Here are some simple phonics rules I teach: I use pictures to teach all the letter sounds, so the kids are very solid in their short vowel sounds. Then I teach them about the vowels a,e,i,o,u sometimes y through a song. Then I teach them that most of the time, if a word has one vowel, then we use the picture sound for it. They already know the picture sound for a is like the a in ‘apple’. But if a word has 2 vowels, the second one is silent and the first one says its name, like in the abc song. So I give them the words cap and cape and tell them to put a number one under the first vowel and a number 2 under the second vowel (if there is a second vowel). If there is only one vowel to the word, I tell them to hold up one finger and repeat ‘one vowel, picture sound’, and we sound out c-a-p. For ‘cape’ I tell them that we can’t use the picture sound for the first vowel, we have to use the name sound, like it has in the abc song. So I draw a little musical note over the first vowel, and we sing ‘abc’, so they know that in ‘cape’ they can’t use the short a sound. Then I say that the second vowel is silent (with a finger to my lips) and we cross it out. Then they have to hold up 2 fingers and say, ‘2 vowels, abc song’. The kids get it with practice.
They go on to learn things like not all 2 vowel pairs can follow the above rule. I teach the 2 oo sounds, ou, the 2 ow sounds, ing, ong, aw/au, igh, ar,er ir,ur, or etc. Even in Taiwan I taught kids this way, but I would use Chinese to explain the rules. Also, I would make big cards with say ‘ing’ in one side, and the corresponding KK pronunciation symbol on the back. Chinese students will need to often use the KK pronunciation in their dictionary for longer words that they have never heard before. In the US, if the student has been exposed to a long word (they grew up speaking it, or as in the case of ESL students, the teacher has explicitly taught them the word), they can sound it out using phonics rules even if the rules don’t apply 100% of the time. If I see the sentence: ‘he jumped across the river’ and I initially sound out ‘across’ as ‘ay-crahss’, I can quickly correct myself because of sentence context and because I already have the word ‘across’ in my speaking vocabulary. So for long words, foreign students may have to depend more on a pronunciation system like KK. But for the US, if the student has the long word in their speaking/hearing vocab, they can sound it out without a pronunciation system. But when words get to be long, sometimes they get the sounds all mixed up in their heads. I teach them to say-‘long word, 3 letters’. Most of the time if they cover up all but the first 3 letters of the word and just concentrate on sounding that out first, and do the rest in chunks as well, they can sound out the entire word no problem.
Also, I got a great book about dyslexia that had a lot of all around good reading teaching strategies in it. Just being able to sound out the word isn’t enough, kids have to get fast at it, so that as soon as they see the word, they automatically can read it. Blending is definitely the first step, and, with a lot of kids, they will get to read that word automatically just by seeing it repeated in their stories. But for kids who have auditory retention problems-they can’t remember sound well (like my oldest daughter), they need extra practice with flash cards to make sure they have a deep impression of the words in their brains and can read it automatically when they see it. For my daughter, I would get say 8 words that she already knew how to read, albeit slowly. Then I would get a stop watch and time her as she got to read them faster and faster. We charted her progress and she loved the stop watch thing and trying to beat her own time. She really had difficulty learning to read, as well as speech problems. It was definitely something she was born with. The schools don’t have time to do this amount of remediation usually. If she didn’t have a mom who was willing to put in the time researching her problem, and then implementing a strategy, she would probably have needed to be put in a special class for low achievers. She still sometimes has problems sounding out a long word, but as long as she does it gradually, adding together chunk after chunk of the word, she can get it. For example, the word ‘international’. Even if she uses phonics and sounds it out as in-ter-na-tion-al, she might finally read it as ‘innatertional’, because she can’t keep the sound chunks organized in her mind well. But if she reads it step by step, adding chunks as she goes: in, inter, interna, internation, international- she can do it. I finally found her a series of novels she loves (about warrior cats 
), and she reads for an hour at a stretch. She just got her 5th grade report card- straight A’s :bouncy: .
