, using pinyin, which is alphabetic. While the principles of phonics generally apply regardless of the language or region, the examples in this article are from General American English pronunciation. For more about phonics as it applies to British English, see Synthetic phonics, a method by which the student learns the sounds represented by letters and letter combinations, and blends these sounds to pronounce words. Phonics is taught using a variety of approaches, for example:

learning individual sounds and their corresponding letters (e.g., the word cat has three letters and three sounds c - a - t, (in IPA: , , ), whereas the word shape has five letters but three sounds: sh - a - p (in IPA: , , ), or learning the sounds of letters or groups of letters, at the word level, such as similar sounds (e.g., cat, can, call), or rhymes (e.g., hat, mat and sat have the same rhyme, "at"), or consonant blends (also consonant clusters in linguistics) (e.g., bl as in black and st as in last), or syllables (e.g., pen-cil and al-pha-bet), or having students read books, play games and perform activities that contain the sounds they are learning.

Overview Reading by using phonics is often referred to as decoding words, sounding-out words or using print-to-sound relationships. Since phonics focuses on the sounds and letters within words (i.e. sublexical), it is often contrasted with whole language (a word-level-up philosophy for teaching reading) and a compromise approach called balanced literacy (the attempt to combine whole language and phonics). Some phonics critics suggest that learning phonics prevents children from reading "real books". However, the Department for Education in England says children should practise phonics by reading books consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and skill; and, at the same time they should hear, share and discuss "a wide range of high-quality books to develop a love of reading and broaden their vocabulary". In addition, researchers say that "the phonological pathway is an essential component of skilled reading" and "for most children it requires instruction, hence phonics". Some recommend 20–30 minutes of daily phonics instruction in grades K–2, about 200 hours. The National Reading Panel in the United States concluded that systematic phonics instruction is more effective than unsystematic phonics or non-phonics instruction. Some critics suggest that systematic phonics is "skill and drill" with little attention to meaning. However, researchers point out that this impression is false. Teachers can use engaging games or materials to teach letter-sound connections, and it can also be incorporated with the reading of meaningful text.

History The term phonics during the 19th century and into the 1970s was used as a synonym of phonetics. The use of the term in reference to the method of teaching is dated to 1901 by the Oxford English Dictionary. The relationship between sounds and letters is the backbone of traditional phonics. This principle was first presented by John Hart in 1570. Prior to that, children learned to read through the ABC method, by which they recited the letters used in each word, from a familiar piece of text such as Genesis. It was John Hart who first suggested that the focus should be on the relationship between what is now referred to as graphemes and phonemes. For more information see Practices by country or region (below); and History of learning to read.

Phonemic awareness Not to be confused with phonics, phonemic awareness (PA) is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual spoken sounds of language, independent of writing. Phonemic awareness is part of oral language ability and is critical for learning to read. To assess phonemic awareness, or teach it explicitly, learners are given a variety of exercises, such as adding a sound (e.g., Add the th sound to the beginning of the word ink), changing a sound (e.g., In the word sing, change the ng sound to the t sound), or removing a sound (e.g., In the word park, remove the p sound). Phonemic awareness and the resulting knowledge of spoken language is the most important determinant of a child's early reading success. Phonemic awareness is sometimes taught separately from phonics and at other times it is the result of phonics instruction (i.e. segmenting or blending phonemes with letters). It is that part of phonological awareness that is concerned with phonemes. In one instance, a 2014 program of advanced phonemic awareness training (without using the corresponding letters) improved the PA but not the word reading. When teaching phonemic awareness, the National Reading Panel found that better results were obtained with focused and explicit instruction of one or two elements, over five or more hours, in small groups, and using the corresponding graphemes (letters).

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