Phonics as Instruction S.

Gooden A statement by the (American) National Reading Panel (2002) emphasizes the fact that phonics instruction is most effective when it is early, direct, and systematic. Also the body of available research tells us that systematic explicit phonics instruction significantly improves word recognition and spelling and that it is most effective in helping children who are struggling readers and who might develop other reading problems. Phonics application involves learners in instructional procedure, strategies, and activities that prepare them to first be aware of speech sounds, know letters, and recognize letters in print and associate them with their corresponding speech sounds. They also learn to segment letters in words and then blend letter sounds to form words that are either already in their speaking vocabulary, or are new words. Consequently, teachers must provide learners with a body of information about phonics rules and patterns. Several assumptions have been made concerning phonics instruction and these have tended to obscure the real purpose of phonics learning. Two of these are that phonics teaches children to sound out letters with no attention to meaning and the many rules do not work more than half of the time they are applied to words. While phonics does pay attention to the sounding out of words and providing rules for guiding students into pronouncing words, these are just ways in which its aims are achieved and not the sole reason why it is taught. In fact, Ziffer calls such a view a misconception. He states that children who learn to read using phonics develop superior critical thinking skills as phonics instruction automatically teaches many aspects of formal logic. This is demonstrated as children learn to make inferences such as, if the letters d-a-s-h spell the word dash then the letters c-a-s-h must spell the word cash or they can base their assumptions on the premises that previous words with the a-s-h combination yielded the sound, /a/sh/, thus any new word with this combination will give the same end sounds. While

irregular words might seem negate this truth, it is a line of reasoning that can be applied successfully to regular words. For many Jamaican learners, as established previously in this text, attention must be paid to pronunciations but this is a means to an end that allows them to apply phonics knowledge to help them make logical connections between print and their official language, English. Successful use of phonics as a word recognition tool means that its role must be established. Teachers can use these to assess the success of instruction and to determine the needs of learners.

Reference Ziffer, D. (2009). How Phonics Instruction Teaches Critical Thinking. Retrieved From http://www.ucwil.edu/people/ko2/offm. National Reading Panel (2002).