Hollman, W., Wallace, C., & Macroy, G (2024, April 10) The Conversation.
The argument built by these three eminent linguists from England begins by acknowledging that in 2023 30% of 5-year-olds were not meeting target levels and that more than half the children from the ages of 8 to 18 did not enjoy reading. These experts point out that the importance of reading for meaning and for pleasure cannot be ignored and will be vital to turn these statistics around. They then go on to review the case for the teaching of synthetic phonics as a basis for early reading pedagogy – they outline the broad approaches to teaching phonics both synthetic and analytic. They also cite some examples of the implementation of synthetic phonics instruction where children are processing sound symbol relationships and reading nonsense words using texts with little meaning or connection to familiar oral language. They suggest that it is a poor decision to focus purely on the relationship between sounds and symbols in English, stating that “a phonics-led approach is less effective than one that focuses on comprehension more broadly”. In conclusion it is suggested that a more successful approach would be to follow other Anglophone countries, which use methods that include the use of both context and meaning, to understand and decode words.
Touchstones: 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9.
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