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Synthetic Phonics Explained

Synthetic Phonics is the new buzzword in literacy education. Read on to find out what the term means

Within each word are individual sounds called phonemes. For instance, the word plough has 6 letters, 3 phonemes and 1 syllable.

English has 43 phonemes in all, but is unusual in having over a thousand different letter combinations that can represent them.

There are two main camps of literacy educators, who believe in either the Real Books approach or in Phonics.

The Real Books approach uses reading books with pictures and text. The principal is that the child will learn by exposure to text and meaning. Some words will become familiar quickly and the others can be guessed from the context and with the help of the pictures.

In contrast to that approach, the phonics system focusses on the structure of words and relationships between each phoneme and the different letter structures.

Phonics is split into two philosophies. Analytical phonics looks at the syllable structures within words and groups them along those lines. For instance, the words spare, rare and care would all be in a group. The learner becomes familiar with the main groups and then just distinguishes the words within the groups.

Synthetic Phonics works from the opposite direction. The possible letter structures for each phoneme are taught and then the syllables (and words) are blended from the individual sounds.

What should we be using?

In a controlled testing environment, synthetic phonics gets the best results.

But it is hard to achieve the same results across the school system. Synthetic phonics is a technical approach not suited to all teachers.

For that reason, the results in general use tend to be disappointing in comparison with the tests done.

The alternative that we have been working on is to combine the two approaches. We deliver the essential technical side of the synthetic phonics over the Internet, and then build on that with a real books approach using Easyread TrainerText.

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