E-Course - Part 1
Phonics

Look around the literacy world from the US to the UK, from France to Japan, from Taiwan to Australia, and you will see indisputable evidence: phonics is back.

No longer are educators willing to put up with the decline in literacy standards brought about by the failed whole language experiment; now they demand a return to a system that worked for thousands (yes, thousands!) of years: a phonics literacy system.

So what precisely is a phonics system? And how does it work?

The Word 'Phonics'

The word phonic comes from the Greek word phone meaning voice or sound. A phonics literacy system is therefore a method of learning to read and write that concentrates on sounds, or, to be more precise, the sounds the letters make. It is a method that uses the alphabet as its cornerstone.

This is to be contrasted with the whole language method. This method ignores the sounds the letters make and simply encourages students to memorize each word in the English language as a whole (visual) unit.

Basic Letter Sounds

To understand phonics systems better, it is worth remembering that the alphabet is actually a sound code. That is, each letter stands for a particular sound. The letter a, for instance, stands for the sound a as in apple; the letter b for the sound b as in bat, etc.

These letter sounds are not one hundred percent consistent in every letter of every word. But the above examples show what can be called the basic letter sounds.

It is important to note that letter sounds are very different from letter names. When we spell a word we will use letter names (for instance, See, Ay, Tee for cat); but the letter names themselves don’t actually help us sound out a word. That is precisely why we use them if we don’t want a small child to understand an important word we are saying (e.g. ‘ Johnny is too chubby, he shouldn’t have any more
b-u-n-s [Bee, You, En, Ess]’)!

The Beauty of Phonics

The beautiful thing about a phonics system is that as soon the basic letter sounds of the alphabet have been learned, it is already possible to read thousands of English words. All we need to do is decode them. We see the word cat on the page, for instance, and we convert the letters into sounds – c (for cap), a (for apple), t (for tap) and we run the sounds together to read the word cat.

And it isn’t just small words that can be decoded either. Even many large words can be read. Think of words like tunnel, trumpet, pond, picnic and confident – they can all be sounded out. All you need to do is take the basic sounds the letters make (the, b for boy, z for zebra, etc.), run them together (left to right), and you can read them all without difficulty.

What is great about this method is that you can even read words you haven't been taught before - something unthinkable for anyone trained under a whole language system. They can only read words that have already been taught because they have been given no tools to decode them.

Of course reading, sadly, isn’t always as simple as just running basic letter sounds together to ‘decode’ words. To begin with, we run into an obvious problem: the English language has more sounds than there are letters to make them! There are about forty-four speech sounds and only twenty-six letters. So how is this problem overcome?

Digraphs

The solution to this problem is the use of digraphs. That is to say, two or more letters used together to indicate a new sound – a sound different from the basic sounds of the letters put together.

The letter-combinations ch, tion, ous and sh, for instance, are all digraphs. The digraph ch doesn’t give you the sounds of c (as in cap) and h (as in hat) run together. Instead it gives you the new sound ch as in chug.

Similarly, tion doesn’t give you the sounds t (as in tap), i (as in ink), o (as in on) and n (as in not) run together. Rather, it gives you tion as in nation. The same with all and sh : the letters of these digraphs work together to produce a new sound.

It is therefore by using these digraphs that we are able to write all forty-four speech sounds with just twenty-six letters.

Digraphs in Practice

As soon as we start learning the English digraphs we can begin forming more complex words.

Take a word like birthday. It is composed of the basic letter sounds b (as in bat) and d (as in dog) and three digraphs, ir (as in bird), th (as in thug) and ay (as in day). B + ir + th + d + ay.

If we know these basic letter sounds and digraphs we will have no problem reading this word - even if we have never come across it before. The same with a large percentage of the English language. Look at the words team, chop, method and moonlight and see if you can divide them up into their basic letter sounds and digraphs. (Answers at bottom of page.)

Extra Sounds

You might remember from the introduction that a good phonics system will enable students to decode (i.e. read) between 90-95% of all English words. Learning the basic letter sounds and the digraphs is big part of this; but there is, of course, more.

To begin with, you sometimes have single letters (almost always the vowels) that behave in irregular ways. Take the i in the word find. Normally it would give us the basic letter sound i as in insect; but here it gives us a long vowel sound (as in i for ice-cream).

This change in letter sound is actually quite common – especially for vowels – and letters that do this create what are sometimes called single letter extra sounds. The name isn’t particularly important; but it is important to recognise that letters can, at times, change their sound. Some examples of single letter extra sounds are:

• e as in be, me, he, we and she
• y as in by, my, try, cry, fly
• u as in bush, put, pull, push and bull

Spelling Rules

Another crucial part of being able to read 90-95% of all English words is learning some spelling rules. This does not have to be a chore, and it does not have to be hard. In fact, you don’t need to learn all English rules – just the main ones. When you do, you will actually find that you enjoy rules (maybe even love them!) because they suddenly help make sense of a lot words and patters that would otherwise be confusing.

A good example of a useful spelling rule concerns adding ing to a word with a short vowel (a basic vowel sound). Run, for instance, becomes running and sit becomes sitting. Here the rule says that we must double the consonant to retain the short vowel sound.

Another helpful rule regards the sound the letter c makes when it is followed by an i, e or y (as in cinch, receive, cypress tree.) Here, as you can see from the examples, it gives us an s sound. Knowing the rule definitely helps us read and write correctly.

Sight Words

With our basic letter sounds, our digraphs and spelling rules, we have almost all bases covered. To be able to read our 90-95% of English words, only one last thing remains: the fifty most common sight words.

A sight word is, to put it simply, a word for which no rule can be learnt. Words like said and I are good examples. You and who are more examples. To read them you just have learn them by sight (i.e. memorize them).

This, naturally, is slightly unfortunate since sight words are obviously a lot harder to read than words you can decode; but the good news is that you only need to learn the fifty most common ones to be able to read the 90-95% of English words we have been talking about.

Summary

• The word phonic comes from the Greek word phone meaning sound. Phonic reading systems are primarily concerned with the sounds the letters – and digraphs (e.g. sh and ch) – make.
• The alphabet is actually a sound code: each letter stands for a sound (e.g. c for cat).
• Digraphs are two or more letters used together to indicate a new sound: e.g. ch for chair and ee as in beep.
• Some English letters can make more than one sound. These extra sounds(e.g. i in find and e in me) can, not surprisingly, be called single letter extra sounds
• English has a number of spelling rules we can learn to help us read and spell words. Examples are doubling a consonant after a short vowel when we want to add ing (e.g. run – running) and the letter c making the sound s after an e, i or y.
• You can’t learn a rule for every word. Words for which no rules can be learnt are called sight words. Examples of sight words are: I, said, was and their.
• A good phonics literacy system teaches all of the above things in a step-by-step systematic manner so that students can read up to 95% of the English language – even if they have never seen many of the words before!

Answers:

Team  =	T + ea + m
Chop  =	Ch + o + p
Method  =	M + e + th + o + d
Moonlight  =	M + oo + n + l + igh + t

Part 2

Top

Fitzroy Phonics Australia

Fitzroy Range

• Alphabet Book
• Alphabetics game
• Answer Books
• Audio CDs
• Fitzroy Files
• Fitzroy Sounds
• Phonics Readers
• Phonics Software
• Teacher's Guide
• Word Families
• Word Skills

‘Your readers have been an enormous help in my Resource Teaching.’
E.M., Principal, St. Bede’s, Australia.