The Importance of Phonology and Phonics in Reading

Key Words List

Alphabetic principle: Understanding that letters and letter patterns (graphemes) represent the sounds (phonemes) of spoken language.

Blending: Putting individual sounds (phonemes) together to say a whole word.

Decoding: The process of translating written letters or groups of letters (graphemes) into their corresponding sounds (phonemes) and blending those sounds together.

Grapheme: A letter or group of letters that represent a sound (phoneme) in written language.

Phoneme: The smallest individual sound in spoken language.

Phonemic awareness: The ability to hear, recognise, and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.

Phonics: A method of teaching reading that connects sounds (phonemes) with letters or groups of letters (graphemes).

Phonology: The study of the sounds in a language and how those sounds are organised and used to create words.

What makes a skilled reader?

How do we learn to read effectively and efficiently?

Reading fluently involves an interwoven combination of skills, strengthened through direct instruction and years of experience.

A critical part of learning to read is understanding and applying the sounds which make up the language we read. In this blog, Carly De Luca, Research Assistant on the RILL project, considers how sounds of our language are involved in learning to read.

Decoding: What Does It Mean?

Decoding is a term we use to describe the process of reading words.

An important part of decoding is understanding that individual sounds (phonemes) are linked to written letters and letter combinations. This understanding is known as the alphabetic principle.

Grasping the alphabetic principle depends on children being able to recognise the phonological structure of words, particularly that words are made of individual phonemes. Without this awareness, children cannot fully understand what letters represent.

When reading printed words, it is essential to apply the correct sounds (phonemes) to their corresponding letters to be able to decode words accurately.

But how do we do this? A key underlying skill we need is phonological awareness.

What Is Phonological Awareness?

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognise and work with the sound structure of spoken language. In typical development, children first notice larger units of sound and gradually move towards recognising smaller units of sound.

Phonological awareness can be broken into four categories:

Word awareness
Syllable awareness
Onset-rhyme awareness
Phonemic awareness.

All these components play a huge part in preparing children to read print successfully.

How can we use this information to help us teach reading?

To help children learn to read, we first need to teach them to recognise and manipulate sounds in words. We can do this through activities such as:

Rhyming games
Segmenting words into individual sounds
Blending sounds together to form words

We can teach different types or categories of phonological awareness (e.g., syllable awareness, onset-rhyme awareness, phonemic awareness). However, the National Reading Panel (2020) found that teaching phonemic awareness (an awareness of individual sounds) is most strongly related to better reading outcomes.

Letter Knowledge

In alphabetic languages like English we need to learn that letters represent sounds in written language. Learning the names and sounds of letters is known as letter knowledge and Caravolas et al. (2012) have found that a child's ability to recall the letter names and sounds is important for later reading development across several languages.

We can teach letter knowledge using a step-by-step approach:

Identifying and naming individual letters (including lowercase and uppercase)
Learning the sounds (phonemes)
Learning how to write the letters

Wiley and Rapp (2021) have shown that learning to write letters may also be beneficial in learning their corresponding sounds.

Phonics

After children have learnt to recognise and manipulate the sounds of our language, and to understand that these sounds are represented by letter(s), the next step is learning how to combine these sounds to decode words.

An effective way to teach this in alphabetical languages is through phonics instruction. Whilst phonics methods vary, they are typically systematic, meaning that grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in a specific, planned order (Solity, 2020).

English has a more complicated spelling system than many other languages: 26 letters correspond with approximately 44 sounds, using over 1,100 different spelling patterns. Because of this, systematic phonics programmes tend to focus on the most common patterns, teaching children how to blend individual sounds (phonemes) into words. Additionally, teaching letter-sound correspondences in a specific sequence allows for more explicit and effective phonics learning.

How RILL teaches Phonology and Phonics

Children’s early reading difficulties can be associated with challenges with phonemic awareness, letter knowledge, and decoding.

The good news is that the RILL programme addresses all of these areas. Through planned, direct instruction and fun sound games, pupils learn phonemes (sounds) and how they connect to graphemes (letters and letter patterns). Research shows this is one of the most effective ways to help children build all the components needed for reading.

The games used in RILL also help children developed phonemic awareness and phonological awareness, making them more prepared for reading and writing.

What happens in a RILL Lesson?

Each RILL lesson includes activities that help children build phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and phonics skills.

First, a new sound is introduced via a sound clip prepared by the RILL team. The pupils are encouraged to practice making the sound themselves to match what they have heard.

Then, the pupils play games where they listen to the phonemes in a word and blend them together to say the whole word. These games encourage the pupils to think about the different sounds in the words they hear every day, strenghtening the foundations needed for reading.

Next, pupils build or consolidate their letter knowledge through a short alphabet activity, helping them to confidently recognise letter names and sounds.

After this, pupils practice phonics skills through a variety of games, such as, activities where pupils build words from letters and then blend the sounds together to read the word.

These activities start with common spelling patterns and gradually move on to more complex and less common patterns as the lessons progress. By completing these activities twice a week in a structured, systematic way, pupils build confidence in applying these skills for word reading and broader literacy tasks.

References

Caravolas, M., Lervåg, A., Mousikou, P., Efrim, C., Litavský, M., Onochie-Quintanilla, E., Salas, N., Schöffelová, M., Defior, S., Mikulajová, M., Seidlová-Málková, G., & Hulme, C. (2012). Common patterns of prediction of literacy development in different alphabetic orthographies. Psychological Science, 23(6), 678–686. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611434536

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction.

Solity, J. E. (2020). Instructional psychology and teaching reading: Ending the reading wars. The Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 37(2), 123–132. https://doi.org/10.1017/EDP.2020.18

Wiley, R. W., & Rapp, B. (2021). The Effects of Handwriting Experience on Literacy Learning. Psychological Science, 32(7), 1086–1103. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797621993111/SUPPL_FILE/SJ-DOCX-1-PSS-10.1177_0956797621993111.DOCX

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