Resources - Discussion Papers

Understanding Phonics and its role in Literacy Education

Marie T Emmitt, Deakin University, a paper presented at Australian Literacy Educators' Seminars,
Tasmania, September-October 1998

Introduction

Phonics is often central to many literacy debates. There have been newspaper headlines such as: "Learning to read becomes a war of words", "The Literacy War", "Fashionable teaching blamed for low literacy", and you would probably have seen some TV shows that have promoted phonics as the answer to literacy problems. If you tried to follow the arguments about literacy education in the media you could not be criticised for thinking that phonics is the solution to any possible decline in literacy standards and that it will solve all literacy problems. But when trying to follow the arguments you need to remember that education, in particular literacy education is political. Not just in a party political sense but from the distribution of power perspective, who has access to different institutions, who has access to people of influence etc. Allan Luke from the University of Queensland had this to say:

Literacy education is, by definition, always a social and political matter, tied up with the distribution of power, knowledge and competence in increasingly complex and difficult economic and cultural conditions. (Luke, 1998, p.31 1).

In this paper, I want to cover some of the areas of confusion and misconception that surrounds phonics and phonics teaching, and in particular to highlight some of the complexities of phonic knowledge. There is confusion both about the use of the term and the relevance of phonics to literacy education. In particular, there is confusion in understanding and using terms such as phonics, phonemics, phonemic awareness and phonetics. In addition I have concerns about the teaching of phonics. My concern is not that some teachers do not believe in the teaching of phonics, but rather that some do not possess sufficient explicit knowledge of the relationship between English speech sounds and letters in words. Therefore, many teachers cannot provide the most appropriate instruction in phonics and instead, give their students misinformation. This is particularly dangerous for those students who need all the help they can get.

Much of the media hype focuses on debating questions as to whether a phonics approach is better than some other approach. This is overly simplistic. Most literacy educators acknowledge that phonics is necessary. The issues are: what phonic knowledge is important, and what ways can best help students learn to use this knowledge.

In this paper therefore, I will focus on:

• The Place of Phonics in Literacy Education
• Clarification of Key Terms
• English Phonics and its Complexity
• Research and Phonics
• Phonics Instruction

The Place of Phonics in Literacy Education

Firstly, literacy is much more than phonics. For the purposes of this paper literacy can be described as the use of written language to fulfil a range of social purposes. It involves the ability to solve problems, think analytically and communicate effectively using written language. Literacy education includes a planned program for helping students learn and use efficient strategies to read and write for a wide range of purposes.

Learning to read involves much more than knowing sound-letter relationships. As Freebody's (1990) description of reading indicates "cracking the code" is one aspect only. He describes four roles that a learner needs to take on: codebreaker, text participant, text user and text analyst. These roles are not to be learned hierarchically but from the beginning. Goodman (1994) argued we use a range of knowledge to construct meaning when reading such as semantic, syntactic and graphophonic. This view is generally accepted by educators and informs curriculum documents in Australia.

The teaching of word identification skills and strategies is therefore, part of a total program that emphasises reading and writing for meaning. Instruction for word identification offers learners a range of organised and relatively systematic strategies to deal with unfamiliar words. Phonics or the use of phonic knowledge is one such strategy but there are others. Similarly phonics is one strategy for spelling. Therefore, literacy education has to be seen as much more than phonics.

There are some in the community however, who have narrow views of literacy and of reading in particular; reading as a set of subskills, where code-cracking is paramount. Phonics first, is then central to that view. Just to clarify any confusions about different views of reading, they can be summarised under three broad categories: reading as a hierarchy of skills, reading as a psycholinguistic process, reading as social practice. Probably one of the reasons that there is so much confusion re the place of phonics is that many adults do not realise how much of the information needed to construct meaning from a text is provided by the context and by prior knowledge. Try for example, to read the introduction of a version of Little Red Riding Hood where the vowels are removed. You can still make meaning which demonstrates that we don't need to identify every letter etc.

What do we mean by phonics, phonemic awareness and phonetics?

Phonics is a teaching term that has been used in different ways.

1. It is often used to refer to one traditional approach to teaching reading - the phonic method. Some of you might have been taught by this method when you were at school. This method emphasised the teaching of sound-letter knowledge as the first step in reading instruction. It used as a basis, books that use phonically regular words such as "The cat sat on the mat". This method was often contrasted with another traditional skills based method - the whole word method.
   
2. The term is also used as a label for activities that emphasise letter-sound correspondences. The term phonic analysis' is generally used To refer to the strategies for identifying words by analysing their sounds, one-by-one.
   
3. More accurately for today's use, the term refers to the relationships between letters and sounds, or between letter patterns and sound patterns (Emmitt & Hornsby, 1996).

In the media the phonics approach is often contrasted with 'whole language'. Unfortunately, the interpretation of whole language seems to represent the whole word approach. The articles often argue that phonics is not taught in whole language. Most teachers, from my experience do believe in the teaching of phonics. However it is still a site of political and ideological debate, due to different positions on education, literacy and reading, hence the nature of reporting in the media. For example, Susan Moore, from the Institute for Public Affairs, a private think tank, was cited as claiming that:

the whole language approach has been a disaster .... 'it is a national disgrace that 10 and 11 year olds cannot break words into syllables because they lack the basic phonic skills. Phonics has been a dirty word for a long time' (Hope 1994, p 1).

I'm sick of reading in newspapers that whole language teachers don't teach phonics. Whole language teachers do teach phonics, but they teach it differently, from known words and their different sounds. Whole language is not look - saying (sic) or whole-word. 'The kids 1 see in whole language classrooms love books and reading (Hope 1994, pl.)

Clearly, the issue of phonics is important for teachers and an emotive topic in the profession. It is certainly a site of political and ideological struggle. Hence the nature of the reporting in the media.

The ability to learn how sounds map to letters is related to phonemic awareness, or the understanding that speech is composed of words and that words are composed of individual sounds. Before children can master sound-letter associations they must understand that spoken words can be segmented. Children who are phonologically aware are able to discriminate between and manipulate sounds in words and syllables in speech; they know when words rhyme or do not rhyme. When my son was 3 or 4 he said to me: "Humphrey begins the same way as Humpty". This was a sign of his developing phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness does not automatically develop. Studies of adult illiterates who are competent speakers indicated that they do not possess phonemic awareness. It seems it develops through experiencing with written language and play with language. I will say more about phonemic awareness when talking about instruction.

Phonetics which is often used inappropriately instead of the term phonics, is a linguistic term that refers to the characteristics of speech sounds and how they are produced. It is also used to refer to a stage in children's spelling development where they use their knowledge of sounds to represent the spelling of words - 'phonetic spelling' eg 'lfnt' for elephant.

What is English Phonics and why is phonics so complex?

Phonics is the set of relationships between the phonology (sounds) of a language and the orthography or if you like, the graphology (written symbols). Some languages, for example Finnish and Spanish have very regular 1-1 relationship between the sounds and their representation by letters. However, in English there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the phonology (sounds) and the orthography (letters). The reasons for this is the origin of English words, which is another fascinating story. There are at least 40 phonemes in English but only 26 letters. Sometimes two letters are put together to represent one sound eg. 'th', 'sh', and 'ch'. Some single letters represent a combination of sounds. For example, 'x' represents (ks) and 'q' represents (kw). Often, one letter may represent more than one sound, depending on its placement in the spelling of the word. For example the letter 'a' represents many sounds. Consider the sounds it represents in these words - mat, mane, said, village, about .... Also one sound is sometimes represented by different letters. For example, the sound (f) can be represented by 'f, 'ff, 'ph', '-h'. Consider how these letter combinations represent different sounds: 'longer, singer, finger, ranger; phone, uphill; father, fathead'. Despite these complexities most consonant sounds are represented by relatively few alternatives. On the other hand vowel sound - letter relationships are much more complex. For example, the (aI) sound in 'buy' can be represented by at least nine spellings: i (child) i-e (ice) ie (pie) igh (light) ai (aisle) ei (height) eye, uy (buy) y (fly). In the following the 'o' represents different sounds : hook, horizon. honey, hoist, horse, hoot, house, hour, hope, hot'.

However, English sound-letter patterns are not random. There are rules but in many cases they are complex and with many exceptions, especially for vowels. Clymer (1963) articulated many rules. However the rules are complex and have many exceptions and much too complex for beginner readers and writers! There is however, greater consistency or regularity between patterns of sounds and letters than there is between single sounds and letters. For example patterns such as 'er, ing, ack ' are generally consistent. Hence the purpose of phonics teaching is not to get students to sound out words but to learn to recognise patterns in words and to use those patterns in their reading and writing. Generally there is high consistency in spelling patterns and the meaning parts of words. For example, the spelling of 'sign' is consistent with the spelling for 'signature, 'signal' and 'signify' where the 'g' is pronounced.

From this it becomes obvious that in teaching, you draw attention to consonants first and then common spelling patterns e.g. 'ing', and for reading it makes sense to focus on the strategy of identifying the first sound of a word and integrating this knowledge with the semantic and syntactic knowledge to assist in recognising, words.

What does research have to say about phonic instruction and phonemic awareness?

As I said earlier there is little real debate in the profession about the importance of phonic knowledge for learning to read and write. However, there is considerable debate about:

• how phonics is taught,
• what is taught, and
• when phonic knowledge is taught.

There is also considerable debate about the value of systematic instruction in phonics. However, I again emphasise that phonics is one strategy for word recognition in reading and one strategy for spelling. It is often the first strategy for spelling but not in reading. This then should help set priorities for instruction. Phonics has to be kept in perspective.

Let me discuss briefly the research evidence for phonemic awareness and phonics instruction. There is still some debate about the role of phonemic awareness. Research has demonstrated that phonemic awareness is a predictor of reading success (Adams, 1990). The issue is how significant is instruction in phonemic awareness. It seems that much of phonemic awareness is learned through reading and writing. Lots of experiences with rhyming language and discussion of sounds and words may be useful. Students need to be able to demonstrate phonemic awareness before any instruction in sound-letter patterns.

As I said earlier, much of the debate about phonics is about the nature of phonics to be taught, when and how. There are strident proponents of phonics first instruction, but despite what you see and hear in the media there is not a large body of research out there saying that phonics first instruction is the way to go. Richard Allington, an eminent researcher and educator in USA (1997) reported on his examination of a report called "Thirty Years of Research: What We Know About How Children Learn to Read" which was produced by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The Report concluded that phonics should be the sole method of instruction for all beginning readers. Allington examined the research cited in the report and found that it often did not refer to original research, but to commentaries or reviews that did not put the findings in context. It is this type of report that is influencing decision making re phonics.

Routman (1996) a well known American school principal and writer states that intensive early phonics instruction does produce students with superior word identification skills but does not necessarily improve their comprehension:

Data on the long-term effects of phonics instruction are scanty. In one of the few longitudinal studies, children who had received intensive phonics instruction in kindergarten or first grade performed better in the third grade than a comparison group of children on both a word-identification test and a comprehension test. By the sixth grade, the group that years earlier had received intensive phonics instruction still did better than the comparison group on a word-identification test, but the advantage in comprehension had vanished. The fact that an early phonics emphasis had less influence on comprehension as the years passed is probably attributable to the increasing importance of knowledge of the topics, vocabulary, and reasoning ability on advanced comprehension tests. (Routman, 1996 p.92).

Recent research by Dahl & Freppon (1995) in a study of literacy instruction in inner urban classrooms found that children taught phonics in context were better able to use phonics in their reading and spelling than children taught it systematically in isolation from reading and writing.

Wilde (1997) a researcher and educator, argues that there is research which supports not teaching phonics. She discusses different research studies that demonstrate that children can recognise words and use phonics without systematic instruction in phonics. She concludes that the most important question is always, "Are these children, in my classroom, learning to read? (Wilde, 1997, p.73). If your students are not learning to read, then it is vital that you determine what is happening or not happening and adjust your program accordingly. This may mean more explicit teaching of phonics to some students. 1 don't see evidence for systematic teaching of phonics for all students. In summary, research does demonstrate that phonic knowledge is important but to be effective for reading and writing it needs to be taught in context.

Weaver (1990) summarised the reasons not to teach numerous patterns and rules as follows:

• It's not necessary. Most children will unconsciously induce the common patterns, given ample opportunity to read environmental print in context; listen to and read predictable stories, rhymes, and songs; write using functional 'phonetic' spelling; and have their attention drawn to patterns in Big, Book experiences, language experience recounts etc.
• There are too many rules with too many exceptions, especially for vowels. Even if a rule applies to a given word, it's not always possible to know which rule applies unless you know the word.
• Phonic cues provide only approximations of words, anyway. Using phonic cues only, readers often cannot say the word right even with simple words (for example, love, wind).
• Saying the word doesn't guarantee getting the meaning, anyway. And getting the meaning of a word doesn't guarantee that it's the right meaning in context.
• Too much emphasis on phonics encourages children to use "sound it out" as their first and possibly only strategy for getting words and meaning, other than asking someone.
• Effective and efficient readers first use context and prior knowledge to predict what would make sense. Using the context first they then need only sample the visual cues. If the word is in their listening vocabulary, context plus consonants are often enough.
• Overemphasising phonics may encourage readers to focus too much on identifying words and too little upon getting meaning.
• Teaching numerous phonic patterns or rules may result in many children being labelled early as reading failures or slow readers, since for many children it's harder to learn phonics than to learn to read.
• It's not necessary!!! Just as we don't teach babies and toddlers rules for putting together sounds to make words or words to make sentences, so we don't need to teach rules for sounding out words. Most children will learn the patterns through repeated exposure, with a minimum of direct instruction.

Phonics Instruction

1 would hope that the above discussion highlights that phonics is complex and that instruction in phonics needs to be handled carefully. We need to consider how children learn phonic knowledge. We have the evidence of those children who learned to read without formal instruction. Certainly many children learn a lot about sound and letter knowledge from rich experience with reading and writing. Through careful observation of their reading and writing, the teacher can determine what instruction is necessary for the different learners to use phonics more effectively. Some learners will require more explicit instruction than others. Some will need different instruction from others. Teachers need to be very clear about the type of knowledge that should be learned and monitor for this. Some categories of knowledge which should be developed include:

1. phonemic awareness
2. knowledge of letter names and shapes
3. metalanguage - a language to talk about language
4. use of phonics in reading, in particular knowledge of: initial consonants and common letter clusters and patterns
5. knowledge of common spelling patterns for spelling. (Emmitt & Hornsby, 1996)

As stated earlier, learning is most effective if instruction occurs in context. Stahl (1992) discusses characteristics of exemplary phonics instruction. He gives the following characteristics:

1. Builds on a child's rich concepts about how print functions.
2. Builds on a foundation of phonemic awareness.
3. Is clear and direct.
4. Is integrated into a total literacy program
5. Focuses on reading words in context, not learning rules.
6. May include onsets and times to highlight the patterns; an onset is the part before the vowel and the rime is the vowel and consonant, eg 'c' is the onset and 'at' is the rime in 'cat'.
7. Includes allowing for invented spelling in writing.
8. Develops independent word recognition strategies, focussing attention on the internal structure of words.
9. Develops automatic word recognition skills so that students can devote their attention to comprehension, not words.

Much can be achieved by drawing children's attention to words and parts of words through reading and writing activities such as shared Big Book, guided reading and language experience activities. Powell and Hornsby (1993) amongst others, give ideas on how to develop phonic understands in context of reading and writing.

However, for the effective teaching of phonics, by which I mean the monitoring of children's development in reading and writing and their knowledge and use of phonic knowledge, plus appropriate instruction depends on the teacher possessing an explicit understanding of the relationship between the letters and sounds of the language. As I said before, I am concerned that many teachers do not have sufficient knowledge and may give their learners incorrect information which must add considerable confusion for these beginning readers and writers. I am not blaming individual teachers for this lack of knowledge. Too often linguistics did not form any part of a teacher education program.

Summary

In summary, phonic knowledge is useful when used with other knowledge. For example phonics is only effective in reading when it is used along with prior knowledge and context rather than in isolation. Readers need to develop at least a rudimentary knowledge of phonics and an ability to use that knowledge to make progress in reading. To spell effectively, a number of strategies are necessary. Spellers use the sound of words, the visual image of words and the knowledge of the meaning of parts of words to spell unfamiliar words. Use of phonics with other strategies is effective but in isolation it is effective for very few words.

Many children learn much about phonics through reading and writing. Others need their attention drawn to words and word parts. However, there is little evidence that systematic teaching of phonics in isolation is effective. Instruction in phonics in the context of reading and writing is effective.

Phonics is not the solution to any perceived literacy crisis. It is an essential part of literacy instruction, but only one part. For phonic instruction to be effective students need to learn to use the knowledge in concert with other knowledge and strategies. This means that instruction is not the magic ingredient that is going to ensure that all children are successful at learning to read. However, teachers need to ensure that their students do possess the appropriate phonic knowledge and strategies which means that teachers need explicit knowledge of phonics. In the past many teachers possessed inaccurate of insufficient knowledge which meant the teaching of phonics may not have been effective. Literacy education is complex and teachers need a sophisticated knowledge of literacy and their learners to be able to determine the most appropriate strategies. A prescriptive program will not work for their learners with their different individual strengths and needs.

It is interesting to compare the texts advocated from a phonics first approach with those from a meaning based emphasis such as a Fitzroy Reader with a Bill Martin Junior book such as 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear'.

References

Adams, M. 1990, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Dahl, K. & Freppon, P, 1995, 'A comparison of innercity children's interpretations of reading and writing instruction in the early grades in skills based and whole language classrooms', Reading Research Quarterly, vol.30, no.1, pp50-74.

Emmitt, M. & Pollock, J., 1997, Language and Learning, Oxford University Press, Melb.

Emmitt, M & Hornsby, D. 1996. 'Phonics in Early Literacy' , Practically Primary, p.11-17.

Freebody, P. 1992, 'A socio-cultural approach: Resourcing four roles as a literacy learner, in Prevention of Reading Failure, eds. A. Watson & A. Badenhip, Ashton Scholastic, Sydney.

Goodman, K. 1994, 'Reading, writing and written texts: A transactional sociopsycholinguistic view' Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, 4th edn. Eds. R. Ruddell, M. Ruddell and H. Singer, International Reading Association, Newark, Delaware.

Goodman, K, 1993, Phonics Phacts, Heinemann, Portsmouth NH

Goswani, U & Bryant, P 1990, Phonological Skills and Learning to Read, Lawrence Arlbaum, Wheatons, Exeter, UK.

Hope, D. 1994, 'The Literacy war', Weekend Australian Review, July 16-17, pp 1-2.

Hornsby, D & Powell, D. 1993, Learning Phonics and Spelling in a Whole Language Classroom, Scholastic, New York, NY.

Hornsby, D, 1995, Sounds Great: Learning Graphophonics Connections in a Whole Learning Classroom, Martin Education, St. Leanards, NSW.

Routman, R. 1996, Literacy at the Crossroads, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.

Strickland, D 1998, Teaching Phonics Today: A Primer for Educators, International Reading Association, Newark, Delaware.

Wilde, S. 1997, What's A Schwa Sound Anyway? A Holistic Guide to Phonetics, Phonics, and Spelling, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH.

Marie Emmitt, Deakin University, Victoria, Email: memmitt@deakin.edu.au