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Teaching reading using synthetic phonics

Introduction

Synthetic phonics is a simple method of teaching reading to children. You teach them the sounds of the language, and how these sounds are written as letters. Each child learns to spell out certain simple words, and to recognise these words. When the child sees a new word, they learn to put the sounds of the letters together to get the sound of the word as a whole. Thus they can deal with any new words which have regular spellings, and build up a vocabulary. This is the basis for reading. Only a few very common words need to be learnt as sight words.

Cloudworld has long supported phonics with our product, WordAloud. It was decided to look into synthetic phonics after reading about its success in Clackmannanshire, where 300 children were taught by the synthetic phonics method at the beginning of their time in school. Researchers found that, after seven years, the childrens' reading ability was some three years ahead of the national average, and almost all children were able to read. We considered the implications for dyslexia, and how synthetic phonics can be supported by WordAloud. And, we also realised the implications for English language teaching (ELT).

The research in synthetic phonics shows that there is a logical order for the teaching of language and literacy, right from the start. This is applicable to learners of any age or ability who want to read and write English. The beginnings of a prescriptive method are elaborated below. An important factor in success is to allow active participation of learners in the learning process. This is where WordAloud is particularly supportive, since the user can type in words and hear them spoken by the speech synthesiser.

It is recommended that you use WordAloud with a keyboard which has lower case letters on the keys. Such a keyboard is available at low cost, e.g. £8.21 plus £5 delivery from MISCO, see www.misco.co.uk.

Government strategy

On April 6th, the Commons "Education and Skills Select Committee" demanded an immediate review of the teaching of reading. Eight years after the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) was introduced, approximately one in five children cannot read properly aged 11. The 17% illiteracy was "unacceptably high". The all-party committee reported about the success of synthetic phonics in Scotland. It disputed that the literacy strategy was based on the best available research. In the Clackmannanshire study, after starting the children with synthetic phonics, it was found that they were more than three years ahead of their peers by the time they were eleven. Furthermore there was no difference in reading ability between boys and girls. According to the Times (April 7th), the committee said "The evidence in favour of synthetic phonics is based on the belief that an early ability to 'decode' words is the key to later success in reading."

It is clear that, for the NLS, the government (DfES) has adopted a compromise between competing factions of education specialists, some of whom still adhere to the "whole language", "whole word" or "look and see" approach, where children are encouraged to memorise the image and shape of common words and to guess the meaning of other words from context, grammatical understanding and pictures. The Clackmannanshire success is largely due to adopting phonics from the start, but also due to adopting synthetic rather than analytic phonics.

Synthetic phonics versus analytic phonics

There is much confusion, in the press and elsewhere, as to the difference between synthetic and analytic phonics. Synthetic phonics starts by considering how spoken words are made up of sounds, and shows how these sounds are represented by letters. The mapping of sounds to letters is used for writing and spelling; and the converse mapping of letters to sounds is used for reading, decoding and pronunciation. On the other hand in an analytic phonics programme, you start by teaching pupils to recognise the "look" of whole words, so that they build up a vocabulary of these "sight" words. New words are then analysed with respect to that vocabulary, e.g. by pattern matching. Phonic decoding is considered in the context of whole words.

Let us consider synthetic phonics in more detail. You start by showing how the sounds ("phonemes") of our language can be put together ("blended") to form words, which gives the pupil a "phonemic awareness", essential for any phonics approach. This awareness can be given without any reference to how the sounds are represented on paper. Then you teach pupils to recognise a few letter shapes and corresponding sounds, so that they can spell out some simple words, and start reading some simple text, see below. With practice, pupils naturally build up a vocabulary of quickly-recognised "sight" words.

Applicability

The synthetic phonics can be used at any age, and can be applied retrospectively in the case of people with reading difficulties of any kind, including dyslexia. It can be used for learning literacy skills, for reading and writing. (The Clackmannanshire study showed that spelling was improved.) But it can be also use for teaching pupils or students for whom English is a second or other language (ESL/TESOL) or for teaching English abroad (ELL/EFL/TEFL).

Synthetic phonics is simple enough to be used by parents and teaching assistants. A fully prescriptive method can be developed. Synthetic phonics is applicable to languages other than English. We will use it as a teaching method/pedagogy for Greek, Italian and German in the 'LISTEN' project, under MINERVA, part of the European SOCRATES programme.

Unique mapping

With the synthetic phonics approach it is possible to start, in the first term, with single representations for phonemes - i.e. a unique mapping from sounds to symbols. This has several implications for the teacher:

• if you have 'c' representing the consonant sound in 'cat', then you cannot use 'k' or 'q';
• if you have an 's' to represent voiced as well as unvoiced sound, then you cannot use 'z';
• if you use 'i' to represent the short vowel sound, then you cannot use 'y' for the same purpose;
• if you map short vowel sounds to single vowel letters, then you have to decide on suitable mappings for the longer vowels and diphthongs (where the vowel is a sequence of two sounds).

The following sequence of instruction can lead up to a spelling system with a unique mapping, and very few exceptions to these mapping rules.

First letters and words

In the Clackmannanshire study, they started with six letters: 's', 'a', 't', 'p', 'i' and 'n', being the six letters making the most number of three letter words.

The first words could include:

• it, sit, pit, tit, tin, in, sin, pin, pip, tip, sip, nip;
• at, sat, pat, pan, tan, tap, sap;
• as, is (for the voiced 'z' sound);
• a, an (for the schwa sound).

The teacher sounds out the word, and, with a pupil (or with the class), breaks it into constituent phonemes, for example, 'tap' into a short whispered 'tuh' sound, a short 'a' sound, and a short whispered 'puh' sound. It is important not to follow the 'tuh' or 'puh' sound with a vowel sound, however short - this is why we suggest you whisper the sound. (Any such vowel sound will confuse the pupil with the sound of the actual vowel in the word.)

The reverse process is also tried, asking the pupil what word results from putting, say, a hissing 'ss' sound, a short 'i' sound and a humming 'nn' sound together. The pupil should learn to blend the sounds together to obtain 'sin'. Then one can ask questions such as "What happens if the 'ss' is replaced by 'puh'?".

The pupils must learn the shape of the letters. They can draw the shapes. It may be useful to have magnetic letters, from which the pupils can select letters to form words. It may also be useful to have a computer to generate large letters on the screen. You can use WordAloud software for this purpose, see www.cloudworld.co.uk.

With these first six letters we can put together phrases such as:

• a pin in a tin
• a tit sat in a pan
• nip tip, tap sap, sit, sip
• Pat sat in a pit

BTW, a capital letter can be used for 'P' in 'Pat', but only because the shape is identical to the lower case 'p'.

Next words and letters

It is help for learning to have "self reference", where the story is told in the first person. Thus one of the next letters to learn is 'I'. It is more memorable to imagine oneself sitting in a pit, than Pat (unless that happens to be your name). And with 'I' you will need 'my', so the letters 'm' and 'y' have to be learnt at some time.

We can introduce the other vowels, but only in short form. Note that we avoid the vowel sound in 'put', and stick to words such as 'pup', 'but', 'sun'. Also the 'magic e' which elongates vowels (turning 'mad' to 'made', etc) has to be avoided at all costs.

The next consonants can include 'b', 'f', 'h', 'l', 'm' and 'r'. We suggest you do not introduce 'b' and 'd' at the same time, as they are easily confused, being mirror images of one another. This is a particular problem for dyslexics.

We suggest the sound /k/ is always represented by a 'c', and you avoid words with 'k' or 'q' for writing. However, when reading it is useful to know that 'k' always has the /k/ sound.

Note the hard 'g' (as in 'gap') maps to 'g', so you should avoid words with a soft 'g' (as in 'gem'). We suggest you stick to words where the soft 'g' is spelt with a 'j', as in 'jet'.

It is important at this stage that you only introduce simple one-syllable words that are spelt according to the rules you have already introduced. Thus you can have 'bed' but not 'head' or 'said'; you can have 'fun' but not 'won' or 'done'; etc.

First irregular words

It is suggested you introduce a few of the sort, most common, words gradually, with lots of examples, so that they quickly become 'sight' words for immediate recognition. The first word to introduce is 'the', which breaks the rule of the letter 'a' representing the schwa sound. After that, you probably need 'of' (where the 'v' sound is spelt with an 'f') and 'to' (where the schwa sound is represented by 'o') in order to make reasonable stories. At this stage you can introduce some words to be read, where the final letter is doubled, such as 'tell'. Don't worry if the pupils spell such words with a single letter.

And you can start introducing sounds that are always, or nearly always, represented by a pair of letters: 'th', 'sh', 'ch' and 'ng'.

Longer words

After learning a few simple CVC words (i.e. words in the form consonant-vowel-consonant), it is possible to progress to more complex words. You can introduce some two syllable words, such as 'batman' and 'hatpin'. And you can introduce 'consonant blends'. Even with the six initial letters we can produce a large number of such blends:

• ant, its, sits, pits, spit, spat, span, snip, snap, snips, snaps (etc.);
• pans, tans, pins, tins, sins (for the voiced 'z' sound);
• and (which has the schwa sound when spoken quickly).

Long vowels and diphthongs

The next stage is to introduce the long vowel sounds and some diphthongs. Finally we should have a complete mapping as follows.

Complete initial mapping

By the end of the first term, we propose that the following initial mappings have been taught:

• the 'k' sound maps to (i.e. is represented by) the letter 'c';
• both hard and soft 's' sounds map to 's' (so 'z' is unused);
• initial 'y' sound, as for example in 'yes', maps to 'y';
• initial 'w' sound, as for example in 'went', maps to 'w';
• the 'sh', 'ch', 'th' and 'ng' sounds map to corresponding letter pairs;
• the 'v' sound maps to 'v', except for 'f' in 'of';
• other consonant sounds map to their own single letter;
• five short vowels map to five vowel letters ('a' is in 'cat', 'e' as in 'bet', 'i' as in 'hit', 'o' as in 'pot', and 'u' as in 'but');
• the schwa sound (a short 'uh' sound) is represented by 'a', except for 'e' in 'the';
• the long 'ee' sound maps to 'ee';
• the long 'oo' sound as in 'moon' maps to 'oo';
• the 'ar' sound maps to 'ar';
• the 'or' sound maps to 'or';
• the 'er' sound maps to 'er';
• the 'ay' diphthong maps to 'ay';
• the 'oy' diphthong maps to 'oy';
• the 'long i' diphthong maps to 'y' except for the word 'I';
• the 'ow' diphthong as in 'cow' maps to 'ow'.

Certain mappings are left out:

• the short 'oo' sound as in 'hood', 'put' and 'could';
• the 'ow' diphthong as in 'owe';
• the 'ure' diphthong as in 'pure';
• the 'ire' diphthong as in 'fire';
• the 'our' diphthong as in 'flour'.

The letters 'k', 'q', 'x' and 'z' are left out.

At first, letters are kept in lower case except the 'I', which is exclusively used for the first person (self). Later one introduces capital letters that look like their lower case counterparts, such as 'P' and 'T'. With these initial mapping rules it is possible to construct quite elaborate stories for the learner to read by themselves, and practice what they have learnt.

Example story

Pat is my dog. Pat is a big fat dog. I can sit on Pat, as I am not as big as Pat is. I sit on my dog, Pat. The dog sees a cat. The cat sees Pat. The cat runs hard. Pat runs at the cat. I am on Pat. I cling on, as the dog runs at the cat. 'Help!' I cry. Now, this cat can jump. This dog can jump too, but a fit cat can do a big, big jump. This cat is fit. The cat jumps up a tree with a big jump, and clings on the bark. Pat jumps at the cat but can not get it. (The cat's jump was too big.) As the dog jumps, I drop off. Help! I land in a pond by the tree with a big splash. I am wet and sad, but do not cry. Pat is sad too, as the dog has not got the cat. The cat is not sad, as it has not been got by the dog. Now the cat sits up in the tree with a big fat grin. The dog barks and then limps off. I drip till I am dry. The end.

References

1. The Times, Thursday April 7 2005, pages 1, 2 and 17
2. BBC News: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4419955.stm
3. Reading Reform Foundation
4. Debbie Hepplewhite's online synthetic phonics programme