The Teaching of Early Reading

The Teaching of Early Reading

Literature Review

Synthetic phonics is a method of teaching reading that initially attempts to teach the letter sounds and combines them together to enable blended sounds to pronounce whole words. Phonology is the branch of linguistics, which studies the sound system of languages, compared to the physical articulation of language (phonics). Among the variety of sounds that can issue a speaker, it is possible to recognize those who represent the 'same' sound, though the ways of pronouncing is different from the acoustic point of view. Germany and Austria are the countries where synthetic phonics are popularly used and starts before a student is exposed with books or readings. The practice essentially involved teaching small groups of letters rapidly.

Dominic Wyse and Usha Goswami (2010) suggests that the teachings of synthetic phonics should be involved and preferred for English learners and English schools have been asked to initiate synthetic phonics programmes as a key mediums to teaching high quality phonic work. The study presents the evidences support the change to synthetic phonics. The study concludes that the commendations of the Rose Report, UK government's primary national strategy has influenced the primary teachers in England and clearly entails that the primary schools should employ systematic and discrete programme to enable the teachings of high quality phonic work. The teachers are supposed to follow a published programme by the UK government called Letters and Sounds; principles and practice of high quality phonics. It further emphasizes that synthetic phonics should be employed and adopted nationally throughout England and the research supports the importance of synthetic phonics in the reading comprehension and development of students.

Jim Rose (2006) directs that even though phonic works has been a statutory component of the curriculum yet, the focus has not resulted in considerable results. Involving children in interesting and exciting pre-reading activities will directs to a good start on the systematic phonics. The author suggests that along with the areas pinpointed where the change is called, it also supports those that are valuable and should be sustained. The provisions supporting children in learning English as an additional language and with special educational needs. The issues are concerned with inclined towards building quality rather than capacity and improving quality of what is already existing rather than including couple of new elements.

Johnson and Watson (2005) carried out a study with 300 children of the effectiveness of synthetic phonics programme with an evaluation of performance of the phonology programme with typical analytical phonics programme and it was the most effective in developing literary skills. The authors (2003) in the article present the progress of children from primary 1 to the end of primary 7 while focusing on the attainment of boys versus girls. It further critics on the impact of synthetic phonics teaching on developing the literary skills of the children and to what extent children underachieve when taught by synthetic phonics programme. The methodology of the study was gathered around 16 weeks of training ...