Phonics or No Phonics?

Introduction Phonics: the wider picture

Learning to read is a vital foundation to becoming a literate, educated person. Reading offers opportunities for enjoyment, for increasing our knowledge of the world and for enhancing our imagination and creativity. It also gives people access to improved life chances – success or failure in becoming a reader is a strong indicator of future progress in school and beyond. Throughout the develope...

Phonics in ESL Literacy Instruction: Functional or Not?

DOCUMENT RESUME

Visual phonics: an English code buster?

Visual phonics is an instructional program to provide print awareness, alphabet knowledge, and sound-letter correspondence for children with hearing loss who experience difficulty developing a foundation of phonemic awareness skills. Its purpose is "to clarify the sound symbol relationship between spoken English and print" (Waddy-Smith & Wilson, 2003, p. 15). It is implemented in numerous schoo...

Synthetic Phonics and Learning to Read: A Cross-language Perspective

Arguments about how to teach initial reading are once more in the news. Proponents of “synthetic phonics” argue that there is only one effective way to teach a child to read. In this anniversary issue, it is worth taking a step back from the polarisation of the “synthetic” versus “analytic” phonics debate, to consider the evidence base for reading acquisition across languages. Most children wil...

A summary of research and studies in phonics