Phonics Programs

the ABC's of learning
How does phonics work?

Author: www.phonics-programs.com

August 18, 2010

Posted in Phonics History,Phonics Programs | |

The phonics method of teaching reading is a traditional but highly effective one, as proven by both the National Research Council in 1998 and the National Reading Panel in its 2000 report. The basic idea consists of teaching children how to connect sounds with letters or groups of letters, which are then blended together to form new words. This allows the reader to sound out vocabulary words, even if they don’t know the meaning. While phonics is used today to teach the English language, the basic idea dates back to a Roman text The Doctrine of Littera, which stated that a letter consists of a sound, symbol, and name. These three elements are what students in phonics programs learn.The reason phonics works for English is that the language is based on an alphabetic principle. Other systems can be logographic (Chinese) or syllabic (Japanese). Some of the controversy about the phonics system has come from the fact that unlike Spanish, English spelling does not have a one-to-one correspondence, due to its roots in five different languages. (more…)

Posted in Phonics Programs | |

When John M. Shanahan created a phonetic study tape for his son Sean in the mid-1980s, he was going against the “modern” perspective on teaching reading. However, it was far from a new learning technique. Phonetic learning was the traditional way of learning to read before the 1930s, when professors decided that the technique was redundant and pointless. Instead, the prevailing belief became that children would learn to read naturally if they were faced with simple words in context, as in the “Dick and Jane” schoolbooks.However, this technique failed Shanahan’s son Sean, whereas phonetic techniques on tape worked. This success, and the popularity of the tapes among his neighbors, inspired Shanahan to market his system as “Hooked On Phonics”. He focused on advertising to sell the product, even going so far as to purchase the phone number 1-800-222-3334 (1-800-ABC-DEFG) for 10,000. (more…)