Synthetic Phonics

Synthetic Phonics Research

Research into Phonics

• New Phonics Research - Reading specialists have often pitted phonics against holistic word recognition and whole language approaches in the war over how to teach children to read. However, a new study by researchers at New York University shows that the three reading processes do not conflict, but, rather, work together to determine speed.

• Researchers Verify Reading Ability Gets a Boost From Phonics - A study has confirmed the premise of the Bush administration's "Reading First" initiative that systematic phonics instruction is essential in teaching young children of all backgrounds to read successfully.

The study, just published by researchers of the National Institute for Early Education Research and Rutgers University in New Jersey, re-examined findings of the National Reading Panel (NRP) in 2000.

The study gives even greater weight than the NRP to the importance of intensive phonics, which is systematic instruction of letter-sound relations in English and how to use them to read texts with controlled vocabulary.

• Research Regarding Phonics - Phonics defines the set of relationships between written letters and the spoken sounds that those letters represent. Closely related to phonics is "phonemic awareness", a child's understanding of the idea that spoken words can be broken down into constituent sounds ...

• Research Regarding Phonics - A Bibliography - Material derived from an excellent summary of phonics research that was compiled by the SRA division of McGraw-Hill, Inc.

• Synthesis of Research on Reading from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development - The National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) educational research program, initiated in 1965, began to focus more on reading difficulties as it became clear how extensive the reading problem was in the general population. The 1985 Health Research Extension Act resulted in a new charge to the NICHD to improve the quality of reading research by conducting long-term, prospective, longitudinal, and multidisciplinary research. Reid Lyon led the new charge by closely coordinating the work of over 100 researchers in medicine, psychology, and education in approximately 14 different research centers.

• Measuring Success: Using Assessments and Accountability to Raise Student Achievement - Statement of Dr. G. Reid Lyon Chief Child Development and Behavior Branch National Institute of Child Health and Human Development National Institutes of Health.

• Project Follow-through - (1967) the largest educational study every conducted in the history of education research. The U.S. Department of Education compared a systematic, comprehensive, phonics-based approach against eight other styles of teaching reading. The results indicated the overwhelming superiority of the phonics-based approach. The study was especially interesting because it was conducted in "real-world" classrooms rather than in the lab.

• US National Reading Panel Statement 2000 - "In the largest, most comprehensive evidenced-based review ever conducted of research on how children learn reading, a Congressionally mandated independent panel has concluded that the most effective way to teach children to read is through instruction that includes a combination of methods. The panel determined that effective reading instruction includes teaching children to break apart and manipulate the sounds in words (phonemic awareness), teaching them that these sounds are represented by letters of the alphabet which can then be blended together to form words (phonics), having them practice what they've learned by reading aloud with guidance and feedback (guided oral reading), and applying reading comprehension strategies to guide and improve reading comprehension."

• US National Reading Panel Statement 2000 - "In the largest, most comprehensive evidenced-based review ever conducted of research on how children learn reading, a Congressionally mandated independent panel has concluded that the most effective way to teach children to read is through instruction that includes a combination of methods. The panel determined that effective reading instruction includes teaching children to break apart and manipulate the sounds in words (phonemic awareness), teaching them that these sounds are represented by letters of the alphabet which can then be blended together to form words (phonics), having them practice what they've learned by reading aloud with guidance and feedback (guided oral reading), and applying reading comprehension strategies to guide and improve reading comprehension."

• Accelerating Reading and Spelling with Synthetic Phonics: A Five Year Follow Up - 1998 report on a study of around 300 Primary 1 children (aged 4-5) in which they examined the effectiveness of a synthetic phonics teaching program. Performance on the synthetic phonics program was compared with performance on a typical analytic phonics program, and also with a similar program that included a substantial element of phonological awareness training. The synthetic phonics program was by far the more effective.

• Accelerating Reading Attainment: The Effectivemess of Synthetic Phonics - In 1992/93, a research team from the University of St. Andrews School of Psychology began a study of the teaching of reading in the early stages of primary school ...

Findings: - By implementing a synthetic phonics program, children can be taught to read at the phoneme level. This does not mean merely teaching them lettersound correspondences: children have to be shown that the sequence of the phonemes in the spoken word maps on to the sequence of letters in the printed word. This can be done by teaching them small groups of letters and showing them these letters in all positions in words e.g. 'cuh','ah' and 'tuh',which corresponds with the written letters 'c', 'a' and 't'. This should be reinforced by teaching them to sound and blend letters in order to pronounce words, and to spell words using magnetic letters.

The gains made through using synthetic phonics are:

• increases in reading and spelling over and above the levels of performance achieved with analytic phonics
• in March of Primary 1, reading and spelling skills in Study 3 were found to be well above national norms: children trained for 20 minutes a day for 16 weeks had reading levels seven months ahead of what would be expected for their chronological age
• this method of teaching reading led to the best gains in phonemic awareness
• the synthetic phonics method leads to fewer underachieving children and so in classes where this method is used teachers will have more time to assist those making a slow start in reading.

Synthetic phonics can be implemented on a whole-class basis and it can be very effective when taught as a pre-reading activity before reading-scheme books are introduced. One disturbing finding was that diluting the time spent on phonics with phonological awareness training (i.e. training children to hear sounds in words without print) actually produced lower levels of reading ability than a wholly analytic phonics teaching program.

• What sort of Phonics? Systematic Phonics - The Latest Research - 1997 report - Prior to doing this research we had believed that it was good to use an eclectic approach to teaching reading from the earliest stages. So we thought that on school entry it was effective to teach children some phonics and some sight words, but also that it was necessary to introduce them to reading books very early on so that they learn that reading is a pleasurable and meaningful activity. What we have learnt is that a 'phonics first' approach, whereby children are taught right from the start that letter sounds can be blended together to pronounce words, gives them an excellent start, and the basic elements can be completed in the first term of school if intensive teaching is given. Of course this phonics teaching can alternatively be carried out in the context of reading attractive books from a reading scheme.

However, we have established that it is not necessary to take three years to teach phonics, slowly working through word families and rhyming words, if the children have been shown how to sound and blend letters in order to pronounce words at the start of reading tuition.