: a method of teaching beginners to read and pronounce words by learning the phonetic value of letters, letter groups, and especially syllables
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How Do You Teach phonics?
In the field of beginning reading, there are two basic schools of thought in the U.S. today. One emphasizes "whole language" teaching, which relies on teaching a lot of reading; the other emphasizes phonics, teaching how letters and syllables correspond to sounds. Phonics instruction may be especially difficult in English, since English has the most difficult spelling of any Western language. Consider the various ways we create the f *sound in *cough, photo, *and *giraffe, or the sh sound in special, issue, vicious, *and *portion, or the k sound in tack, quite, and shellac, and how we pronounce the o in do, core, lock, *and *bone, or the ea in lead, ocean, idea, and early. Teaching phonics obviously isn't an easy job, but it's probably an important one.
Note:
The word was most likely reformed on several occasions. Its earliest use appears to be in an essay by the English-born Church of Ireland cleric Narcissus Marsh (1638-1713) ("An introductory Essay to the Doctrine of Sounds, containing some proposals for the improvement of Acousticks," Philosophical Transactions [of the Royal Society], vol. 14, no. 156, February 20, 1684, p. 473): "In like manner Hearing may be divided into Direct, Refracted, and Reflex'd; whereto answer three parts of our doctrine of Acousticks; which are yet nameless, unless we call them Acousticks, Diacousticks, and Catacousticks, or (in another sense, but to as good purpose) Phonicks, Diaphonicks, and Cataphonicks." The application of phonics to a method of teaching reading appears to date from the first half of the nineteenth century; see the anonymous review of the phonic reading books sponsored by the British educator Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth in The Quarterly Review, vol. 74 (June & October, 1844), pp. 26-38, in which the reviewer refers contemptuously to a sound-based teaching system as "Shuttleworth's phonics."
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