What is the value of phonics rules?

Phonics is an approach to early reading that sets out to provide the beginning reader with rules that relate the spelling of a word to its pronunciation. For some languages, such as Spanish and Malay, these rules are relatively simple and straight forward, but for other languages like English and French, the rules are more complex. In fact, the rules for English are so complex that many people argue that they are of no value at all.

The phonics approach is actually the traditional approach to early reading, and it goes back hundreds of years. In the twentieth century it came under attack from competing approaches under various names ranging from ‘look and say’ to ‘whole word’ and more recently ‘whole language’. Supporters of phonics will argue that if there are pronunciation rules, then it makes sense to explain them to the learner and make use of them. Opponents will argue that just knowing the pronunciation of words is not nearly enough, and that the learner also has to understand the meaning of words, and indeed the meanings of whole sentences and texts. The problem is that both sides are of course perfectly right.

Phonics rules are really designed for native speakers of the language. Beginning readers already know the words they see written down, and so they relate the spelling to a pronunciation and a meaning which are familiar. When you start learning a foreign language, you probably don’t know the words at all, and so you have to learn the spelling, the pronunciation and the meaning all at the same time. Meaning is all important here. Words like cam and pus are very easy to read aloud using phonics rules, but there is no point unless you know what a camshaft is or what pus is. Of course, although words like these are easy to read aloud, they are quite unsuitable for infant beginning readers.

‘Look and say’ is more appropriate when the learner can already recognise words. When we learn a new skill, such as riding a bicycle or driving a car, there comes a time when we begin to do it automatically, without thinking. What is happening is that a different part of the brain takes over. Recognising written words is also a skill, and we use different pathways through the brain according to whether we are reading phonically or using a ‘look and say’ method.

We can’t drive a car without thinking before we have learnt to use the brake and the steering wheel. Similarly, ‘look and say’ is not very effective before the readers have learnt to recognise words at all. Flash cards are useful for words that beginning readers already know, and it is a useful method of making the word recognition automatic, and turning a beginning reader into a fluent reader.

The ‘reading wars’ of the last century were really motivated by a political struggle in the US, the UK and other countries. Scientifically they are irrelevant, and the idea that there is a choice to be made between phonics and ‘look and say’ does not make sense. Beginning readers need all the help they can to link the spelling of a word to its pronunciation and meaning, and phonics is a good way of doing this systematically. But when children go beyond reading one word at a time, they need to automate the recognition of individual words. This is the point at which ‘look and say’ comes into its own.