b. Phonics
Phonics, concerns the ways in which graphemes, (letters and combinations of letters) relate to the sounds of language (phonemes). In any alphabetic writing system, phonics is crucial to the teaching of reading. There is a mass of research evidence to show this (Pressley, 1996; Byrne, 1998; Taylor and Pearson, 2002). The Ofsted report Reading for Purpose and Pleasure (2004) notes that systematic and explicit teaching of phonics is beneficial. The Rose Review of best practice in teaching reading (Rose, 2006) has reopened the phonics debate recommending that schools should focus on synthetic phonics in early teaching. As a result Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics. (DfES 2007) has been published.
The definitions and the differences between synthetic and analytic phonics and the application of both in the classroom are central concerns.
Synthetic phonics
Synthetic phonics teaches children to match individual letters to individual phonemes. It then involves blending for reading and segmenting for spelling. It seems to work well in languages with more regular spelling systems, such as Finnish or Italian. But an approach of this sort is not enough for English spelling (Dombey, 2006). (See also 3c. Word identification). This is, of course, the approach favoured in the primary Framework, as can be seen in this article on The Standards Site .
Analytic phonics
Analytic phonics starts with whole texts, and then whole words, before teaching how these can be analysed. The teacher then teaches children to recognise new words by analogy with familiar words and draws attention to letter sound correspondences as they occur in text.
Analytic phonics is based on the evidence that children’s phonological awareness – their awareness of speech as sound – develops from large units to smaller units. Children recognise and can manipulate words before syllables, syllables before onsets and rime units, with individual phonemes coming last of all.
Onsets are the part of the syllable before the vowel: the ‘f’ and ‘bl’ in ‘fast’ and ‘blast’. Rimes are the rhyming parts of written words such as ‘fast’ and ‘blast’, ‘call’ and ‘ball’, and are key to analytic approaches.
Research by Goswami and Bryant (1990) has highlighted the importance of rimes in early literacy learning in English. In practice the two approaches are not necessarily opposed to each other. Juel and Minden-Cupp (2001) have shown the superiority of a systematic approach including, as well as onsets and rimes, the sounding and blending of phonemes within the rimes – in short a principled combination of analytic and synthetic approaches.
Student teachers will find that teachers may be using either or both. Analytic phonics provides a useful way into both phonics in general and also to unusual word patterns, which cannot be ‘sounded out’, such as ‘fast’ and ‘blast’. Synthetic phonics gives children a powerful route of access to the words that are phonically regular (straightforwardly spelled).
All student teachers will need a clear understanding of the power of young children to learn through analogy, as well as the progression in phonological awareness from syllables, to early rhyme, onset and rime, through to an awareness of phonemes. Student teachers can usefully examine the PNS teaching materials, Letters and Sounds. To see the extent to which these promote this line of development. (See also 6d. Phonics – developing a sense of progression in children’s phonic learning)
Further references to and discussion of the two types of phonics can be found by downloading the Rose Report Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading and the UKLA response Submission to the Review of Best Practice in the Teaching of Early Reading.
See also 6d. Phonics – developing a sense of progression in children’s phonic learning and 6e. Phonics – planning to use resources for phonics
 
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