Synthetic phonics
Synthetic phonics is an instructional approach designed to teach children how to read by focusing on the sounds that letters and combinations of letters make. This method emphasizes blending these sounds to form words, contrasting with traditional techniques that often relied on memorizing words by sight. Advocates argue that synthetic phonics provides a solid foundation for reading, enabling children to decode unfamiliar words and improving their spelling skills. The method teaches children the forty-four phonemes of the English language, allowing them to sound out words independently. However, critics point out potential drawbacks, such as difficulties with homophones and words that are phonetically spelled but not correctly. Furthermore, they argue that the method may limit exposure to a broader range of literature and can lead to misunderstandings about word meanings. Despite the debate surrounding its efficacy, synthetic phonics has gained endorsement from educational authorities in various English-speaking countries as a favored method for teaching reading.
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Synthetic phonics
Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching children to read that is used in a number of English-speaking countries, such as Great Britain, the United States, and Australia. Synthetic phonics emphasizes teaching children the sounds represented by letters and how to blend them to make words. It minimizes the role of guessing words or determining them from context. While many experts see benefits of teaching synthetic phonics, some say that teaching words purely by sounds can result in children having issues with words that sound the same but are spelled differently.
Background
A beginning reader must learn to understand what word is represented by each unique combination of letters. This includes understanding words that have multiple pronunciations with different meanings, such as read, wind, and bow.
New readers were traditionally taught to recognize words by sight. This was very effective, especially with young children who can learn to memorize easily. However, it produced a reader with a limited vocabulary of sight words and no way to easily decipher words not previously encountered. This resulted in individuals who were functionally illiterate, or unable to read the majority of the nearly six hundred thousand words in the English language.
The solution to this was to teach beginning readers the sounds each letter or combination of letters makes and how to combine them into words; armed with this ability, a reader can sound out any word. This technique is called phonics. The word comes from the Greek phone, which means "sound," and phonics is defined as the science of sound. Some methods of phonics were in limited use as far back as the sixteenth century. In the early part of the nineteenth century, children were taught to spell first and then to read. Great emphasis was placed for decades on proper spelling and pronunciation, also known as elocution. Teachers generally read the words and students repeated them back until they were memorized.
William Holmes McGuffey developed the first books that came be known as McGuffey readers. These reintroduced the principles of phonics to the classroom by teaching children to recognize the sounds made by letters and combinations of letters. Surveys done during the 1890s showed that children who learned to read using phonics were better spellers. However, for a number of decades some schools continued to emphasize memorization of sight words. Children in the early part of the twentieth century often learned to read with the Dick and Jane books, a set of primary readers with short sentences and extensive repetition.
In 1955, Rudolf Flesch endorsed the use of phonics with his book Why Johnny Can't Read. In the decades that followed, many studies backed up Flesch's endorsement. Some testing done using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) demonstrated the brain processes involved when reading by the sounds. This offered medical evidence for the benefits of teaching phonetic reading.
In 2004, Scottish researchers determined that the method known as synthetic phonics produced the best results for several categories of readers. Synthetic phonics takes its name from the way it teaches children to synthesize, or combine separate elements to make a new single unit. In the case of synthetic phonics, that new single unit is a word. A subsequent report from the British government endorsed the use of synthetic phonics over other methods of teaching reading. Education officials in the United States, Australia, and other English-speaking countries followed suit.
Overview
The three main types of phonics instruction are analytic phonics, embedded phonics, and synthetic phonics. The analytic method is taught alongside whole word reading techniques and requires the reader to look at the whole word, notice how the word starts, and compare the sound patterns to those the individual already knows, so a child who already knows the word block will more easily be able to read clock. Embedded phonics is also taught along with whole word reading techniques and involves examining the whole word for known patterns. While the analytic technique systematically exposes the reader to individual words, the embedded technique uses words in context.
Synthetic phonics starts by teaching children the forty-four recognized possible sounds, or phonemes, that can be made by the twenty-six letters of the English language and combinations of those letters, such as sh-, ch-, ph-, and ck-. Children are taught not just what the letter is called but how it sounds, so for the letter s they are taught that it sounds like "ssss." They are shown how to blend the sounds made by letters or letter combinations to sound out the whole word. Once these tools are mastered, they can read nearly any English word. The exceptions to the rules and words that occur with frequency in works children are likely to read are taught as sight words or camera words, or words that must simply be memorized. These include words such as the and friend.
Proponents of the system say that it gives children a firm foundation for being able to read any text they encounter. Spelling ability improves because students know and understand what letters and combinations make specific sounds and are able to apply that knowledge to spelling. Supporters point out that other methods often allow children to guess words from context, which helps them learn that word but does not advance their overall reading ability. They note that while some children with learning challenges will have difficulties no matter what method is used, synthetic phonics is most likely to be successful for these children as well.
Some critics challenge these benefits. They point out that children taught to read in this way often spell words phonetically instead of correctly, at least initially. While learning to read through synthetic phonics the children can only read the books that are part of the program, limiting the literature to which they are exposed.
It also creates difficulties with words that have multiple pronunciations, such as read, wind, and bow. In some areas, students are tested on their ability to synthesize letter combinations according to the sounds they were taught. This results in children being graded as correct for sounding out a combination that is not a word and wrong for correctly pronouncing a word that is an exception to the rules, such as correctly pronouncing blow instead of synthesizing it to rhyme with now. In addition, because synthetic phonics does not rely on context for word understanding, children may learn to read a word without knowing its meaning. These opponents urge education leaders who want to use synthetic phonics to eliminate testing for correct synthesizing and emphasize reading fluency and vocabulary building instead.
Bibliography
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Davis, Andrew. "Reading Lessons: Why Synthetic Phonics Doesn't Work." The Guardian, 4 Mar. 2014, www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/mar/04/reading-lessons-phonics-world-book-day. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.
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"Getting Ready for 2025: Building Strong Readers in the Early Years Through a Structured Approach to Literacy." Education HQ News, 20 Nov. 2024, educationhq.com/news/getting-ready-for-2025-building-strong-readers-in-the-early-years-through-a-structured-approach-to-literacy-185899/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.
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"What is Synthetic Phonics?" Oxford Owl, www.oxfordowl.co.uk/home/reading-owl/expert-help/what-is-synthetic-phonics. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.
Wyse, Dominic and Morag Styles. "Synthetic Phonics and the Teaching of Reading: The Debate Surrounding England's 'Rose Report'." Literacy, April 2007, www.edalive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/RoseEnquiryPhonicsPaperUKLA.pdf. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.