Phonics Is a Building Block of Reading

A good command of phonics is crucial for early forays into the world of reading.

Phonics allows children to sound out unfamiliar words (and when you’re just starting out, most words are unfamiliar) by giving them rules about how each letter sounds.

As is true of most teaching methods, the teaching of phonics swings in and out of favor with educators and learning theorists every few decades. It was most popular in the first half of this century, later lost momentum and is now growing popular again.

But phonics has never completely disappeared from school reading programs because it’s such a good shortcut to learning pronunciation. Even so, many parents are mystified by the concept of phonics--the term itself sounds frighteningly clinical.

Yet, learning enough about phonics so that you can practice the sounds with your child at home is fairly easy. Here’s a crash course in the basic concepts and terminology of phonics.

The premise of phonics is that each letter of the alphabet represents a sound (or sometimes two). Thus, if your child learns the roughly 40 sounds made by our alphabet’s 26 letters, then he or she should be able to correctly sound out most unfamiliar words found in daily reading.

Beyond that, phonics involves several categories of sounds. These are sounds you speak, hear and read every day, so you can practice them with your child at home, no matter what your own level of education or income.

Some storybooks borrowed from the public library should suffice. Your child’s teacher may also be able to lend you practice materials.

The study of phonics often begins with the learning of consonants because they’re the basic building blocks of words and their sounds are consistent. Thus the first step in learning phonics is knowing what sound each consonant makes by itself.

Consonant blends occur when two or more letters are pronounced together. They include br in brush, gl in glue, spr in spruce, squ in squeeze and tr in train.

But you can’t make a word just with consonants; knowing the sounds of vowels is a part of phonics too.

Each vowel has both a short sound and a long sound. Short sounds include the a in ant, e in end, i in spit, o in otter and u in mud. Long vowel sounds include the a in Quaker, e in tepee, i in while, o in rose and u in tuba.

Phonics teaches kids a series of rules for knowing when a vowel makes a long or short sound, and when y is a vowel, such as: “If a vowel appears between two consonants in a word, it’s probably a short vowel.”

Diphthongs occur when two different vowels appear together and each contributes to an overall sound. We’ve got only four of them in English-- oi , ou , ow and oy --so it’s easy to help your child spot them. They’re heard in moist, pout, frown and soy.

Diagraphs are slightly different from diphthongs. They’re composed of two different letters that appear next to each other and make one new sound together. Here are some examples for starters: au , aw , oo , ee , p h, sh , th , nk , ck and ng .

For more information on phonics, ask your child’s teacher. Since every school teaches phonics a little differently, it’s best to find out the concepts and rules your child is learning.

Resources for practicing phonics with your child at home are also easy to find. Inexpensive workbooks are sold by many children’s book or toy stores; they also often sell software for phonics practice on home computers. “Sesame Street” offers clever phonics practice because each alphabet letter gets a whole episode and educational theme song to itself.

And, although I’m generally reluctant to suggest specific brands or products, my advice would be incomplete without mentioning the famous “Hooked on Phonics” program. Ignore all the ribbing it takes in late-night comedians’ monologues--the multimedia program really can help your child’s study of phonics and basic reading skills.