Are you equipped to teach a child or an adult basic reading skills?
- How many phonemes (vowel and consonant sounds) are there in the English language? Does your child's teacher know this?
Answer: 44. See the English Phoneme Chart. There are 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds.
A teacher who does not know this, will not have measured the challenge of learning to read. - What is the first phoneme (a vowel sound) in the word "equipped"?
Answer: phoneme / ɪ / [see sound number 01 on the English Phoneme Chart] - What is the last phoneme (a consonant sound) in the word "equipped"?
Answer: phoneme / t / [see sound number 23 on the English Phoneme Chart] - Underline where the vowel sound in the word "pin" occurs in the following words:
ill England women pretty Ceylon myth build baggage bargain marriage sieve counterfeit
Is it worth using phonics to teach reading when so many of the English sounds can be represented by a variety of spellings?
Two research projects conducted in 1966 focusing on American English suggest "yes":
1. Paul R. Hanna et al., Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences as Cues to Spelling Improvement (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office)
2. Richard L. Venezky and Ruth H. Weir. A Study of Selected Spelling-to-Sound Correspondence Patterns. (Cooperative Research Project No. 3090. Stanford University. Cal).
These studies established that American English orthography is alphabetically based at least eighty per cent of the time and that the unit phoneme-grapheme correspondences can be predicted upon sound bases alone about ninety per cent of the time.
Computational linguistics has grown of age since the above studies were conducted. It is not difficult now to do your own research, using either British or American English phonemes and spellings as given in either the "Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary (17th Edition)" or the "Longman Pronunciation Dictionary". Both these dictionaries come with interactive CDs which allow 'wildcard searches for spellings', based on combinations of phonemes. You can test out any phoneme in any possible position in the word for variant spellings, and assess the difficulty of reading the target sound correctly.
Should the method of teaching reading be limited to phonics?
Clearly not, and authors of reading schemes such as "Oxford Reading Tree Songbirds Phonics" are far more eclectic in their methodology.
For example, the phonics focus of Stage 6: Songbirds: "Paula the Vet" is the sound as in the first syllable of the word "August". However, "Paula The Vet" includes practice of the sound using the variant spellings "or", "au", "aw", "ore", "oor" and "a".
Recognising 'whole words' visually (look and say methodology) plays a significant part in learning to read, especially as reading speed becomes greater. However, it remains the case, nearly always, that the phonetic and graphetic environments of 'single letters' or 'combinations of letters' making single sounds, provide excellent clues to the target sound.
What may go wrong educationally and socially if phonics is continued for too long?
Reading aloud represents only a small part of what reading actually is. Most reading is done silently, and effective readers process text internally and efficiently. A learner who continues to rely on sub-vocalising—quietly sounding out words while reading—will usually read slowly and inefficiently. In addition, audible sub-vocalising can distract peers who are trying to read silently.
Phonics practice typically focuses on isolated words. When words are combined into longer texts, these are often simple narratives that encourage a linear, word-by-word reading style. However, this does not reflect the range of reading skills required in real life.
Reading aloud well requires an awareness of the differences between written and spoken language. Spoken English includes features such as assimilation, where the final sound of one word may change depending on the first sound of the next. A strictly phonics-based approach can mislead learners in such cases, producing speech that sounds stilted or unnatural. Effective oral reading also depends on appropriate syllable stress, sentence stress and intonation. Phonics may support reading aloud in syllable-timed languages such as Spanish. In English, however—a stress-timed language—an over-reliance on phonics can result in unnatural rhythm and pronunciation. Adult learners, especially those who have not spent their early childhood immersed in spoken English, should not depend on phonics as a reliable guide to how the language is actually spoken.
Skilled silent readers go beyond decoding individual words and sentences. They recognise discourse markers, understand how topics develop across paragraphs, and adjust their reading style according to purpose. Reading a menu or a bus timetable, for example, is very different from reading a short story. Effective reading involves flexibility: it must respond to purpose, content, genre and layout. Phonics can play a useful role in the earliest stages of literacy, helping learners to decipher written words. However, an excessive focus on phonemes—particularly when weak forms are ignored—contributes little to the broader skill of reading and may even encourage an artificial model of spoken language.
There are, of course, strong reasons to read aloud to children. It fosters interest in books and in spoken literary forms such as radio and television storytelling. Yet the value of reading aloud lies not in phonics but in the richness of spoken language. Adults reading to children should attend to features such as sound patterns, weak forms, rhythm, contractions, sentence stress and intonation. Professional audiobook narrators often differentiate characters through voice alone, while children’s television storytellers also use gesture and facial expression to bring narratives to life. Phonics has its place—but if continued for too long, it risks narrowing both reading development and spoken language awareness.