Have you seen these misspellings before: hav, woz, sed, iz, poot, gon, babe, thay?
There is much evidence that phonemic understanding is important in the teaching of oral and written language skills. But all phonics teaching is not the same, and teacher knowledge and the type of phonemic methodology used are paramount to the success of the learner. We must ensure that the phonics taught is correct and provides the learner with a clear understanding of the sound system used in English and the function of the alphabetic principle, that is, how letters are used in English to represent sounds in written words.

Why, with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been poured into remedial literacy programs, do we still have intelligent children, adolescents and adults who struggle to read and write in English?

To make differences in literacy levels in our schools we must change the way early phonics and literacy are taught. We must challenge conventional phonics teaching. Many teachers in our system today do not have a clear understanding of the sound system used in English or the function of the alphabetic principle. This leaves them lacking the confidence to competently teach their learners basic literacy skills and rely entirely on whole language strategies to teach literacy.

Currently, the starting point for much early phonics language teaching is based around a “graphophonic” methodology. That is, a letter is presented and a sound is then associated with that letter. This is referred to as “letter-sound” or “initial sounds” teaching. Herein lies the problem. English is a language that contains 44 sounds not 26 sounds. In English, letters can represent many different sounds. For example, the letter “a” has different sounds in “was”, “water”, “whale”, “many” or “bath” – or it could be used with other letters to represent a vast array of sounds, as in “beach”, “air”, “car”, “saw”, “tray” or “ear”.

The graphophonic letter-sound teaching becomes confusing for learners as they try to use the letter-sound pattern to read and spell words. Consistent and common misspellings reflect this teaching, for example, “was” as “woz”, “said” as “sed”, and so on. Graphophonic methods for early literacy teaching make English a difficult, complex and contradictory language to learn, when in fact English is not difficult and is extremely patterned in its structure.

Spelling patterns are introduced on a limited basis. For example, as teachers, we teach “ch” as making the sound heard at the beginning of “chair”. What we often don’t teach is that it can represent the sound at the beginning of “chef” or “Charlotte”. Likewise, the word “school” which children see on a daily basis, is commonly misread using the sound at the beginning of “chair” and commonly misspelt as “skool”.

Using this restrictive phonics process, teachers are forced to resort to the use of “rules” and “magic” or “silent” letters to try and explain how letters are used to represent different sounds in different words, and different teachers have different interpretations of these so-called “rules”, causing more confusion and frustration for students. For example, children are commonly taught that the “e” at the end of a word makes a “hard” sound into a “soft” sound as in “tap” to “tape” – but this does not explain the words “have”, “give”, “gone” and “come”, to mention but a few of the 46 or more exceptions.

A literacy teaching method such as THRASS provides a concrete visual representation of the structure of English. A teacher working with the youngest child is able to show them that the sound they hear at the beginning of “cat” can be spelt “c” as in “cat”, “k” as in “kitten”, “ck” as in “duck”, “ch” as in “school” or “q” as in “queen”.

Words such as “was” and “said” no longer become “hard words” or “sight words”. Teachers have a simple tool to explain the word. The child is encouraged to listen to the sounds they hear in a word, and then look for the correct letter patterns that represent the sounds.

Teacher subject knowledge is paramount to the success of the learner. I work on a daily basis with teachers many of whom fail simple phonemic tests. Many teachers cannot list the 44 sounds of English and have a limited knowledge of spelling patterns. They have difficulty differentiating between a sound, a blend and a syllable. If a child is given the same phonemic test and gains the same result as many teachers they will be “labelled” as having “phonemic processing” problems.

If teachers lack the knowledge and ability to segment and identify phonemes in words, how are they expected to teach the process to their learners?

Where must the blame be laid? Not at the feet of the teachers, but at the feet of teacher training. Future teacher training must ensure that our teachers have a clear understanding of the sound system used in English and the function of the alphabetic principle, ensuring good subject knowledge and understanding that they can impart to their learners.

Denyse Ritchie is an author, publisher, former teacher and teacher trainer who provides professional development courses in the THRASS literacy method to schools.