Phonics Meaning

In the field of beginning reading, there are two basic schools of thought in the U.S. today. One emphasizes "whole language" teaching, which relies on teaching a lot of reading; the other emphasizes phonics, teaching how letters and syllables correspond to sounds. Phonics instruction may be especially difficult in English, since English has the most difficult spelling of any Western language. Consider the various ways we create the f *sound in *cough, photo, *and *giraffe, or the sh sound in special, issue, vicious, *and *portion, or the k sound in tack, quite, and shellac, and how we pronounce the o in do, core, lock, *and *bone, or the ea in lead, ocean, idea, and early. Teaching phonics obviously isn't an easy job, but it's probably an important one.

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.[5]

Phonics Meaning

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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),[12] 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).

The National Reading Panel in the United States concluded that systematic phonics instruction is more effective than unsystematic phonics or non-phonics instruction.[15] 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.[16]

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.

Although sometimes confused with phonics, Phonemic awareness (PA) is the distinct ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual spoken sounds of language, unrelated to writing. PA, a subset of phonological awareness, is strongly related to the learner's oral language skills and is critical in learning to read.[18] To assess PA, or teach it explicitly, learners are given a variety of exercises, such as adding a sound (e.g., Add the tag_hash_107__ sound to the beginning of the word tag_hash_108___), changing a sound (e.g. In the word tag_hash_109____, change the tag_hash_110__ sound to the tag_hash_111_ sound), or removing a sound (e.g., In the word tag_hash_112____, remove the tag_hash_113_ sound). Phonemic awareness and the resulting knowledge of spoken language is the most important determinant of a child's early reading success.[19] PA 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).[20][21][22]

Although the patterns are inconsistent, when English spelling rules take into account syllable structure, phonetics, etymology, and accents, there are dozens of rules that are 75% or more reliable.[31] This level of reliability can only be achieved by extending the rules far outside the domain of phonics, which deals with letter-sound correspondences, and into the morphophonemic and morphological domains.

The following are a selection of the alternative spellings of the 40+ sounds of the English language based on General American English pronunciation, recognizing there are many regional variations. Teachers of synthetic phonics emphasize the letter sounds not the letter names (i.e. mmm not em, sss not ess, fff not ef). It is usually recommended that teachers of English-reading introduce the "most frequent sounds" and the "common spellings" first and save the more infrequent sounds and complex spellings for later. (e.g. the sounds /s/ and /t/ before /v/ and /w/; and the spellings cake before eight and cat before duck).[32][33][34][35]

Between 2013 and 2022, 30 US States have passed laws or implemented new policies related to evidence-based reading instruction.[39] As a result, many schools are moving away from balance literacy programs that encourage students to guess a word, and are introducing phonics where they learn to "decode" (sound out) words.[40]

The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Nova Scotia, respectively, reported that 26% and 30% of grade three students did not meet the provincial reading standards in 2019.[41][42][43] In Ontario, 53% of Grade 3 students with special education needs (students who have an Individual Education Plan), were not meeting the provincial standard.[44] In 2022, the Minister of Education for Ontario said they are taking immediate action to improve student literacy and making longer-term reforms to modernize the way reading is taught and assessed in schools, with a focus on phonics. Their plan includes "revising the elementary Language curriculum and the Grade 9 English course with scientific, evidence-based approaches that emphasize direct, explicit and systematic instruction, and removing references to unscientific discovery and inquiry-based learning, including the three-cueing system, by 2023."[45]

Proponents of evidence-based reading instruction maintain that teaching reading without teaching phonics can be harmful to large numbers of students, although in their view not all phonics teaching programs are equally effective. According to them, the effectiveness of a program depends on using specific curriculum and instruction techniques, classroom management, grouping, and other factors.[46] Phonics instruction is also an important part of the science of reading.

Interest in evidence-based education appears to be growing.[47] In 2019, Best Evidence Encyclopedia (BEE) released a review of research on 48 different programs for struggling readers in elementary schools.[48] Many of the programs used phonics-based teaching and/or one or more of the following: cooperative learning, technology-supported adaptive instruction (see Educational technology), metacognitive skills, phonemic awareness, word reading, fluency, vocabulary, multisensory learning, spelling, guided reading, reading comprehension, word analysis, structured curriculum, and balanced literacy (non-phonetic approach).

Other evidence-based comparison databases featuring phonics and other methods include Evidence for ESSA[51] (Center for Research and Reform in Education)[52] (meeting the standards of the U.S. Every Student Succeeds Act, and the What Works Clearinghouse.[53]

There are many ways that phonics is taught and it is often taught together with some of the following: oral language skills,[56][57] concepts about print,[58] phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonology, oral fluency, vocabulary, syllables, reading comprehension, spelling, word study,[59][60][61] cooperative learning, multisensory learning, and guided reading. And, phonics is often featured in discussions about science of reading,[62][63] and evidence-based practices.

The Ontario Association of Deans of Education (Canada) published research Monograph # 37 entitled Supporting early language and literacy with suggestions for parents and teachers in helping children prior to grade one. It covers the areas of letter names and letter-sound correspondence (phonics), as well as conversation, play-based learning, print, phonological awareness, shared reading, and vocabulary.[66]

Sight words (i.e. high-frequency or common words) are not a part of the phonics method.[67] They are usually associated with whole language and balanced literacy where students are expected to memorize common words such as those on the Dolch word list and the Fry word list (e.g. a, be, call, do, eat, fall, gave, etc.).[68] The supposition (in whole language) is that students will learn to read more easily if they memorize the most common words they will encounter, especially words that are not easily decoded (i.e. exceptions). However, according to research, whole-word memorisation is "labor-intensive", requiring on average about 35 trials per word.[69]

On the other hand, phonics advocates say that most words are decodable, so comparatively few words have to be memorized. And because a child will over time encounter many low-frequency words, "the phonological recoding mechanism is a very powerful, indeed essential, mechanism throughout reading development".[70] Furthermore, researchers suggest that teachers who withhold phonics instruction to make it easier on children "are having the opposite effect" by making it harder for children to gain basic word-recognition skills. They suggest that learners should focus on understanding the principles of phonics so they can recognize the phonemic overlaps among words (e.g. have, had, has, having, haven't, etc.), making it easier to decode them all.[71][72][73]

Sight vocabulary is a part of the phonics method. It describes words that are stored in long-term memory and read automatically. Skilled fully-alphabetic readers learn to store words in long-term memory without memorization (i.e. a mental dictionary), making reading and comprehension easier. The process, called orthographic mapping, involves decoding, crosschecking, mental marking and rereading. It takes significantly less time than memorization. This process works for fully-alphabetic readers when reading simple decodable words from left to right through the word. Irregular words pose more of a challenge, yet research in 2018 concluded that "fully-alphabetic students" learn irregular words more easily when they use a process called hierarchical decoding. In this process, students, rather than decode from left to right, are taught to focus attention on the irregular elements such as a vowel-digraph and a silent-e; for example, break (b - r - tag_hash_120_____k), height (h - tag_hash_121____ - t), touch (t - tag_hash_122_______), and make (m - tag_hash_123_- ktag_hash_124_). Consequentially, they suggest that teachers and tutors should focus on "teaching decoding with more advanced vowel patterns before expecting young readers to tackle irregular words".[69][74] ff782bc1db