By: Dr. Monica Bomengen
Parents of elementary students hear the term “phonics” and may have questions about the meaning of this reading instructional method and the terminology that accompanies it. It is helpful for parents to know the basics of what phonics means in order to understand the method(s) used to teach their child to read. Schools may be phonics-only, but most public schools use a combination of instruction methods to teach young children to read.
Simply put, phonics is the relationship between letters and sounds. Phonics-based reading instruction is a methodology for teaching young children to spell words and read them. The teacher introduces a series of spelling rules and teaches the child to apply phonetics (how the letter combinations sound out loud) to decode words based on their spellings. Phonics attempts to break written language down into the simplest possible set of components.
Phonics is NOT phonetics. Phonetics is the study of speech sounds in general. Phonics is the application of speech sounds to written language in order to decode it and comprehend (read) it. English is a particularly difficult language to learn to read because it contains 42 phonemes (sounds), but only 26 letters of the alphabet and no accent marks. Many phonemes must be represented by combinations of letters. Over centuries, the original Germanic version of the English language absorbed components of other languages, including the Romance languages, Norse, Latin, and Greek. The spellings of these words did not change when they were absorbed into English. For a young child to learn to read English is quite an accomplishment. For a child to experience difficulties in learning to read is not something to be ashamed of—it is understandable and treatable with effective reading remediation.
One of the best ways to describe phonics is as a code that breaks written language into comprehensible building blocks. If a child understands that a letter has a specific sound, and that combinations of letters have corresponding specific sounds, than he can “decode” words as he reads. Although phonics is considered to be a reading instructional method, it also helps children learn to write as well.
In phonics-based reading instruction, which usually occurs in kindergarten through the second grade, the child first learns the sound(s) associated with individual letters of the alphabet. After mastering the individual letter sounds, the child moves on to recognizing combinations of letters and the sounds associated with those combinations. At this point, the teacher introduces simple words that apply the rules the child has learned. The reading assignments and exercises are based on a controlled vocabulary in order to reinforce the learning.
The child usually learns all the consonant letter sounds in kindergarten. Vowel letter sounds are learned in first grade, along with letter combinations and simple words. By second grade, word parts such as prefixes and suffixes are included as the child increases his vocabulary and learns how to decode words that are exceptions to the basic phonics rules. Successful readers typically can spell and read fairly automatically by the end of the second grade, although some children need to continue phonics instruction into the third grade. Children diagnosed with dyslexia and other reading disorders need phonics instruction into the upper elementary grades, and those with reading difficulties will continue to benefit from it beyond elementary school.
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