Devonshire, V; Morris, P; Fluck, M. University of Portsmouth, UK Learning and Instruction 25 (2013) 85-94
The authors explain that English has a deep or opaque orthography since only 56% of its words can be predicted by phonological rules. Highly transparent languages such as Finnish, Italian and Spanish have an almost one-to-one mapping between letters and sounds. The authors suggest that for transparent languages where there is a close mapping of letters and sounds an approach known as phonics would seem highly appropriate.
However, for English it may be beneficial to teach young children multiple levels of representation explicitly. They tested this view by explicitly teaching morphology, etymology, phonology, and form rules to 120 English children 5-to7 years old. They compared the effectiveness of this instruction with a phonics-based condition and found the comprehensive intervention significantly improved the literacy skills of the children including both word reading and spelling compared with the phonics condition. They suggested that early teaching of English literacy should include instruction in morphology, etymology and rules about form in addition to traditional phonics.