Synthetic phonics is an effective (arguably the most effective) method to teach reading. It focuses on connecting letters (graphemes) to their individual sounds (phonemes), then teaching children to blend these sounds together to read whole words, and segment words into sounds to spell.
Synthetic phonics starts with simple words and builds to more complex ones, allowing students to “sound out” unfamiliar words, building a strong foundation for decoding and spelling. In addition to moving toward tackling longer words and more spellings for a particular sound, synthetic phonics also teaches the more common phonograms before the less common ones (like ph or ough).
What synthetic phonics does not do is encourage students to memorize words by sight or guess words from contextual clues. Memorizing words often appears to work in the first few grades, but one cannot memorize anywhere near the number of words in English, and students will begin to struggle by second or third grade if they are dependent on that strategy. Moreover, they will have formed improper neural pathways in the brain that are hard to reprogram. Using sight to read depends strongly on the occipital lobe in the back of the brain, whereas synthetic phonics instruction forms effective neural pathways in the left hemisphere in the temporal and parietal lobes (behind and above the left ear).
In the 2006 article by K. Hempenstall, What Brain Research Can Tell Us About Reading Instruction, the author explains that Magnetic Resonance Imaging has shown that optimally, the brain uses the parieto-temporal region to sound out words. Once a word has been sounded out (and the meaning comprehended) several times, the complete internal representation of the word is then stored in the occipito-temporal region (left side of the head toward the back). The word’s recognition then becomes automatic and instant – in about 1/6 of a second! This is why many had erroneously thought that reading happens strictly through sight. However, the research showed that the word will not be stored in that occipito-temporal region unless it is first processed in the parieto-temporal region.
Also, a student should not be expected to read words with phonograms or spelling rules they have not yet been taught. That also would encourage guessing and memorizing. According to Barton Reading & Spelling, “Reading research clearly shows that emerging readers will improve their fluency (speed) only if they read books that contain controlled text. In other words, books in which at least 95% of the words can be sounded out using the rules the student already knows.”
Now for some specifics of our language:
English has 44 sounds (phonemes), the building blocks of words, while the 70 phonograms refer to the many letter combinations used to spell those sounds, including single letters and multi-letter teams (e.g. sh, igh, ea, oy), crucial for phonics-based reading programs. The 44 phonemes break into consonants and vowels, and the 70 phonograms show all the ways letters represent those sounds, with some sounds having multiple spellings (e.g., /ē/ in see, pea, key, and piece).
How They Work Together
- A single phoneme (sound) can have multiple phonograms (spellings).
- A single phonogram (e.g. a) can represent multiple phonemes (sounds).
- Teaching the 70 phonograms provides a comprehensive toolset to decode and encode words, linking the 44 sounds to their various written forms.
[Note to linguists and SLPs: The following is using a layman system, not IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. For example, I’ve used /j/ for the sound that j or ge make, not the sound y makes.]
English has approximately 44 sounds (phonemes): /b/, /d/, /f/, /g/, /h/, /j/, /k/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /r/, /s/, /t/, /v/, /w/, /y/, /z/, /sh/, /ch/, unvoiced th (bath), voiced th (bathe), /zh/ (television), /ng/ (sing), short a, short e, short I, short o, short u, long a, long e, long i, long o, long u/oo (ruin, boot), short oo (book), /aw/ (thaw), /ow/ (clown), /ar/ (far), /er/ (fern), /or/ (form), /air/ (chair), /ear/ (fear), /ire/ (tire), and /oy/ (boy).
If you’re wondering what happened to c, q, and x: c can make either a /s/ or /k/ sound, q is two sounds together (/kw/), and x is two sounds together (/ks/). Ng, on the other hand, is not two sounds together, but rather is made with the back of the tongue up, rather than the front up, as it is in /n/. (You can hold the tip of your tongue down with your finger after the initial sound when saying -ng in words like ‘wing,’ ‘gang,’ ‘long,’ and ‘hung’ to see that this is true.) In words like ‘finger,’ the ng is making two sounds – /ng/ followed by /g/. ‘Rank,’ ‘sink,’ ‘honk,’ and ‘bunk’ have an /ng/ followed by a /k/.
English has 70 phonograms — the ways letters represent those 44 sounds. For example, a /sh/ can be spelled sh (cash) or ch (cache). The long a sound can be spelled with an a (make, agent), ay (pay), ai (paid), ea (break), ei (vein), or ey (they).
When teaching reading using phonics (decoding – turning letters into sounds), it is recommended that you utilize the reverse process in the same lesson (encoding, or spelling – turning sounds into letters). If you’re teaching how silent/magic e makes the preceding vowel long, you should have the student spell CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) and CVCe words, to “cement” into memory the purpose of the silent e. For example, dictate ‘cap,’ then ‘cape’; ‘not,’ then ‘note’; and sometimes in the opposite order: ‘pale,’ then ‘pal’; ‘mane,’ then ‘man.’
When teaching vowel teams, be sure to practice spelling them as well. Without this practice, a student is unlikely to remember what vowel follows the first one (e.g. using ae or ao instead of ai). When teaching ai, dictate words like ‘rain,’ ‘tail,’ and ‘maid.’ You should explain that the words to be dictated do NOT use a silent e, and it might be good to point out the alternate spellings/meanings after they’ve spelled the word. For example, tell them that ‘tail’ is what a cat, mouse, pig, cow, horse, etc. has on their end, but ‘tale’ is another word for “story.” A ‘maid’ is a person who cleans a house or motel room, but ‘made’ is the past tense of ‘make,’ as in “She made a pie.”
After covering ay and ai, you should point out that ay is the spelling when the long a sound comes at the end of the word/is the last sound of the word, whereas ai is for when the long a sound comes in the middle of a word/when other sounds follow in the word. I recommend that you dictate several words of each spelling to make sure they understand and utilize that concept. In other words, when dictating a word like ‘way,’ make sure they know not to spell it ‘wai,’ and when dictating a word like ‘wait,’ make sure they know not to spell it ‘wayt.’
Note: This rudimentary spelling instruction is considered by the author to be an important component of a good phonics program/teaching, so is assumed as a prerequisite to starting the Steps to Superb Spelling program. In other words, the student needs to be able to identify the sounds they hear — for example, knowing the /sh/ sound is “sh”, the /f/ sound is “f”, and which letters go with the short vowel sounds. If they can do all that, then they are ready for this program.