Making English Decodable

What if every English word told you exactly how to say it?

Fonetic English adds pronunciation, syllable breaks, and stress to standard spelling — without changing a single letter. Developed with Professor John Sweller. Backed by seven research frameworks. Used by tutors, schools, and ESL colleges worldwide.

Tutor Guide: Teaching Native English Speakers

How to use the Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish tools to take students from slow decoding to fluent reading

Why English is hard to read — and what Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish does about it

Most native English speakers can speak fluently before they start school. They know thousands of words. They understand grammar. But reading is different — and for many students, it stays hard for years.

The reason is simple: English spelling is erratic. The same letters make different sounds in different words, and there is no reliable rule to tell a reader which sound to use. A student looking at the word ‘signed’ has no way of knowing which of the 76,800 possible sounds is the correct sound. The spelling does not contain enough information for the sound to be decoded. This is not the student’s fault. It is a lack of information in English spelling.

Humans remember things that make sense. So if the sound and spelling of a word make sense, students can remember the sound of the word by sounding it out a few times. The student will be able to look at the word and instantly know its sound. This is called a sightword.

Humans have evolved a filter to stop us remembering random information so our minds are not clogged with low value information. Our minds see erratically spelled words as random information, and students need to overcome the memory filter if they are to remember it. This means students must remember the sound of an erratically spelled word by rote, which means hearing the word and seeing its shape, and repeating until it sticks — which can take 20 to 50 repetitions per word. That is slow, and it is boring.

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The Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish Font

Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish adds pronunciation adds all the information needed to intuitively sound out any English word directly to standard English spelling — without changing the spelling. This allows students to learn sightwords quickly. Because the spelling and shape of the word do not change when marked up in Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish, students can read the word in standard English.
So students learn sightwords using Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish and then they can read those sightwords in standard English because they can recognize the word with or without Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish markup.

Research supports this. In countries with phonetic languages — where words can be sounded out reliably — literacy rates are significantly higher than in English-speaking countries, and dyslexia is diagnosed far less often. Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish applies the same principle: make English decodable, and students learn to read faster, with less struggle and more confidence.

The goal of reading is fluency. Reading involves running your eyes over a line of written words and “hearing” the “silent word sounds” in your head. Reading repurposes the speech part of the brain to “hear” the “silent sounds”. Because the speech part of the brain is repurposed, humans understand best when reading is at the speed of speech, about 100 words per minute, which is called fluent reading. Fluency comes from sight-word recognition: seeing a word and instantly knowing its sound, without having to think about it. When reading becomes automatic, the brain can focus entirely on meaning rather than on working out the sounds of words. Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish is the fastest route to building that recognition.

What the student sees in Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish text

It is worth being clear about this, because it surprises many people the first time they see it.

Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish em√beds āll tңê in…for√mâ…ťiòn yoů nêed tȷ √qüick…lý, in√tů…it…ive…lý and √acc…ů…rate…lý sĳund ĳut √än…ý √Ēng…lish wòrd, which is tңè √rê…ál ob√jec…tive of √Рho…nics 1.0. With Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish, thẂre iş next tȷ √nò…thing tȷ learn! √Män…ý √pêo…ဇle can √fig…ure ĳut Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish just bΥ √sêe…ing text in Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish..

A student reading Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish text sees the word exactly as it appears in any English book or website. The spelling does not change, so students can learn to decode a word sound using Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish and can quickly remember the shape of the word and the sound.

Humans evolved to be able to recognize the shape of camouflage predators. Humans can read using multiple fonts. Programs like CAPTCHA use this skill to disguise words so that humans can show they are real humans. Because Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish preserves the shape of the word, students can read that word in standard English as well as Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish.

What Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish adds all the information needed to sound out any English word:

Sound characters appear as small superscript letters above a spelling character when that character does not make its usual sound. The student learns these characters as part of learning Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish. Once learned, they remove all ambiguity about which sound to make.

Silent letters are greyed out. The student can see them — which matters for spelling — but knows not to say them.

Syllable breaks are marked with a solid dot for a stressed syllable and a hollow dot for an unstressed syllable. This guides the student to the correct rhythm and stress of the word.

A person who can already read English can pick up Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish text and read it immediately. The Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish cues are intuitive and do not get in the way. For a student who is still learning, those same cues remove every source of ambiguity.

The Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish Font

The Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish cues are rendered by a custom Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish font designed specifically for this purpose.

The font has also been designed so that no two letters look alike in reflection or rotation. Characters that are commonly confused — like b, d, p and q — have been made visually distinct from each other. This matters especially for students who struggle with character recognition and character reversal.

What this means in practice

Praise effort and the willingness to correct, not right answers.

A wrong answer is valuable. It tells the student's brain exactly what needs to change. A student who gets something wrong and then corrects it is learning more effectively than a student who guesses right.

Do not make a big deal of errors. The system corrects them automatically. Your role is to keep the student in a relaxed, focused state where they can move quickly and try again without anxiety.

Speed is the signal you are watching. When response times drop, the student is building the neural pathways needed for fluent reading.

The core principle: you are building automaticity, not explaining rules

This is the most important thing to understand before you start teaching with Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish.

The goal is not for a student to consciously apply rules. The goal is for recognition to become so fast and effortless that the student does not have to think at all. This is called automaticity, and it is what separates a fluent reader from a struggling one. Fluent readers can devote all their focus on understanding what they read, so comprehension and learning outcomes can markedly improve.

The Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish tools measure automaticity directly through response time. When a student responds quickly and correctly, their brain is recognising — not calculating. When they are slow, they are still thinking it through. Your job is to help them get from thinking to recognising.