How Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish Helps Emerging Readers
Reading connects written words with the spoken words and meanings already stored in a child’s memory. Fluent readers normally read at more than 100 words per minute, so they cannot stop and sound out every word. They need to see a familiar word and instantly retrieve its sound and meaning. Words recognised automatically in this way are called sightwords.
Human cognitive architecture helps explain how sightwords are learned. Humans have evolved to understand and remember information that makes sense, but not to remember large amounts of apparently random information. A word that can be sounded out accurately makes sense: the child can connect its spelling with its sounds, recognise the spoken word and retrieve its meaning.
The number of repetitions required varies greatly. Some children can sound out a readily decodable word once and recognise it as a sightword the next time they see it. An erratically spelled word may appear to have no understandable relationship between its characters and sounds. Although some children remember these arbitrary associations easily, struggling readers may need to encounter certain words as many as 20 to 50 times. These are not averages; they illustrate the enormous differences between children and words.
Fonetic English supplies the pronunciation information that ordinary English spelling leaves out—without changing the spelling. Superscripts identify sounds, grey characters show what is silent, syllable marks divide longer words, and a stress mark identifies the stressed syllable. FE makes the conventional spelling understandable rather than giving the child a replacement spelling or phonetic alphabet to learn.
Progressive Sounding Out
FE identifies digraphs—two characters representing one sound—as single sound units. For example, chart contains five characters but three sounds:
The word can then be sounded out progressively:
At each stage, the child combines the sound already assembled with only one new sound. The child does not need to hold all the separate sounds in working memory and blend them at the end. Each completed step is heard immediately and becomes the starting point for the next step.
The Efficiency of Learning Syllables
Syllables make learning highly efficient because they are small and reusable. A word learned as a whole helps a child recognise that one word. A syllable learned once can help the child read dozens of different words in which it appears.
FE teaches common syllables in order of frequency. The 100 most common syllables average only about 2.1 sounds each, making them much easier to learn and process than complete multisyllable words. Once familiar, these syllables can be recognised automatically wherever they occur.
An analysis of 26,125 marked-up words in the FE database illustrates the potential gain. A reader who knows the 100 most common syllables and can sound out one unfamiliar syllable when necessary has the components needed to read 13,557 different words—more than half the words analysed. With 300 common syllables and one syllable sounded out as needed, coverage rises to 18,900 words, or approximately 72 per cent of the database.
This is very different from learning 100 complete words. Those words may occur frequently, but they remain the same 100 words. Learning 100 common syllables provides reusable building blocks for thousands of words the child may never have seen before.
Longer words can therefore be approached efficiently:
The more syllables a child knows, the less new information each word contains. If most of its syllables are already familiar, the child may need to learn only one small part before the whole word can become a sightword. Familiar prefixes, suffixes and roots also help children recognise word families and develop vocabulary.
From FE to Standard English
The purpose of sounding out words and learning syllables is to develop automatic word recognition. Each successful decoding strengthens the connection between a word’s spelling, pronunciation and meaning.
Children do not first learn an FE word and then learn a different standard-English word. FE preserves every character and its order. When the added pronunciation information is no longer required, the same written word remains and can be recognised automatically:
Reading with the FE eReader
The Fonetic English eReader provides this support within meaningful stories and informational texts. Children can hear complete words, hear and practise their syllables, follow progressive sounding out and access vocabulary support when needed.
Familiar words can be read automatically, while FE remains available for unfamiliar words and syllables. As the child’s store of familiar syllables and sightwords grows, reliance on the additional information naturally decreases. Attention can then move from decoding individual words to reading fluently and understanding the text.
