What is synthetic phonics teaching?
The invited guest for this article is Dr Noel K.H. Chia, a board-certified diplomate of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals and also a board-certified educational therapist registered with the Association of Educational Therapists, USA.
Introduction
Phonetics and phonics are often confused and mistaken one for the other. Phonetics is the scientific study of spoken sounds that occur in all the world’s languages forming what is known as the International Phonetic Alphabet. On the other hand, phonics involves describing and teaching letter sounds and syllables that maike segmenting and blending of words easy, and eventually moves on to decoding words in phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and texts.
Teaching Phonics
Teaching phonics is part of the whole approach to produce fluent readers and skilled writers capable of comprehending and composing text. It involves teaching the alphabetic principles in a systematic way to decode (read/spell) words within the language curriculum involving listening, speaking, reading and writing. Despite several criticisms (e.g., mechanical learning, boring repetitions, damping reading interest) cirected at phonics approach, there have been several studies (e.g., project Follow-through, 1967; US National Reading Panel, 2000) that show phonics-based approach is still the most effective way to teach our children reading/spelling.
However, not all English words can be decoded with phonics rules. According to studies, 50% of all English words can be decoded with phonics rules that relate one letter to one sounds, and 37% with phonics rules relating groups of letters to one sound, while the remaining 13% are irregular or sight words that mus be learned by memorization through whole word method.
Phonics teaching works better for learners with good phonemic awareness, i.e., the ability to understand letter sounds and how they can be blended to make meaningful words. The more experienced a learner is in listening to sounds in words, the better he/she is at identifying sounds in words.
Two Phonics Teaching Methods
There are two main phonics teaching methods: synthetic and analytic. The former shows learners how to blend letter sounds (phonemes) together to say a word. the latter shows learners how to break up a word into its consistuent sounds. Whichever phonics method one prefers, a multi-sensory approach is still the best as it includes looking at the symbol, listening to its sound, saying it aloud and accompanying this by doing an action. it supports elarners in remembering many of the sound-symbol relationships.
Of the two phonics teaching methods, synthetic phonics teaching is more preferred as it is pro-active and progressive. Learners taught through synthetic phonics are never given books that are too difficult and they often begin with simple sounds. This is crucial to building a feeling of self-confidence and success. They gradually move to more complicated combinations of sounds, and learn how words can be made from these sounds.
Benefits of Learning Phonics
Learners can apply phonics strategies when reading/spelling a new/unfamiliar word:
1. sound out/spell the word from phonological knowledge;
2. remember the sight word based on its unique configuration;
3. guess the word from an illustration/other contextual cues;
4. use the spelling from similar words already known; and
5. check it up in a dictionary/hand-held spell-checker.
Finally, studies have shown that synthetic phonics teaching is the best approach to help children diagnosed with dyslexia in learning to read and spell.
Phonics Program
Four rules to ensure success in learning to read/spell through a phonics program are:
1. gradual progress through the levels of difficulty only when the learner has mastered the previous level.
2. Only one new sound is introduced each time.
3. Self-check worksheets prepared for the new sound should be easy and user-friendly.
4. Revision of words learnt in the previous level in the same lesson.
Finally, the Golden Rule when reading with a child is to tell the child the word he/she does not know right away.
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