What is the role of Phonics in teaching language?
If you are a little confused or intimidated by the concept of Phonics then you are likely not alone, especially if you did not experience this concept during your own early learning.
Phonics is now not only established mainstream practice for teaching children the English alphabet and related pronunciation but also reading and spelling of words. teaching theory and practice perspective. It achieves this via leveraging the relationship between sounds (“Phonemes”), letter groupings related to those sounds (“Graphemes”) and the spelling and sounding of a whole word incorporating those letter groupings. There is a wealth of academic literature on this subject but, while the concept is widely accepted, debate continues to rage over the practical application for teaching. Something that at face value should be relatively straightforward, I mean we all learned to speak, read and write well enough right, is actually quite hard to grasp from a teaching theory and practice perspective.
When entering the phonics subject, the first complexity one discovers is that many letters of the English alphabet have more than one sound, a basic sound and a complex sound, and there are sometimes several usage types for the complex sound (see Fig.1 for example).
It is seemingly no longer acceptable to simply call out a word associated with a thing that begins with each letter of the alphabet, rather one must be clear on whether we are using basic or complex sounds and in what context. So X cannot be for Xylophone anymore because the correct phonic for X is “ks” as in X-Ray, which isn’t really a word as such but rather a type of a “ray”. We can’t even make a distinction and say we are using a complex X sound because there isn’t one. Xylophone is actually an example of a complex Z sound… Nightmare!
There are more than 44 sounds in all. There are also different conventions for representing sounds both phonically and graphically and this variety of graphical representation of sounds can cause some confusion and argument. The most contentious part of phonics seems to be not so much the sounds themselves but the method or system to categorise and teach them. Minefield! (see Fig.2 for example).
For many parents it can seem like a daunting task of re-education (AKA back to school) to comprehend all this, almost like learning a new language with all the technical terms employed. If trying to educate our children can sometimes feel like talking to the wall, getting to grips with Phonics can often feel like listening to the wall…
At Little Wriggler we have no desire to wade into the academic debates on this topic. As parents all we seek to do is find the best way to help our little wrigglers develop, and language is crucial for that broader development, it is the source from which all learning flows. To that end, we leave the choice of method and teaching of the systems of phonics to schools and teachers and concern ourselves solely with basic understanding of the alphabet in the context of early learning. Our videos focus on the Phonics basic sounds of the alphabet and employ a standard graphical representation symbol set.
However, phonics is important so we do embrace the philosophy of it. At the preschool level we feel it is most important that the children recognise the letter itself and the basic sound they should make associated with that letter. It is important to put the letter and sound into the context of some words that start with each letter (or end with in the case of X as words that start with X are too complicated at this stage and, as mentioned to above, are mostly actually Z sounds…). We also like to put the word into real word context to complete the picture of how language is used to communicate ideas and concepts.
The beauty of leveraging technology such as video format is that we do not have to rely solely on the graphical representations of the sounds but can actually sound out the sounds so that children can hear it and repeat it. Thus, largely, we avoid the debate on the system of graphemes but do not ignore phonics completely as it will be part of children’s formal education. Our Phonics alphabet series takes each letter in turn and employs a number of associated words. We also have a number of A-Z style videos to introduce both the alphabet and the concept of phonics.
Watch our complete Phonics and A-Z playlist on our YouTube channel
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