Phonics - basics

[Mashabell]

At this time of year many schools hold parents evenings to explain phonics.
So it occurred to me that parents who have never given the matter any thought before might find it helpful if I explain briefly on here what phonics is. (For me things always register better if I read or hear something several times.) So here I go.

Words are made up of sounds which are blended together: cat is a blend of C ? A - T.
Some sounds are spelt with just one letter, as in ?cat?, others with two or three (ch, igh). The different spellings for sounds are collectively known as ?graphemes?.

For reading, children have to learn to sound out the graphemes and to blend them into words.
For writing, they learn to break words up into their constituent sounds and what letters to use for them.

Most European languages have around 40 sounds, and English has 43 ½ . (The ½ sound is the unstressed, barely audible vowel in endings of ?flatten, certain?, but can be elsewhere in a word too (dEcide).

The 43 main English sounds (in alphabetical order) are as follows and illustrated with the words in brackets:
A : (ant), AI : (rain), AIR : (air), AR : (arm), AU : (sauce), B : (bed), CH : (chip), D : (dog), E : (egg), EE : (eel), ER : (herb), F : (fish), G : (garden), H : (house), I : (ink), IGH : (high), J : (jug), K : (kite), L : (lips), M : (man), N : (nose), NG : (ring), O : (pot), OE : (toe), OI : (coin), OO : (food), OO : (wood), OR : (order), OU : (out), P : (pin), R : (rug), S : (sun), SH : (shop), T : (tap), TH : (this), TH : (thing), U : (cup), UE : (cue), V : (van), W : (window), Y : (yak), Z : (zip), ZH (spelt mostly -si-) : (television)

Because some English sounds are spelt differently in different positions of words (mAY, mAkE) or are spelt differently for other reasons (KiCK, ComiC),
the basic English spelling system uses 81 graphemes:
A : (ant), AI : (rain, plate, play), AIR : (air), AR : (arm), AU : (sauce, saw),

B : (bed), CH : (chip, stitch), D : (dog),

E : (egg), EE : (eel, funny), ER : (herb),

F : (fish), G : (garden), H : (house),
I : (ink), IGH : (by, bite),

J : (jug, bridge, oblige),

K : (c/at/ot/ut, crab/ clap, kite/kept, comic, pick, seek, risk; quick, fix),

L : (lips), M : (man), N : (nose), NG : (ring),

O : (pot, want, quarrel), OE : (toe, bone, old), OI : (coin, toy), OO : (food), OO : (wood), OR : (order, wart, quarter, more), OU : (out, now),
P : (pin), R : (rug), S : (sun, face), SH : (shop, station, musician), T : (tap, delicate), TH : (this), TH : (thing), U : (cup), UE : (cue, cube), V : (van, have), W : (window), Y : (yak), Z : (zip), -si- : (television)

There are also 8 main endings ( doable, fatal, single, ordinary, flatten, presence, present, other),
2 prefixes (decide, invite)
and the use of doubled consonants for showing that a vowel is short rather than long (dinner ? diner).

There are many exceptions to the above which children get taught as they move up through the primary years, but to begin with, they?ll start learning the sounds for just a few letters which nowadays are often s, a, t, p, i, n.
Making them aware of the sounds in words is usually the very first step.

I would be happy to answer any questions about this.
I would be happy to be corrected too if I made any errors by trying to show the system on here without the use of bold or colour.
Masha Bell

PontyMython had said that my use of capitals for phonemes was driving her insane. I have redone the basic explanation of English phonics without them.

English has 43 ½ sounds . (The ½ sound is the unstressed, barely audible, variously spelt vowel which occurs mainly in endings, such as ?flatten, certain?, but can be elsewhere in a word too (decide, invite, abandon).

The 43 main English sounds (in alphabetical order) are as follows (illustrated with the words in brackets).
a (ant) ai (rain) air (air) ar (arm) au (autumn)

b (bed) ch (chip) d (dog)

e (egg) ee (eel) er (herb)

f (fish) g (garden) h (house) i (ink) -igh (high) j (jug)

k (kite) l (lips) m (man) n (nose) -ng (ring)

o (on) -oe (toe) oi (oil)

oo (food) oo (wood)

or (order) ou (out)

p (pin) r (rug) s (sun) sh (shop) t (tap)

th (this) th (thing)

u (up) -ue (cue) v (van) w (window) y (yak) z (zip)

zh (spelt mostly -si-) (television)

Because some English sounds are spelt differently in different positions of words (may, make) or are spelt differently for other reasons (kick, comic),
the basic English spelling system uses 81 graphemes:
a (ant) ai (rain plate play) air (air) ar (arm) au (sauce saw)

b (bed) ch (chip stitch) d (dog)

e (egg) ee (eel funny) er (herb)

f (fish) g (garden) h (house)

i (ink) igh (by bite) j (jug bridge oblige)

k (c/at/ot/ut crab/ clap kite/kept comic pick seek/ risk quick fix)

l (lips) m (man) n (nose) ng (ring)

o (pot want quarrel) oe (toe bone old) oi (coin toy) oo (food) oo (wood)

or (order wart quarter more) ou (out now)

p (pin) r (rug) s (sun face) sh (shop station musician) t (tap delicate)

th (this) th (thing) u (cup) ue (cue cube) v (van have) w (window) y (yak)

z (zip) -si- (television)

There are also 8 main endings ( doable, fatal, single, ordinary, flatten, presence, present, other),
2 prefixes (decide, invite)
and the use of doubled consonants for showing that a vowel is short rather than long (dinner ? diner).

It isn't the capitals driving me crazy!

Mrz - It isn't the capitals driving me crazy!

What exactly is?

I'm starting to see your lists in my sleep masha and I can't escape them

81 graphemes are not nearly enough, children need to know 160 -180ish. Your 'system' would leave them woefully short of essential letter/sound correspondence knowledge.

You seem to have forgotten /ire/ and /ear/ and I would suggest that 'au' and 'or' both spell the same sound, /or/.

Maizie - 81 graphemes are not nearly enough

I said in my OP, There are many exceptions to the above which children get taught as they move up through the primary years,

I was trying to explain just the basics of English phonics on here.

For spelling, English uses 205 graphemes in all (as I have shown on my Dec 2009 blog). But for reading children only need to learn to decode around 130, because some spelling differences which take some learning for writing (brother, doctor) don't need special attention for decoding.

I hope that parents who have questions about reading and writing will take a look at this thread.

I hope they will ask the people who actually teach children to read and ignore this thread masha

Mrz I hope they will ask the people who actually teach children to read and ignore this thread.

But many phonics fanatics on here, and even more in discussions on the tes site, keep saying that most teachers still have an insufficient grasp of the English alphabet code.

Perhaps you didn't understand the sentence who actually teach children to read masha... but in all honesty if a parent is really concerned this thread isn't going to be of any help.

masha, I am a parent of a DD who has just started reception and have to say I have not a clue as to what you are saying!

It is a long long time since I was at infant school and have no idea of how I was taught to read and write so phonics are all pretty much new to me. I get that you are trying to help parents like me but to be honest I would rather be just one step ahead of my DD (rather than what looks like the whole of primary school learning ahead) so that I can help her.

I would rather be just one step ahead of my DD (rather than what looks like the whole of primary school learning ahead)
And that's fine, but some parents do want to understand what learning to read involves. And this
a (ant) ai (rain plate play) air (air) ar (arm) au (sauce saw)
b (bed) ch (chip stitch) d (dog)
e (egg) ee (eel funny) er (herb)
f (fish) g (garden) h (house)
i (ink) igh (by bite) j (jug bridge oblige)
k (c/at/ot/ut crab/ clap kite/kept comic pick seek/ risk quick fix)
l (lips) m (man) n (nose) ng (ring)
o (pot want quarrel) oe (toe bone old) oi (coin toy) oo (food) oo (wood)
or (order wart quarter more) ou (out now)
p (pin) r (rug) s (sun face) sh (shop station musician) t (tap delicate)
th (this) th (thing) u (cup) ue (cue cube) v (van have) w (window) y (yak)
z (zip) -si- (television)
is what most children now learn in reception.

69 of the above spellings/graphemes have alternative pronunciations as well, as I have shown on one of my blogs, e.g. ant/any able father. They are what the rest of primary literacy teaching covers.

On another thread Ishmael1 gave a good explanation of how reading is nowadays taught

All words are made up of sounds and all sounds can be spelt. That being the case, as long as a learner is taught from simple to more complex, all words are decodable. Your child is at present probably being taught the one-to-one correspondences: words like ?sat?, ?dog?, and ?wet?. All of those words contain three sounds and all the sounds are spelt with one letter.

At this level, things are relatively straightforward. However, things get more complicated and this where the teaching becomes ever more important. We don?t just spell sounds with one letter, we also spell lots of sounds with two letters (f i sh, some with three letters (l igh t) and relatively few with four letters (eigh t).

The next level of complexity is that we spell the sounds in English (and there are around forty-four of them and they are stable - i.e. they don't change and we don't add new ones every now and then) in different ways. For example, there are a number of common ways of spelling the sound ?oe? as in the word ?toe?: ?goat?, ?slow?, ?no?, ?toe?, ?bone?, ?soul? and ?dough?. This is one reason why it?s so difficult to become a perfect speller in English ? because if you?ve never seen a word before, how would you know how to spell it?
The other problem is that many spellings also represent more than one sound. For example, the spelling can be ?ee? in ?steam?, ?ae? in ?great?, and ?e? in ?bread?.

You probably think that all of this probably sounds quite complicated. It is! That?s why teaching practitioners need proper training in understanding how the sounds of the English language are related to the spelling system. They also need to learn how to teach it.

If done properly, teaching young children to read and spell isn?t a difficult job. It does take time and patience and expertise on the part of the teacher. It?s not like teaching Spanish, for example, where you only have about twenty-two to twenty-four sounds (depending on accent) and around thirty-some- odd spellings.

While English is probably the most difficult alphabetic language to learn to read and write, it can be done ? usually in the Key Stage 1 years. After that, with some fine-tuning along the way, you can decode anything however difficult, from ?cat? to ?catastrophic?...

All this is way over my head. I am not a teacher, but i taught my ds to read using Scholfield and Sims Sound phonicsn series. It is brilliant as there is a structured
approach to learning to read . There are about eight books in the series. Parents may find this series of books more useful than any of the explanations on this thread.

Good recommendation, forehead! A nice structured synthetic phonics scheme, developed by a knowledgable teacher in the field and far more use than the tedious lists endlessly cut and pasted by masha!

It depends on the parent.
There is generally no need for parents to buy more phonics materials than schools provide.

That's the point though - many schools, including my own ds's, don't provide phonic materials. There are endless threads here about it.

many schools, including my own ds's, don't provide phonic materials.

I find it hard to believe that there is now a single school left in the country which does not have some kind of phonics course.

Chris Jolly told me back in 2005 that 60% of primaries were using his scheme by then. Since the Rose review of 2006, many others have come on the market. Most schools now have several.

masha you seem to be under the mistaken belief that using Jolly Phonics means that schools provide phonics materials. Using the JP handbook to teach and then using ORT or Ginn to apply is a mismatch doomed to confuse beginner readers.

many schools, including my own ds's, don't provide phonic materials.

There are threads on MN right now that say exactly that, masha.

I suspect that what Chris Jolly said was that 60% of primaries were buying JP. I doubt if he would have been able to say with confidence that they were using the programme (let alone using it correctly) without having personally visited every one of those schools and seen JP being taught.

N.B It is not Chris's scheme; he just publishes it.

Also, masha, an awful lot of schools use the govt guidance, Letters & Sounds, which is not a complete 'programme' and has absolutely no resources to go with it.

and many schools use Letters & Sounds badly getting so hung up on phases children are held back.

Mrz - many schools use Letters & Sounds badly

Yet u always advise parents who are worried about their c's reading progress to sort it out with their teachers.
How do they know if their particular teacher is good or bad?

Also, many parents on here have described their c doing very well by methods which u would regard as bad, i.e. a mixture of phonics and learning many common words by sight.

This makes me think that I must definitely carry with my efforts to help parents understand what learning to read English involves.

masha as I don't know every single teacher in the UK I have to begin with the assumption that the teacher is good until that assumption is proven to be wrong. However regardless of whether the teacher is good or bad at teaching phonics/reading/writing they are the one the parent is going to have to work with unless they decide to move schools so they must be the starting point for any parental concerns.

How many parents on here describe their child doing well by methods that I personally regard as bad? Well I haven't kept a count but I imagine I wouldn't need both hands to find the total ... I would once have been one of those parents saying my child reads well and doesn't know any phonics unfortunately it is now too late to correct for my son which is why I feel so strongly about the constant misinformation you insist on posting and the untold harm you are responsible for.
It is why even though I tell myself not to engage with your posts I can not allow your efforts to go unchallenged.

mrz, just wondering, why do you say it is too late for your son?