Thread by @Suchmo83

A thread on phonics and how the discussion of it sometimes lacks a bit of nuance, leading to misconceptions... 🧵

Some people state that the aim of phonics teaching in practice is to explicitly teach pupils the entire "code" of correspondences between phonemes and graphemes that exists in the English writing system.

This leads to misconceptions, I think.

The code itself can be thought of as a best-fit approximation of the correspondences between phonemes and graphemes. There's little debate about the correspondences in the word "fish", but what about in "Wednesday" or "library"? There's no right answer here.

Is the vowel sound in "made" represented by <a_e> (a split digraph) or just <a>?

While many phonics programmes prefer the first correspondence, there isn't an inherently correct answer to this question.

In other words, any description of the code is inevitably limited. Things like split digraphs are a choice we make to explain the code in a fashion simple enough to use as a jumping off point for learning to decode words.

English orthography is messier than a mere code of correspondences between phonemes and graphemes. We can describe it as a code and teach it as such - a very useful thing to do - but it is a simplification.

The key goal of phonics is not to explicitly teach kids the entire code. This simply is not how learning to read happens. The key goal is to teach kids enough of the code so they can begin learning how English orthography actually works through successful experience with text.

At first, this successful experience with text works best when it is guided, and decodable text seems to be particularly useful for this. This guidance is important while pupils are getting used to decoding through the whole word as their means of tackling unfamiliar words.

Pretty soon, though, kids need to be learning about the the complexities of English orthography (and the written English language more broadly) from experience with "normal" text.

This is the bit that so often gets overlooked:

Kids need to learn to deal with bits of the code that they *don't know yet*. The code is too complex for them to only deal with correspondences that they have learned in advance.

Even if we could teach the whole code before kids were required to use it, they would be unlikely to remember it all. They learn much of it through practice.

This learning from experience is fundamental. It relies on the code knowledge they do have but also on their vocabulary.

If a kid finds the word "cafe" in a book, they are not going to build up their orthographic expertise from it if they are not familiar with the word's pronunciation. If they *do* know it, then they might have just begun to recognise a bit of the code that they didn't know before.

That said, kids also learn new vocabulary from reading, even if they don't always know the correct pronunciation. For example, from reading I learned what "hyperbole" meant long before I knew how it was pronounced. ("Hyperbowl", anyone?)

Yes, we should keep teaching the rarer aspects of the code long after the point where children are reading independently. This is a useful thing to do.

But an expert reader's knowledge of English orthography is also the result of vast amounts of successful experience with text.

This shouldn't be a surprise. This is just explicit instruction followed by guided practice and lots of independent practice.

It's akin to the chess player who is explicitly taught the basics, plays some guided lessons with an expert to build their understanding and becomes a grandmaster by actually playing *lots* of games of chess.

This also explains why *some* kids can learn to decode words without phonics instruction. Their pattern spotting is good enough to skip straight to the independent experience phase, just as some kids can learn the rules of chess just from watching others play.

So, why am I making this point? Well, when people defend the importance of phonics, they sometimes end up claiming things that don't ring true with people's experiences of teaching reading. This can be counterproductive.

If we give the false impression that kids learn *all* of the code via explicit teaching (i.e. phonics), then this can cause problems.

It downplays the importance of decoding experience for developing pupils' ability to recognise words. If kids have "succeeded" at phonics and this is how they learn the code, then why worry about the amount of decoding kids are doing after that? Just read aloud to them, right?

Reading to kids is hugely valuable (and a joy for all involved when done well), but it doesn't develop children's orthographic expertise in the same way as decoding text. Kids need to do vast amounts of decoding to become fluent readers.

Also, if we don't make it clear that kids develop orthographic expertise through successful experience with text, we can overlook the importance of kids' vocabulary knowledge in the development of fluent reading.

People sometimes promote the misconception that as long as we teach kids enough phonics, they will become fluent at recognising words. The development of fluent word recognition *is* facilitated by phonics, but only because it allows for successful experience with text.

In short, phonics is valuable, but no kid learns to recognise words to the required level just from being explicitly taught the code. And no kid needs to be explicitly taught the entire code to become a fluent reader (though teaching lots of the code is still a sensible idea).

What kids need is to know enough of the code - and the phonemic skills that allow them to use it - so that they can learn how English orthography really works through vast amounts of experience with text.

Make no mistake - I am a wholehearted advocate of phonics. It is an essential component of a school's reading offer. I just think that a sound understanding of what phonics achieves can help schools when thinking about their approach to reading, especially what comes afterwards.

A follow-up tweet on phonics:

https://twitter.com/Suchmo83/status/1559180823504588800?s=20&t=DY5e3SaC0fLW373niQqrUw