A very good paper on phonics teaching

Language English Grammar & Usage
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The paper “Teaching phonics in the National Literacy Stategy”, published by the UK’s Department for Education and Skills, is a very good discussion of various issues in phonics teaching. Although it is concerned with teaching phonics skills to native speakers of English, many of the points it makes are also applicable to teaching young EFL learners.

Two of the most valuable points made are:

Holistic approach: Although it supports progressive, systematic teaching of phonics skills, these skills are to be taught in the context of meaningful vocabulary and language use in general. It recognises the fact that the synthetic teaching of phonic elements works best when done in conjunction with other strategies – knowledge of context, of the graphic aspects of words and their composite elements, and implicit grammatical and syntactical awareness. It supports a two-way process. Phonic elements are blended to form meaningful words. But when a learner recognises a word by using any of the four strategies – phonic, contextual, graphic and syntactical – it can be very useful to break the word down again into its composite elements.

Simplicity: young learners are simply not able to make very good use of explicitly articulated, complex phonics rules which have numerous exceptions. The approach recommended is fairly simple and keeps phonics knowledge on an experiential level rather than being too abstract.

For EFL/ESL teachers reading this paper, there’s something to bear in mind. Native speakers complete their phonemic learning at a very young age. That is, they are able to distinguish the basic phonetic building blocks of their language. Beginning foreign or second language learners do not have phonemic awareness of the language, so the first step in teaching phonics should be to let this awareness develop. The UK’s National Literacy Strategy DOES actually set aside time for development of phonemic awareness. Step 1 involves “hearing and discriminating general sounds, speech sounds and patterns”, with no explicit knowledge of letters required. This is only given a brief mention in this paper, however, so I felt it was important to highlight this first stage in the process.

The paper can be downloaded in .pdf format:
standards.dfes.gov.uk/primar … 303nls.pdf

If you can’t be bothered to download the .pdf, you can browse through the text online by using Google’s cached HTML version.

This and some other good papers can also be downloaded from this web page:
standards.dfes.gov.uk/primar … acy/686807

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Thanks for posting the paper "Teaching phonics in the National Literacy Stategy.

I think your point about the differences between native speakers and EFL/ESL learners with regards to phonics is really important. Yet, I’ve never seen any studies done about this. What happens to EFL students who don’t have adequate phonemic awareness training and jump straight into phonics? What are the problems of using phonics programs designed for native speakers with Taiwanese students?

I came across an interesting phonics article recently at:
projectpro.com/ICR/Phonics/Reading.htm#1

I’ve been curious about students who rush into reading without any phonics training and cope by memorizing every word they see as a sight word. What happens to these “non-alphabetic” readers? This article claims they limit themselves to only being able to learn 600 new words a year vs. the phonics kid who can learn to read 5,000 words.
*The article was unclear where these stats came from though.

Have you ever seen any studies that would support such claims?

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[quote=“Ktownboy”]Thanks for posting the paper "Teaching phonics in the National Literacy Stategy.

I think your point about the differences between native speakers and EFL/ESL learners with regards to phonics is really important. Yet, I’ve never seen any studies done about this. What happens to EFL students who don’t have adequate phonemic awareness training and jump straight into phonics? What are the problems of using phonics programs designed for native speakers with Taiwanese students?

I came across an interesting phonics article recently at:
projectpro.com/ICR/Phonics/Reading.htm#1

I’ve been curious about students who rush into reading without any phonics training and cope by memorizing every word they see as a sight word. What happens to these “non-alphabetic” readers? This article claims they limit themselves to only being able to learn 600 new words a year vs. the phonics kid who can learn to read 5,000 words.
*The article was unclear where these stats came from though.

Have you ever seen any studies that would support such claims?[/quote]Hi Ktownboy, thanks for the reply and thanks for posting that link. These are all things I’ve been thinking about quite a lot recently.

The evidence is clear that some kind of phonics study helps reading. Students who have done some phonics are much better readers than those who have not. This is not in question. Even whole language advocates agree that kids need some phonics teaching. The questions are: what kind of phonics, when and for how long.

Some people advocate intensive, systematic phonics training before any reading. They may go so far as to recommend the conscious study of some of the very complicated rules governing the exceptions to the more simple rules. I think that it is a case of diminishing returns. It is very useful to learn the common spelling/sound relationships. But regarding conscious teaching of complex rules and exceptions, it is difficult to use this knowledge in practice.

Some people recommend initial letter phonics only, with the rest coming from word recognition and context. I don’t think this goes far enough. The evidence shows that phonics principles can be used beneficially right through words, not just with beginning sounds. And of course some of the most common spelling/sound correspondences involve two letters together, such as th, ch and sh; and or, ar and er. So a single-letter only approach would be inadequate and misleading. It’s OK to teach the letters and common single-letter sounds at first. But this needs to be followed swiftly by the most common digraphs and associated sounds.

Kids need to learn the letters, and they need to learn the most common written representations of the phonemes of English. They need to be able to use this knowledge whether the phonic element is at the beginning, the middle or the end of a word. But they also need to understand that there are exceptions to the rules, they need to develop their word recognition, and they need to develop their prediction ability based on context and knowledge of syntax.

ALL this is best done within a meaningful context. Phonemes/graphemes should be taught through words that really have meaning to the kids. Later work on reading fluency should be done using readers that are actually interesting and not some horrible thing put together for the sole purpose of practicing phonics. There needs to be a continual back-and-forth between form and meaning.

This could present a problem in the EFL context. Beginning kids don’t know many words and they certainly don’t have much feel for syntax to help them with prediction. Yet parents want their kids to learn to read quickly. For many, reading is synonymous with English ability. And of course kids will be expected to copy things, write their names, etc. Perhaps in an ideal situation, the alphabet and phonics teaching would be delayed for a few months. But this is not possible in the real world.

This doesn’t have to be a big problem. While a lot of commercially available phonics books aren’t ideal for EFL, it is possible to put together a good beginning phonics program that utilises words that are familiar and useful to the kids. It can be designed so that at any point, the new words used are fairly regular with regard to the phonics principles that have already been taught.

Here’s an interesting paper discussing related issues, though it’s about ESL for adults rather than EFL for kids.
literacyonline.org/products/ … procmj.pdf
(Right-click and “save as”.)

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This doesn’t have to be a big problem. While a lot of commercially available phonics books aren’t ideal for EFL, it is possible to put together a good beginning phonics program that utilises words that are familiar and useful to the kids. It can be designed so that at any point, the new words used are fairly regular with regard to the phonics principles that have already been taught.

I am in fact thinking about making my own phonics book. So many of the phonics books available are designed for kids who are native speakers and already have a listening/speaking vocabulary of over 5,000 words. I already have 95% of the art I would need from a TPR series I did for the public elementary schools, so it wouldn’t take long.

Am currently debating whether to do the alphabet in order or not. I usually teach the alphabet/phonics from a to z; letter identification - initial sound+2 nouns - phonics chant - writing letters. A lot of books available use a mixed order like m t p d a g … that allow CVC combinations right away. I find my Taiwanese students need more time with just the alphabet and phonemic awareness activities before I start CVC words.
what are your thoughts on this?

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Interesting stuff, Ktownboy. I think the non-alphabetic order option could be a good one because of various issues such as frequency, utility, regularity, and avoiding teaching easily-confused letters too closely together.

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Those kids that learn phonics rules, but only learn a few hundred words of vocabulary each year always forget the phonics rules. If the rule is repeated many times in class, then it is being taught naturally, and the kids won’t be able to make mistakes. But when the teacher spends one day on the rule, and then wonders why the kids don’t know it a few months later, the answer is that too many phonics rules are not a good thing.

Many phonics ideas are quite simple. Most consonants have simple rules. If you see a “B” it will usually sound the same. Part of the letter name for “B” is /b/, and that’s the sound you’ll hear when the word is read. If you see a “C” it will sound like /k/ or /s/. A little more difficult, because /s/ isn’t even in the letter name. But these kinds of rules are quite important to know, whether it’s implicitly or explicitly. I’d hope that a student an implicit feel for a rule before the rule is explicitly taught.

The rules for vowels are not as easy, but many students who have a big enough vocabulary acquire the rules without being taught. This is because if you know the consonant sounds, there are very few possibilities for a word to be. G + R + vowel-sound + T must be “great” or “grit”, so even though there’s no easy either/or rule for “ea”, you can know just by the context what the word is. I think it’s important, for the first stages of learning, that listening take place.

That’s why I’d suggest teaching with TPR until enough words are learned. The letters can be taught by the teacher using TPR, if necessary. After enough words are known, when the student gets taught to read, connections will form between what the student knows and what the student reads. Then the student can feel excited about reading, and become a lifelong reader.

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Thanks twocs. That’s a very interesting post and for the most part I agree with you. Obviously phonics principles need constant practice in meaningful contexts. And yes, concentrating on the regular and common phonic elements, at least at first, makes a lot of sense.

I also agree that words that embody the phonics principles need to be known before the phonics rules are taught. To this end then of course TPR can help as it is a very quick method of instilling some kinds of language with long-term recall. There are other things that can help as well. Even beginning kids are likely to have come across certain English words and some of those very common words are also useful in that they are composed of regular basic phonic elements. When new words have to be taught, then concrete, easily graspable ones such as concrete nouns and action verbs are good (of course, these are the things which TPR is best at anyway).

But there doesn’t have to be a huge number of example words. Many of the example words include 2, 3, or more regular phonic elements, so they can be “recycled”. This provides more review and instills kids with a feeling of confidence that they can apply phonics rules to come up with real meanings. I feel that, to a certain extent, less equals more in language learning. If you have a really good feeling for the basic principles and practice them often, it will make learning of new language so much easier. And from the point of view of the syllabus in general, it would be a pity if constant learning of new vocabulary were allowed to crowd out the thorough acquisition of the common contexts of the common (grammatical) words in the language.

I feel you may be putting too much emphasis on “implicit learning” of phonics principles. Yes, it works for some kids but with others it doesn’t really happen. This is so even for native English-speaking kids so imagine how much more difficult it can be for English learners. A wide body of evidence shows that some regular systematic phonics learning improves reading (both single words AND comprehension) across the board during grades 1 and 2.

If this kind of phonics teaching is delayed and first done during grades 3, 4 or higher, however, it is not so effective. The reasons for this are not clear at the moment. I believe Krashen would say that this is because after grade 2 or so, students have a body of implicit knowledge that supercedes the need for direct phonics instruction. This may be so for some students. But I don’t think it’s the case for all. The argument could equally be made that by grade 3, students who haven’t received phonics instruction have got into the habit of using word recognition techniques and, though the use of these techniques alone is less than ideal (see below) it is very hard for kids at this stage to change their reading method.

Systematic multisensory synthetic phonics instruction has proved helpful for teaching dyslexic students. And, regardless of the issues concerning phonics instruction at later grades or levels I believe that the “head start” it provides is useful to many, perhaps the majority of students.

I believe that direct teaching of the more regular and useful phonics rules is very helpful to English language learners. In an ideal world perhaps we could wait for quite some time before exposing learners to ANY written input in English. But the reality is that they are going to have this exposure whether we like it or not and if they are going to have it then they should be given opportunities to decode reading material in as efficient and painless a way as possible. Whole word recognition has its place but shouldn’t be allowed to replace phonics principles. (Research has shown that even in the case of native English speakers reading quickly using what one would assume to be whole word recognition, phonics principles are still at work aiding this process, and not just initial letters but phonics right through the words.)

Also, getting a feel for the writing system fairly early on can help those learners whose visual senses are dominant. It can actually aid in the process of acquiring new language. Probably best not used in initial presentation but it can help a lot during “consolidation” of knowledge.

One more thing. There are various ways of teaching phonics. Initial letters first, onsets/rimes etc. I feel that perhaps the most effective are those based on phonemes, rather than any smaller (initial letters first) or larger (onsets/rimes) phonetic units. Particularly in the case of consonants but also to some degree with vowels, the same graphemes tend to represent the same phonemes wherever they occur in a syllable. Kids can certainly acquire these phonemic principles with fairly little effort and indeed a fair bit of enjoyment, if taught in the right way. And research shows that the best way of developing phonemic awareness is in conjunction with learning of letters.

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Explicit phonics instruction is crucial for Taiwanese kids to build strong language skills. These kids don’t get any English language reinforcement from their environment, and rely on us completely for developing their abilites. They will not naturally learn to read and write words in a whole-language setting, and will rely on pure memorization, as that is all they know how to do. Explicit phonics instruction also develops their listening/decoding skills, and therefore does wonders for their general conversation skills.

A lot of people confuse vocabulary instruction with phonics instruction. Be careful using picture flashcards and TPR while teaching phonics, as most kids will focus on the word’s meaning, or the first sound in the word, and never think about anything else.

I use nonsense words to introduce and develop phonics skills, and reinforce them by choosing stoybooks that contain the concepts I’m teaching. As the students get more comfortable with it, I increase the difficulty. The parents are told to not ask their children to memorize, and this is constantly reinforced in class.

However, it only works if the students are constantly reminded that phonics is a skill that they actually need to use when reading and writing. They need to be encouraged to use it every time! My students love learning phonics, as it takes the mystery out of spelling, and they know they don’t need to waste their time memorizing vocabulary lists.

If you are feeling frustrated by your students’ reading and writing skills, try this simple test. Ask them if phonics and spelling are the same thing. If they think they are different skills, then you know your phonics program could use some upgrading.

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Actually Krashen says that phonics teaching is ineffective, and claims to the contrary are based on faulty research. The National Literacy Strategy (NLS) paper glorifies recent improvements, but doesn’t mention of the fact that making changes to a curriculum generally brings an improvement in test scores, especially when the 350 well-paid literacy consultants know how the tests are scored. Also, in the same time period, school lunches got revamped, cutting out the fried foods in favor of healthy food, which has been proved to be effective for raising test scores (and phonics hasn’t). Finally, the British are in the bottom half of the world’s literate people:

Thus, he argues that after grade 1, despite claims to the contrary, phonics adds an insignificant effect. As children can all learn to read without learning phonics rules, but those who are taught phonics rules don’t all learn to read, Krashen’s viewpoint is that phonics teaching is a waste of time. Given a lot of reading, the phonics rules become known. But try to teach them, too many phonics rules are actually made to be broken. One two hour class spent on phonics is a waste of two hours. One two hour class spent on comprehensible input (CI) is a much better class - but it means the teacher needs to keep everyone paying attention.

Though cram schools in Taiwan do teach extensive phonics, the students have poor listening/decoding. After studying and restudying the 26 basic and 264 assorted other phonics rules, students in Taiwan are unable to pass the listening TOEFL test. The proof is in the average TOEFL scores. Taiwan falls at the bottom of the charts.

To blame this on the students because they somehow failed to learn the correct production of a countable number of consonant and vowel combinations is a failure to blame the teaching method. Phonics rules offer something to teach, little class preparation, and few comprehension checks, because what’s to comprehend but sets of strings of letters with commonalities. You might as well argue that teaching grammar in school allows the students to listen, decode or even produce with better grammar than students who get CI.

One final point is what’s happening in India. Many middle-aged women are now able to read in that country who couldn’t before. The reason for this, not attributable to phonics instruction, is that they now watch movies and TV with subtitles.

[quote=“http://www.planetread.org/”]Through PlanetRead

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It’s nice to see people debate teaching theory and practice. I wish more people would get into this. Educational theory is important! It’s difficult to teach well without at least some grounding in it. However, applying a theory is much more difficult that simply learning one. I remember the day, all those years ago, when I stepped into my first teaching job with my freshly-minted teaching degree. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I didn’t know jack about teaching. It was trying out the theories, making mistakes, and refining my teaching methods that gave success to the students and to me as a teacher. A true teacher balances theory with practice, and knows that there is no one perfect approach to teaching.

I think the main reason language teaching is ineffective here is a lack of experience on the part of the teachers. If someone only comes for a year, it’s not enough time to develop true teaching competence, no matter what educational theory gets championed. It’s also not enough time to prove to the school owners that their curriculum needs improving.

I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years, and still spend a number of hours every week researching theory and methodology. The more experience I get, the more I realize that there is a lot left to learn. It doesn’t really matter how you teach. What matters is that the students “wake up” and start thinking for themselves.

Keep researching, and keep experimenting with what you are learning, and you will accomplish great things with your students. I’ve made the theories mentioned in this thread a part of my teaching plan, and love the results. I also use phonics, and again, love the results. Mix and match!

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Twocs, Krashen says that “systematic, intensive phonics” is ineffective. Not ALL phonics. He says that some phonics teaching can be helpful.

He does not really define “systematic, intensive phonics”. The examples he gives are of complex rules and exceptions. But phonics can be systematic yet still done in small effective doses (concentrating on the most consistent and common grapheme-phoneme correspondences rather than complex rules with many exceptions), alongside lots of CI which you and I agree is an extremely important thing.

If I remember rightly the National Reading Panel found a beneficial effect for phonics instruction on reading_comprehension (not only single words) for both grades 1 and 2. That’s 2 years! It’s a lot! Even if there were no beneficial effect from grade 3 onwards, two years of improved reading skills could add up to a lot of learning. Actually, as I understood it, the research comparing phonics instruction at different grade levels was conducted immediately after the period of phonics instruction. I don’t think an attempt was made to compare the reading ability of 4th graders who had recieved systematic phonics instruction in grades 1 and 2, and 4th graders who hadn’t received that instruction. As I said in my post above, introducing systematic phonics during grades 3 and 4 might have been ineffective simply because students had already got into particular habits of reading that were hard to change. Some children had developed effective reading skills. Others were saddled with the imperfect reading habits that they had learned. It’s a possibility, anyway.

And I don’t agree with you that all native-speaking kids learn to read. Some don’t. The research shows that systematic phonics instruction can help all kids, especially those who otherwise have difficulty with reading (both those who are of lower-than average intelligence AND those, like dyslexics, who are otherwise “normal” and only have problems with reading and writing).

I’m not sure about your point that phonics doesn’t work because Taiwanese students seem to have poor listening skills. Firstly, they have probably been taught phonics using an ineffective mishmash of methods, using example words that they neither know nor care about. Secondly, phonics isn’t really intended to improve listening skills. It can do a bit but that’s incidental and not the main purpose.

Phonics is primarily connected with reading, of course, and to a lesser extent with writing. Dangerous Apple said that phonics and spelling were the same thing. Not really so. Phonics can and should have a close connection with early attempts at spelling. A feel for the simple rules of phonics can help a lot in spelling simple words, despite the many exceptions. It seems as if it acts as a kind of mnemonic device to aid memory. As spelling of more complex words is attempted, phonics principles are still present but become less important. Other things such as morphology also come into play.

Dangerous Apple also repeated the axiom that as Taiwanese students don’t have the “English-speaking environment”, they need more formal rule-based instruction than do native-speaking students. On this I agree with you, Twocs. More CI and related activities are what is needed. Yes, some language rules (phonics, grammar) need to be taught explicitly. But they can never be allowed to replace real language use, as languages are primarily learned through understanding messages. Phonics teaching is not a panacea, just part of the means to an end.

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FYI Krashen defines “systematic intensive phonics” instruction as “an attempt to teach all sound-spelling correspondences in a planned sequence”. I’ve never seen any type of phonics program in Taiwan that was not systematic intensive phonics.

[quote=“http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/phonics_debate_2004/index.html”]I think there is a role for the direct teaching of phonics. This is not a “compromise” position but one that is fully consistent with the Comprehension Hypothesis: Phonics, or conscious knowledge of sound-spelling correspondences, can help when it makes text more comprehensible. Smith (1994) demonstrates how this can happen: The child is reading the sentence “The man was riding on the h____.” and cannot read the final word. Given the context, and knowledge of

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Just now I was re-reading the NRP report in the hope that it would send me to sleep.

Hasn’t worked yet, so I’m just posting a correction to what I posted above and a bit more information.

The significant effect size of systematic phonics instruction on reading comprehension (not just single words) was limited to instruction that had started in the 1st grade or earlier. Note that this is instruction that started at that point. There was no significant effect on reading comprehension for phonics instruction started in the 2nd or subsequent grades (apart from with reading disabled children, for whom there was a small but statistically significant effect). However, there was evidence to suggest that the positive effects of phonics instruction that had started in the 1st grade resulted in continuing better performance in reading in subsequent grades.

[quote=“National Reading Panel”]The evidence on older readers above 1st grade reviewed so far provides no information about the effects of phonics instruction on older students who began phonics instruction in kindergarten or 1st grade. However, there is relevant evidence in the database. For four comparisons, phonics instruction was introduced in kindergarten or 1st grade to at-risk readers and continued beyond 1 year…
At the end of 2nd grade, after 2 to 3 years of instruction, the mean effect size was d = 0.43. this is substantially higher than the mean effect size observed for older children receiving only 1 year of phonics instruction in grades beyond 1st (d = 0.27).
Because there are so few cases contributing effect sizes, the results are mainly suggestive. they suggest that when phonics instruction is taught to children at the outset of learning to read and continued for 2 to 3 years, the children experience significantly greater growth in reading at the end of training than children who receive phonics instruction for only 1 year after 1st grade.[/quote]
What they didn’t and presumably couldn’t isolate was the continuing effect on older children of systematic phonics instruction that had started in the 1st grade and lasted only one year. I would hazard a guess that in this case there would still be an improvement over unsystematic instruction or systematic instruction started after the 1st grade.

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Just seen your post above, Twocs. You’re up late as well.[quote=“twocs”][quote=“joesax”]Twocs, Krashen says that “systematic, intensive phonics” is ineffective. Not ALL phonics. He says that some phonics teaching can be helpful.[/quote]

FYI Krashen defines “systematic intensive phonics” instruction as “an attempt to teach all sound-spelling correspondences in a planned sequence”. I’ve never seen any type of phonics program in Taiwan that was not systematic intensive phonics. [/quote]They are not intensive in the sense that some programs in the States are. I have never seen a program here that delved into the complexities of arcane rules and exceptions as much as some programs in the States do!

By way of contrast, programs here do tend to be composed of the more common and regular phonics principles, with some glaring exceptions and perhaps a few unecessary additions.

[quote=“twocs”]There’s a quote here from a definitely pro-phonics paper that seems to argue the same point as Krashen, that a broad base should be built on listening, and after second grade, words in context start to be learned effortlessly through reading:

[quote=“http://projectpro.com/ICR/Phonics/Reading.htm#1”]There are only two ways to acquire written vocabulary: either you use phonics to convert written words into the spoken words that you already know, or you must memorize the meaning of each and every written word as if written English were an entirely new language.[/quote][/quote]What that says is that words that students start reading should be familiar: in other words they should have been acquired. I absolutely agree. I wrote about that in my first couple of posts in this thread. But there is no reason that phonics techniques, or even better a combination of phonics and prediction based on context and syntactic knowledge, shouldn’t be used in decoding those words. And I don’t think there’s a great case for delaying phonics instruction for a full year. Not even with second/foreign language learners.

And you’re never going to be able to provide learners with all the words they’re going to come across when they get to the stage of reading independently. Neither should you try to. Once students have reached an intermediate level they are by definition able to acquire new language independently both by listening and by reading. Phonics is one of several skills they should have under their belts by that point to aid them in this process.

Yes, some students are able to acquire phonics rules in a very natural way. But many students benefit from some focused, conscious reflection on phonics principles.

Phonics instruction is not a harmful thing! It aids comprehension. It seems that systematic instruction can under certain circumstances aid comprehension MORE than unsystematic instruction. The only way it could be harmful is if it were used outside of a generally meaning-based language instruction context or if it were allowed to replace meaning-based teaching. Yes of course we can see phonics teaching done badly and even in a way that is detrimental to real language acquisition. But that doesn’t mean that it’s phonics itself that’s at fault.

It’s not an either/or situation. You can provide abundant comprehensible input and still give students some focused, systematic instruction on the most common and most useful writing/sound correspondences.

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One thing: Don’t forget that meaning plays an important part in reading, too much phonics can KILL a child’s reading interest by focusing on the mechanical rather than the content part of the reading. So it’s best to include some kind of real reading as well as controlled phonics. That way children can get a handle on the reading as a real activity.

Just my 2cents.
Kenneth

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