Phonics learning is a method of teaching English speakers to read and write English. The principles of phonics learning are to teach English speakers to connect the sounds of English with letters or groups of letters in order to speak pronunciation of unlearned words. Basically in a nut shell, phonics is the teaching method of reading and decoding words by training beginners to associate letters with their sound values. Children learn to read using phonics usually around the age of five or six by connecting letter pattern with sounds. During this process, learning the rules and patterns of phonics are necessary.

What are the basic Phonic rules?

The basic Phonic rules are as follows:

• Cognitive reading skills
• Alphabetic principle
• Vowel phonics patterns
• Consonant phonics patterns

And these rules to the average person may be difficult to understand. Basically children learn how to sound out words by learning the rules of speaking the English language instead of only relying on picture and word association, such as in the “look-say” Dick and Jane books that were popular in the 1950s.

When did the word ‘phonics’ become very popular?

The word ‘Phonics’ became a household word in the 1990s after the language program ‘Hooked On Phonics” was introduced and sold in the USA. And this program continues to be very popular and proven to be very effective in teaching young children to read and spell by parents and educators alike.

Phonics Instruction Debate

Using Phonics in the classroom has not come about in an easy fashion since teaching phonics has caused much debating for many, many years in the realm of educators even though teaching reading by using the phonic method has been in existence for long time. However after much studying and reviews by professionals, Phonics was given the stamp of approval from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institute of Health. The appointed panel by Congress in 1997 reported Phonics as word identification as one of the critical reading skills for good readers. In addition to helping children to read, phonics instruction benefits all ages in learning to spell as well.

Source by Linda Messer