Excerpt from
'Reading Through Tears'
PHONICS
We use the word ‘phonics’ here as shorthand for the process of being able to hear the separate sounds of words and to be able to both read and write down letter sounds in their correct sequence.
Three basic skills dominate this process:
1. Knowledge of the sounds of letters
2. Blending of sounds into syllables
3. Blending of syllables
Without these three skills, children cannot read, they can only guess but guessing:
- does not allow the reading of unfamiliar words;
- is unreliable both for very small words and for very long words
- provides little support for spelling.
Knowledge of sounds
Research has clearly demonstrated that at the learning-to-read stage many children are unable to work out for themselves the full range of letter sounds; they need to be specifically taught. Word-guessing not only fails to develop this knowledge, it also wastes time during the critical 6-9 year-old learning period and allows time for confusions between names and sounds to become habituated.
The result is that infants then learn the names of letters rather than the sounds of letters. That obviously then undermines the infant's capacity to blend sounds to make a syllable, and that in turn prevents the blending of syllables, necessary for reading long and unfamiliar words. The resultant name/sound confusions then have to be undone before remediation can take place, and our experience is that remediation of name/sound confusions is a difficult task even on a one-to-one basis.
(Jean)
Today I saw Adam. He is almost 11, has a shy smile, is a little small for his age and thinks that he is average in reading and a little below average in spelling.
However his mother is concerned about the fast approaching problems of Adam's entering high school, a very common concern among parents of 11 year olds! She has been reassured that Adam is progressing satisfactorily but his mother has long ago learned to distrust such assurances.
Adam goes to a Catholic primary school that enjoys a good reputation in terms of teaching literacy skills and Adam has been receiving 'special help' for some years now.…and it shows.
He can read one, two and many three syllable words, which is more that many of my other 11 year-olds can do. And yet when I ask Adam to tell me the sounds of letters he shows hesitations and some of the 3 syllable words show evidence of confusions between names and sounds. Sure, he can build up sounds into syllables and syllables into long words but it hasn't become an automatic skill…it requires a conscious struggle.
I ask myself how can a child know how to blend sounds into syllables and even know how to blend syllables into long words and yet still be hesitant with isolated letter sounds? The answer came to me in the shower that night.
Adam had originally learned letter names and guessing. He had then struggled to read. He preferred guessing words partly because guessing was faster than phonics, partly because his infant teacher encouraged him to guess but mainly because his insecure grasp of sounds undermined his confidence in using phonics.
Guessing however is inherently inaccurate and when he showed clear evidence of struggle, an astute teacher quite correctly tried to improve those phonic skills. She taught Adam the principles of blending sounds and syllables together but failed to over-teach to the stage where his newly acquired phonic skills became automated.
The phonic skills that he was taught are therefore still insecurely based and even though this child knows how to blend sounds and syllables together, he may in fact seldom use these skills in the reading situation… guessing still dominates.
Knowledge of sounds needs to reach the stage where, when you see a letter, you automatically associate it with its most common sound.
Later on you can learn the secondary sounds but if you fail to initially consolidate the basic letter sounds, you may condemn the Adams of this world to being average in reading and below average in spelling when they might have been superior in both!
Blending of sounds into syllables
Knowledge of letter sounds is important but it is useless unless the student can also blend those sounds together.
The following table shows 5 columns extracted from our data on Failing Readers.
Column 1 shows the age of the students from 5-15.
Column 2 shows the percentage of students in each age group who made more than 5 errors when asked to sound the letters of the alphabet (e.g. 'u' sounded as 'yuh').
Column 3 shows the percentage of students who, when reading simple 3 letter words, demonstrated confusions between the names and sounds of letters (e.g. 'rod' misread as 'road').
Column 4 shows the percentage who made repeated errors when trying to blend three sounds together to make a nonsense word ( e.g. 'y+e+m' misblended as 'weem').
Column 5 shows the percentage of students who made repeated errors due to inaccurate word-guessing (e.g. 'rod' misread as 'rid', or 'picnic' misguessed as 'picture').
Column 2 shows that between 35% and 73% of failing readers made more than five errors when sounding out individual letters.
Column 3 shows that between 26% and 41% of these failing readers also demonstrated name/sound confusions when reading real 3 letter words ('rod' misread as 'road').
Column 4 shows that between 42% and 84% of these failing readers were unable to blend 3 sounds to make a simple nonsense syllable. Most of these errors were associated with confusions between letter names and sounds.
Column 5 shows that between 39% and 85% of failing readers were using guessing strategies.
In other words most failing children lacked basic phonic skills:
because of confusions between names and sounds and
because their whole word guessing strategies were inaccurate.
There are many reasons for teaching a child phonics and they are not always obvious.