Phonics and reading

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"Hut???"
"Hat???"
"Hen!!"
Tushar kept blurting out answers looking at me. He hoped at least one pronunciation would make me happy.

"Look at the word, and then read please." I reminded him.

He, at once, looked at the paper, then started rocking back and forth his anxiety being clearly visible.

Later on, even when he had become quite comfortable with reading longer 4, 5, 6 letter words, his confusion over three letter words continued. Turned out that he had learned them in phonics classes in the past and now it was giving him a hard time. For a lot of time he found them challenging and often started the 'guessing game' followed by the rocking.

Initially, I thought it was a one off case. However, after working with several such children who were facing similar confusions, a surprising pattern was noticed. All children had attended phonics classes and now they had developed such confusions which initially wasn't there. This experience made me wonder if phonics is a one-size-fits-all solution. The common observation was the children who attended phonics programmes for years, were the most confused. More the years, more it added to the level of confusion until a point came where the confusion was quite visible to anyone around listening to the child reading something.

Now, this may not be the problem faced by every child attending phonics. Many children have benefitted by phonics classes. However, I decided to put my thoughts into writing so that these unique experiences can help some parents and in turn, the children for whom the phonics approach does not necessarily work.

Even though I don't have extensive experience with phonics, some of the strategies are wonderful. Phonics approach feels a very logical step after a child learns letters and their sounds. The next would be sounds of groups of letters.
Phonics is also observed to be quite a confidence booster approach in initial years of English language literacy at a particular stage in learning to read.

The real issues arise given the nature of English language. And not necessarily the approach.

For example, consider following two words.

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1. Welcome
2. Circumference

If we try to construct phonetically, 'cum' is the correct construction given the teachings based on phonics. However, using that strategy if a child spells 'welcome' as ''welcum', s/he won't be wrong. All we can tell a child is that this is a different case!

The trouble is English language is full of such exceptions! How many such instances can we tell a child are 'exceptions' in language? The more a child hears statements like - "You are right, but... in this case..." it will go on adding to the confusion.

And when we come to words like straight, patient, treasure what is a strategy? At the end of the day, there remain many spellings you simply need to remember! (Read by heart?!)

Sometimes, a separate study of 'side words' is also suggested in the phonics approach. However can 'side words' cover quite a sizeable chunk of a language?

While surely phonics can be the first step in spelling and reading success, for each and every child, it may not be the entire staircase.

On an another level, the debate between whether to follow the whole-word-approach or the phonics-approach will continue. Each one of us will have our favourite approach too.
All I want to draw the attention to is the confusion that a struggling child experiences. Some children also struggle with phonemic awareness. And a teaching approach based on an individual's weak skill may hurt more than help! It can be a super confidence killer. And for parents and teachers, the confusion is an important 'symptom' to monitor in the child.

If such confusion as described above is frequent, the phonics approach might be adding to your child's troubles than actually helping him/her. If not permanently, at least temporarily. It certainly won't hurt to try and give a break to phonics approach for a while. And give it a go at other approaches and techniques for reading.

"Why isn't phonetics spelled the way it sounds?" - Mark Lowry's Fun Stuff