| Article Index |
|---|
| Phonics Phacts |
| What is Phonics? |
| Phonics as Method |
| How Much Phonics? |
| Further Reading |
| All Pages |
Page 3 of 5
Phonics as MethodThat gets us to the issue of phonics as a method of teaching reading. A commonsense notion is that if someone trying to learn to read just learns to match letters and sounds they can read. That leads to the simplistic conclusion that if they don't learn it is because they haven't been taught "phonics." This simplistic reasoning then leads to the notion that since all this is so obvious, there must be a conspiracy to keep people from being taught this sure, simple way. But the phonic relationships are anything but simple. Furthermore, these relationships are abstract: phonics isn't about the relationship of print and sound; it's about the relationship of abstract systems.
What we've learned from the study of language development, both oral and written, is that language is easy to learn when it is used functionally in the real world to make sense. Little children understand and make themselves understood in oral language long before they fully control the sound system. That's because they learn language in the context of its use. Children learn written language in the same way. They may learn the names of letters and even have some sense of how they relate to sounds as they're learning to read. But they can only learn the abstract phonics system in the context of vying to make sense of meaningful print. They are very good at learning language in meaningful contexts. They are not very good at learning abstractions out of context. Current research shows very young children becoming aware of the alphabetic nature of written English. They invent spellings as they experiment with writing and are able to test out their own developing phonics rules. These invented phonics rules often show how keenly these young learners discriminate sounds. They hear features adults have learned to ignore. Gradually, young learners also tune out features which are not important in the system. Direct instruction in phonological rules is not what helps babies learn to talk; direct instruction in phonics is not what helps people learn the complex system of phonics relationships.
Phonics is an important part of reading alphabetically written language. But it is only a part. How do you say going to? Try it in I'm going to the store. Now try it in I'm going to go home now. Most of us say something like gonna in the second case. But we don't say it that way in the first sentence. That's because the words have different grammatical functions in the two sentences. We can't pronounce it until we decide, intuitively, what its grammar is.
