Page 30 - ELG1807 July Issue 459

RESOURCES .

When

phonics

doesn’t phit

Phonics can work wonders with English native-speaker children, but young
English learners with another mother tongue might need a different
approach to reading, writes Terry Phillips

Pronouncing ‘c’
his is not a polemic against using
phonics to teach sound/sight patterns Patterns Examples
to children who are native speakers /k/ in front of ‘a’, ‘o’, ‘u’ cat, cot, cut
Tof English.
I assume, given the longevity and /k/ at the end of a word comic, attic
widespread adoption of the approach in UK /s/ in front of ‘e’, ‘i’ cell, city
and US schools, that it is an excellent way to
introduce such children to the written form. /tf/ with ‘h’ chip, chase
This article is, however, a plea to those /k/ then /s/ if doubled access, succeed
teaching non-native-speakers to think very
carefully before using the phonics approach silent after ‘s’ + ‘e’ or ‘i' scene, scissors
with children who have just begun to learn Exceptions include: school, mechanic, machine, cello, delicious, sceptic
spoken English.
I believe phonics works with a native- not easy because English is not a transparent repetitive pattern of relationship between the
speaker child because the process of learning language. target phoneme and the target grapheme, e.g.
to read is a matter of recognition. The child In other words, one phoneme does not, in how often is ‘c’ rendered as /k/?
knows the denotation of 90 per cent, or even general, equate with one grapheme. Although n How much illustration is required
100 per cent, of words he or she encounters there is usually a base relationship, e.g. ‘c’ to ensure that the child understands the
in an appropriately graded reader. usually = /k/, the actual possibilities are often sentence?
Depending on when reading lessons much more complex – see the table above. Learning to read is about recognising the
begin, at three, four or five a native-speaker Someone has apparently worked out that denotation of a orthographic form, but if the
child already recognises and produces many each of the five vowel letters can make all of child successfully decodes the written form
phonemes correctly, including all vowels. the possible vowel sounds in English. And ‘w-a-s-h’ as /wɒʃ/, but doesn’t know what
The denotation and pronunciation do not it is also apparently true that every letter in ‘wash’ means, reading has not really taken
therefore need to be taught before reading English can be silent in a specific context. place.
can take place. Only the relationship between Phonics-based materials that are eminently So what’s the answer? In my view, we
phoneme and grapheme must be taught, but suitable for native-speaker children – because should teach non-native-speaker children to
then the child will recognise the item and of their vocabulary range and spoken start reading with the whole word method,
often experience the ‘ah hah’ effect as in: ‘Ah language proficiency – are sometimes showing them the orthographic form of words
hah! So those are the letters ‘c-a-t’ and they transferred to non-native environments with they already know and can pronounce.
make the sound /kat/ and that is the furry little recognition of the extra learning load In my own recent work, I try to achieve
thing we keep as a pet.’ that is being place on the activity. this through highly illustrated readers with
Even for the For example, take the poems, songs and familiar stories from fables and fairy tales.
native-speaker chants you might find in the courses I’m It may be that non-native children never
child of referring to (see the graphic on the left for need to chant /k/ /ae/ /t/ is ‘cat’ because they
Candy Cat can cut the English, some made-up examples) can immediately recognise the whole word,
cake. learning the It is important to consider: which is so important in early learning.
Emma Emu eats each sound/sight n How many of the words does the After all, only around 20 per cent of the
egg. relationship non-native child know in the early stages of most common 200 words in English have a
completely regular sound/sight relationship,
between
Wally Whale washes sounds language learning? susceptible to the phonics approach.
n How many of the phonemes can the
his waistcoat. (phonemes) child already pronounce with reasonable
and letters accuracy? n For details of this research, contact terry@
(graphemes) is n Do the chants show a clear and innovapress.com
July 2018

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