Synthetic Phonics

Synthetic Phonics compared to Analytic Phonics

A comparison of Synthetic Phonics and Analytic Phonics

There are two different approaches to phonics - teaching children the sounds the letters make: analytic phonics and synthetic phonics.

Analytic phonics

This approach suggests that by paying attention to the beginning and ending of words, and by working at Word level - relating whole to part - children can successfully learn to read.

In other words, children come to understand how to break words down rather than how to build them up. However, to complicate the picture, the UK Department for Education and Skills has distanced itself from analytic phonics, saying the literacy strategy has been synthetic all along. A spokesman said, 'Analytic phonics is different from the so-called synthetic phonics with which the National Literacy Strategy is more clearly associated'.

The strategy has a very clear focus on the segmentation and blending of sounds in words. John Stannard .. wrote, 'It is vital children are taught to identify and blend sounds for reading and to segment and spell sounds for reading and to segment and spell sounds in words for writing.Whether this is analytic or synthetic depends on which of the many definitions you plump for ... What matters is that children are systematically taught the phonic code and that they learn to apply this along with other strategies to develop fluent and accurate reading and spelling.' (TES 5/3/99)

Synthetic Phonics

This is an approach in which children decode the word 'cat' by building it up from its separate letter sounds. Information is taken from a Scottish Office account of a project based in Clackmannanshire led by Dr Rhona Johston and Joyce Watson of the University of St Andrews.

The method consists of boosting children's reading, spelling and phonemic awareness through learning just six letters a day. Children are taught the 42 letter sounds at six a day over eight days. At the same time, they are taught to identify letters in the initial, middle, and final position in words and to sound and blend words using magnetic letters.

Research commissioned by Clackmannanshire Council found that children taught by this method had a seven month lead over the experimental group on a word recognition test over a comparison group.

John Bradford
July 2005

• Synthetic Phonics - There has been a lot of interest in different approaches to teaching phonics as a method of introducing children to reading. This has highlighted the difference between synthetic and analytic phonics, which has puzzled some teachers and parents. In fact, the two approaches have been around for a long time, but you were more likely to find synthetic phonics being used with children needing 'intervention' because of slow progress, in particular, children with specific learning difficulty/dyslexia.