I’m going to reprint a page from the TRT manual – simply because it’s a sunny Saturday and I’d rather be sipping wine in the back garden.

Saying Sounds Clearly

From this point on, I want you to think in sounds rather than letter names. Most of us are used to spelling in letter names.  How do you spell “stop”?  ‘ess tee oh pee’
Instead, I want you to get used to thinking of the sounds in the words and how you spell those sounds. So the question becomes, what are the sounds in “stop”?
Answer: (say it) “sss” (like a snake) “t” (touch you tongue to the front of your mouth) “o” (as in top) “p” (like you’re blowing out a candle). For the first while, it might help to whisper these sounds so that they are as clean and clear as possible.

“ay bee see dee ee eff gee”

This is the traditional alphabet that most adults use to refer to the symbols that we write to represent sounds. Older students use them naturally so it’s up to you to make sure they are not thinking in letter names as they write. If they are thinking in letter names then they are not learning to use sounds but relying on their faulty memory strategies. memory = ‘Goat is spelt gee oe ay tee’ Sound strategy = ‘The sounds in “goat” are “g” “oe” “t”. We spell it (writing & saying the sounds) g oa t’

“a buh cuh duh e fuh guh huh”

This alphabet is meant to help small children “sound out” simple words. However, the added “uh” sound can be very confusing.
Say: suh tuh o puh Now say the sounds clearly like you did at the top of the page. Which one sounds more like the real word, ‘stop’?

The other problem with this system is that it is only useful for very simple words.
My son came home from his first day in an English school and said, ’I can spell my name the English way! cuh huh a ruh luh e suh’

He was very excited but I was dismayed. What’s his name and what are the sounds?

Clear sounds

As far as possible, leave off the “uh” from the sounds.

Sometimes it’s easy: “m” (humm) “n” (nno!) “s” (hiss) “z” (buzz)

Sometimes it’s difficult: “l” “r” “w” and “y” require a little sound either before or after.

In all of these, keep the “uh” as short as possible.
For all the rest, cut off the “uh” sound for easier blending and segmenting.

Keep asking yourself, “Does that sound like the word?”

The one thing that I would never say to a struggling reader in the face of an unfamiliar word is, “Sound it out”.

Why?  Because that command doesn’t provide enough information to get from looking at print to hearing a word and being able to say it aloud.

So what would I say?

• Say the sounds and tell me what you hear.
• Say the sounds clearly and tell me what you hear. (for the person who adds “uh” after every consonant so that “try” sounds like “tuh” “ruh” “eye”, a three syllable word.)
• Say the sounds as you see them and tell me what you hear. (for a person who isn’t in the habit of moving from left to right all through the word bcause they see each word as a whole object that they either recognise or they don’t)

As long as you keep in mind The Deal and Decodability, these are specific instructions which will usually get a result.

What might go wrong?

• The student might not be good at blending the sounds to hear a word though I find it quite rare amongst older strugglers.
• They might only be able to hear the word when someone else says the sounds.  This is usually temporary until they get confidence and understand what it is they’re listening for.
• They might have a memory problem which prevents them from remembering the first sound by the time they’ve got to the last.  I’ve only encountered this with one person who didn’t have serious substance misuse issues.  Alcohol and cannabis are terrible memory destroyers and I’m very upfront about this with my students.

The Deal

Students never have to know anything that you haven’t learned together.

If they haven’t encountered th then they aren’t expected to know the word the.  But they almost always do know that word and they constantly exceed your expectations and their own.

The flip-side is that they are expected to know what you have done together.  By building level on level, this is manageable and the phonics lesson becomes a place where success is always achievable.  I once sat in a meeting where a prospective trainee asked a TRT volunteer if ThatReadingThing is fun.  The answer was, “No, it’s really hard work, but it’s so satisfying that they always want more.”

This goes along with the idea of Decodability.

The way I put it in a ThatReadingThing training is that we are about “Sounds and the Spelling of Sounds” – helping our learners move from sound to print and back again.

Sounds -also known as:

• phonemes
• pronunciation

Spellings of sounds – also known as:

• graphemes
• symbols
• letters or groups of letters

Phonics is concerned with matching phonemes to graphemes:

• (reading) Say the sounds and tell me what you hear.

It is also concerned with matching graphemes to phonemes:

• (building and spelling)  What’s the first sound in trap?  Say the sound as you write.

Grapheme/Phoneme Correspondences are said to be “One to Many” and “Many to one”.*

One to Many – also known as:

• <y>  happy July myth yet
• pronunciation variations
• one symbol with more than one pronunciation
• Spelling Clone:  looks the same – sounds different

Many to One - also known as:

• “ee” team see be scheme key baby chief police receive foetus
• spelling variations
• one sound represented by more than one symbol
• Sound Clone:  sounds the same – looks different

*The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, ed. Florian Coulmas, 1996,  Oxford: Blackwell

Decodability simply means matching text to the progression of sounds that you’re using in your class.  See here for a description of the progression that I use with older struggling readers.  It is very important in the early stages for building confidence, fluency and preventing guessing as a primary strategy.

When judging the decodability of text at the Foundation levels, assign each word to one of four categories:

1. Decodable = the student has learned all the sounds in the word.
2. Decodable with one sound given = The student has learned all but one sound in a word.
3. Probable sight word = Most older struggling readers come with some words that they “just know”.
4. Freebies = technical term for a word which has two or more sounds that the student hasn’t yet learned.

At CVC, this means:

1. tat, fen, mug, lop
2. back, this, go (unknown sound in bold)
3. the, is, and………they will surprise you.
4. breakfast, cake, should (but they might “just know” these – everyone is different)

By the time you get to adding -tion, it looks like this:

1. example,  inventing, addressed, recognition
2. equipment, intervention, anybody, agreement – Note, with unstressed and “long” vowels, students will often adjust the sound slightly to get the correct word.
3. This will be completely individual
4. should, physician, cough, bicycle

What actually happens by this stage is that your students are understanding how the language works and taking greater risks when faced with an unfamiliar word.  As they are able to match up more symbols with their spoken sounds, decodability becomes less and less of an issue.

Are some words just not decodable no matter how much of the code you know?

Yes, but not very many. The ones that immediately spring to mind are one, once, two, who.  There are other words with one unusual sound like people, laugh, leopard. I would love a list of words that really do need to be taught as sight words if anyone know of one.

Fortunately, for those of us working with older students, they often know a lot of high frequency words.

Decodable: This refers to the words that can be decoded at a given level.  See this post for more information.

Progession of Sounds: Every phonics based programme introduces sounds in a different progression for their own reasons and purposes. I’ve chosen a progression which leads learners from little words (where they feel confident) quickly into longer and longer words which they will encounter in the real world.

Advanced Code: Learners need to discover two main things about the English code once they get through the Foundation levels.

• There are lots of ways to pronounce one letter or group of letters (graphemes).  I call these Spelling Clones because they look the same but sound different.  Think of <y> pretty, July, yet, myth

• There are lots of ways to spell many English sounds.  I call these Sound Clones because they sound the same but look different.  Think of the “ay” sound.  ate, aim, bay, April, they, weigh, great, vein, straight

On the Downloads page you’ll find a progression of sounds and lessons for

Foundation Levels and

Advanced or Clone Levels

Here’s some of the terminology defined:

Foundation Levels:

These levels are designed to take a learner from the ubiquitous “fat cat sat” etc to the much more exciting world of real text as quickly as possible.  SPEED is the key. Each level builds on the last one so that the basic code is constantly practised and reinforced.

Basic Code: one letter to one sound and the 5 vowels are cat, bet, bit, cot, cut and no others.

Basic Code Plus : I also include x, qu, ll, ss and zz – just to make the vocabulary more interesting.

The usual progression is

• cvc – bat, rip, fax, till but NOT sir or ball
• cvcc  – damp, quilt, golf but NOT talk or find
• ccvc – skill, skit, trap but NOT scar or stick or bride

Because this is so limited and limiting, I suggested pushing through these levels as fast as possible.

Extras: This means introducing words which are mostly 1 symbol to 1 sound but with one extra, interesting thing that helps learners to read longer and longer words.

• sh/ch/th (all at once) – lovely and easy lesson.  Best thing in the world to see a very beginning learner spell “fish and chip shop”!
• split vowels (magic-e of old)
• ed (when to pronounce the syllable and when just to add the consonant sound) I added this when I noticed that young people would read “bag” but not “bagged”.
• ck, qu, x (not technically 1 symbol to 1 sound so may need extra practice)
• ng (adds flavour with words like spring, fling and belong)

Endings: By this point the basic code is well entrenched and it’s time to make longer and longer words – though still very controlled so that even the most struggling learners can read and spell beyond their expectations.

• le
• y
• er
• ing
• tion

There is nothing “basic” about words like recognition, accomplishing and instructions yet they are all decodable by this level.

I know I said that all this information would be generic but I do have one major request. Please USE phonics as a tool rather than TEACH it as a subject.

On the “Teaching Phonics” side, you could start by telling your students that letters are how we write the sounds that we say then give them the example that “l” “a” “g” is the word “lag”. Then give them a list of words and get them to figure out the sounds.

On the “Using Phonics as a Tool” side, you could give your students a small whiteboard each and say, “We’re going to build the word ‘lag’. What’s the first sound you hear when I say ‘lag’?” (see individual lessons for how that’s going to progress.) At the end, your students will have built the word and will have discovered for themselves that letters are how we write the sounds that we say. By the end of that first lesson, many will be able to read, write and spell every CVC (one sound to one symbol) word in the language – whether they’ve heard of them or not. (There will be exceptions which we’ll talk about in the “Challenges” category.

I decided to make this site because ThatReadingThing was created to be delivered one-to-one by people with no teaching background. PfAL (nice eh?) is for people are confident in their teaching style but want to incorporate some phonics into their classrooms.  I’ll try to keep the information as generic as possible, adding in tips about things that have worked for me.

We need to start with the questions: What is phonics? and “What does phonics for adults look like?”

What is phonics?

Primarily we’re talking about matching up the symbols of written English with the sounds of spoken English and vice versa. I often start training sessions with extracts from four texts, starting with CVC words and getting progressively more challenging. I haven’t yet met anyone who could read fluently through the last bit of text without working very slowly through several of the words. This exercise is to illustrate that some people will use obvious phonic strategies to read “that fat man at the pub” and others will use it read words like “eleemosynary”. Phonics isn’t limited to “c-a-t says cat.”  Phonics embraces all of English – it’s riches and it’s complications.

Please have a look at this presentation to see what Linguistic Phonics – suitable for adults – is all about.