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.
Humans did not evolve to read, and must be explicitly taught the reading process
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.
Reading is not natural; humans didn’t evolve to read. The reading process:
- We look at a line of written words and “hear” the silent words in our minds.
- We repurpose the speech part of the brain to “hear” and understand the silent words in our head.
- We understand best when we read at the speed we speak — about 100 words per minute, called fluent reading.
- At fluent reading speed, there’s no time to decode the sounds of words
- We have to look at a word and instantly know its sound and meaning.
- Words recognised instantly like this are called sightwords.
- The fastest path to fluent reading is the rapid acquisition of sightwords.
Read the full evidence →
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The Solution: Fonetic English Adds the Missing Information
Fonetic English adds three pieces of information to standard spelling: superscript sound characters (standard letters showing the actual sound), greyed-out silent letters, and syllable break markers with stress indicators.
The spelling itself never changes. Every sightword built while reading Fonetic English text works identically in standard English — any book, any screen, any font, even handwriting. There is no transition step. No dependency.
Because words now make sense when sounded out, they are stored in long-term memory in 2–5 repetitions instead of 20–50. This is the difference between months and years of learning time.
See how the markup works →
The spelling itself never changes. Every sightword built while reading Fonetic English text works identically in standard English — any book, any screen, any font, even handwriting. There is no transition step. No dependency.
Because words now make sense when sounded out, they are stored in long-term memory in 2–5 repetitions instead of 20–50. This is the difference between months and years of learning time.
See how the markup works →
Who Is Fo√ne…tic √Ēng…lish For?
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Educators
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Foundation Partners
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Commercial Partners
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Parents
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