What is Phonics
Right now, English is treated as a pictographic language although it is in fact a phonetic language!
What is the Problem?
- The Whole World Method treats English as a pictographic language - if you have not seen and heard a word about it before, you will not know how to pronounce it.
- Students learn to read by hearing the sound of an entire word: cat, cent, city, catty - Students have to rely on a teacher for correct pronunciation.
- It requires a whole lot of memory power to remember all the words in the English Language.
This is the method that has been used to teach reading in school systems today.
Phonics English
TO SOUND A WORD WHEN YO SEE IT, TO SPELL A WORD WHEN YOU HEAR IT.
The English spelling system is an alphabet. Each letter of the alphabet represents a unit of sound.
Phonics train learners by making use of sounds and rules in English to help them decode words when reading.
Every letter represents either one or more sounds. For example - the printed letter “a” represents six different units of sound.
Which particular sound the letter “a” makes depends on where it appears in a word (this is a rule)
| C-A-T | a1 | First sound of “a” | |
| M-A-T-E | a2 | Second sound | |
| F-A-TH-ER | a3 | Third sound | |
| A-L-L | a4 | Fourth sound | |
| W-A-S | a5 | Fifth sound | |
| A-B-O-V-E | a0 | Schwa |
