Making The Case For Phonics Instruction

For years, I’ve worked with struggling readers of all ages. One thing these struggling readers all had in common is a gap in phonemic awareness skills.  Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to manipulate individual sounds or phonemes in words.   Students who lack phonemic awareness skills tend to have trouble with spelling (encoding) and sounding out words (decoding). The National Reading Panel recommends that students receive explicit and systematic phonics instruction. Explicit phonics instruction means that students are directly taught sound-spelling relationships. Systematic phonics instruction follows a scope and sequence that allows students to encode and decode words.  

For decades, the “Reading Wars” have divided educators into those who believe in whole language and those that believe in phonics instruction. Whole language advocates believe that children should learn to read naturally as they learned to speak. Students are taught to read whole words rather than learning to read words through manipulating sounds. Whole language focuses on understanding text structure, making meaning of the text and writing.   

On the other hand, phonics advocates believe that students learn to read by learning the sound-spelling relationship of the 44 phonemes in the English Language. The casualties of the Reading Wars are the countless numbers of students who have not received one of the key skills necessary to become literate readers. The Reading Wars didn’t leave room for neutrality.   Literacy instruction does not have be an either-or scenario. Literacy instruction should be balanced and include instruction in phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency and writing.  

Phonics instruction prepares students to decode words. Students who have strong decoding skills can use their knowledge of letter-sound relationships as well as their knowledge of spelling patterns to attack and pronounce written words. The English language is made up of 44 phonemes or sounds. Those 44 sounds can be spelled using 250 different spelling patterns.  For instance, the /ā/ sound can be spelled using eight different spelling patterns.

/ā/ Spelling Patterns

a	apron
a-e	rake
ai	rain
ay	hay
eigh	neighbor
ei	vein
ey	obey
ea	break

In order to build decoding skills, students must be taught these 250 spelling patterns explicitly and systematically.

Students who cannot decode words often struggle to comprehend written text. Struggling decoders are not able to read text fluently.  Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately and at an adequate pace. Strong decoders are fluent readers thus spending less time sounding out words which allows them to focus on comprehending and making meaning of the text.   Whereas struggling decoders are not fluent readers and must focus their attention on figuring out the words, leaving them little attention for comprehending and making meaning of text.

Explicit and systematic phonics instructions also allow students to become better encoders or spellers. Encoding is the ability to use knowledge of letter-sound relationships to spell and write words. For students to compose sentences and paragraphs they must be able to spell words using their knowledge of letter-sound relationships. Decoding and encoding skills can be built through phonics awareness and phonemic awareness instruction.  

As we continue to think about improving the educational outcome for all students, we must look at how we are teaching students to read. Schools must adopt curriculum that teach students phonemic and phonological awareness skills explicitly and systematically. They must provide professional development to teachers to build their understanding of how students learn to read as well as how to support struggling readers. Teacher preparation programs must include courses on how to teach reading so that future educators are equipped with the skills necessary to teach students to be proficient readers.