Breaking the Sound Barrier
(Published in INTO magazine, March 2007)
In the ongoing debate on educational standards, the fact that a sizeable proportion of young
people in our schools are underachieving due to poor literacy is often highlighted. The
modern “fix-it” mentality would have it, that all would be well if we got this aspect of our
education service right.
But would it? The question must be asked, “Why are so many of our children finding it so
difficult to flourish in the mainstream?” Could it be that the way we teach language to all
children needs to be looked at, rather than to pour ever-increasing resources into the
remediation of the minority? In our Fonics Phirst trainings we constantly meet teachers
who say “If I really knew what I was doing with the good readers and applied it to the
others, then my literacy problem would be solved”. When asked what he/she had done to
bring the reading of the majority to a satisfactory level, the answers are many and varied. It
is the existence of these many and varied answers, in my view, that lies at the epicentre of
the problem; and that is why I believe we need to conduct a root and branch examination of
how we approach language teaching in our schools.
What is reading? What goes on when a person decodes language from its written (encoded)
form? First of all the reader needs to know that sounds are in some mysterious, wonderful
way represented by the squiggles/graphemes. The developing reader will begin to realise
that some sounds are carried by one letter while other sounds are represented or carried by
more than one letter. (It is interesting for children to be told how the Latin alphabet came
to be adopted historically; this fascinating story takes us back to the Phoenicians and
beyond). The young reader needs to know that in the case of the English language certain
spellings carry more than one sound. In other words, the child needs to have basic
linguistic principles explained in matter-of-fact, easily understood language. We need to
see words as the child sees them and to guide him/her as to their nature and nuances.
When the child sees simple CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words like cat, dog, cup
she/he needs to be told that the skills we need to make sense of words involve breaking
them up into their elements (segmenting) c-a-t and then linking or blending them together
in one breath to make the word. When the child is consciously decoding and properly
reading (not merely memorizing), the shocks, traumas and anxieties that can result in dyslexia, which literally means trouble with words are obviated and the consequent
developmental log-jams minimized. The child comes to realise that a spelling can stand for
more than one sound as in Amy wanted all the fat tomatoes. Thus will the young reader
come to be expert in the skill of sound switching These three essential skills, segmenting,
blending and sound switching, if set forth sedulously by the teacher become second nature
to the child.
The adept teacher will also take every opportunity to make the pupil aware of the “code”.
What “code”? In our trainings, when we ask teachers how many sounds there are in the
English language, we get conflicting answers (often twenty six). When we talk of about
forty four sounds divided into vowels and consonants and ask how many vowels there are,
we are often told “five”. These answers are a consequence of basing language teaching on
the alphabet. It needs to be explained to children that the trouble with the alphabet in the
English language is that the number of letter names in the alphabet does not equal the
number of sounds (phonemes) in the language. We need to explain conscientiously and
repeatedly to children that some sounds are carried by one letter while others are written
using more than one letter: c-a-t; s-t-r-ee-t; h-igh; eigh-t.
This is the code: the approximately one hundred and fifty common spellings of the fortyfour sounds. Children become expert very quickly in recognising the code. Spelling tests
change their character when children, instead of being asked to clutter up their brains with
letter names (no more see-ae-tee for c-a-t), are being asked to identify the sounds and
represent them in the agreed, conventional form. When the child learns to synchronise the
sounding of the phoneme, while writing or encoding the grapheme, there is a marked
improvement in handwriting skills.
In our Fonics Phirst trainings we explain in great detail what the class teacher/tutor/parent
needs to know in order to de-mystify language for children. No longer should the
confusion between the Whole Language approach and a plethora of rules-based phonics
programmes be causing confusion in the minds of our children. It is time for an overarching consistency, from teacher to teacher, from class to class, from school to school. No
mainstream child should be leaving first level schooling with deficient literacy skills.
It is time we identified the essential skills and knowledge that are needed for fluent,
automatic reading. By initiating all our children into the skills and knowledge needed for
fluent reading we will be better able to identify those who present with more intractable
learning difficulties and intervene more effectively. We need more enlightened approaches
to language work from the earliest stages, in the form of well-designed developmental
programmes for the pre-school child. We need not rush into formal work too early but
when we do, we should be much better prepared for the task in hand.
There is a vast army of potential helpers, the parents, at hand, who could and should be
employed to far more telling effect, particularly when a child needs that extra bit of
reassurance and encouragement. Too often I hear from parents that they are not invited into
the inner sanctum and given precise guidance on what they might do in detailed specific
ways to assist their child, particularly in the often fraught area of error correction and
feedback.
The particular type of phonics teaching described above has come to be known as synthetic
phonics. It is based on exhaustive research in linguistics and is producing dramatic results
where it is being implemented. After years of to-ing and fro-ing from one system to the
other, the Department of Education in London has come down decisively on the side of
synthetic phonics following the 2006 report of the Rose Enquiry. It is to be hoped that
enlightened counsels prevail in Dublin before too much valuable time elapses.
We owe it to all our children, particularly in this dawning era of melting-pot Ireland that
we be equal to the educational challenges that lie ahead. It is the birthright of all children to
be nurtured in a love of sounds, musical and vocal, a love of story, poetry and song and in
the love of knowledge, the springboard to which is the love of every aspect of language.
Paddy McEvoy (Developer, with Caroline Golding Brady and Harry Blackstock, of the
Fonics Phirst Synthetic Phonics Literacy Method).