Analytic phonics (sometimes referred to as analytical phonics or implicit phonics) refers to a very common approach to the teaching of reading that starts at the word level, not at the sound (

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...

) level. It does not teach the blending of sounds together as is done in

synthetic phonics Synthetic phonics, also known as ''blended phonics'' or ''inductive phonics'', is a method of teaching English reading which first teaches the letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of who ...

. One method is to have students identify a common sound in a set of words that each contain that same sound. For example, the teacher and student discuss how the following words are alike: ''pat'', ''park'', ''push'' and ''pen''. Analytic phonics is often taught together with levelled-reading books,

look-say Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and ...

practice, and the use of aids such as phonics worksheets. Analytic phonics can also help with spelling. For example, a student learns that the initial sound in ''pig'' is the same as that in ''pen'' and ''pat'', so they conclude that they must write that sound with the same letter (

grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics' ...

) "p". Sometimes, analytic phonics is referred to as ''Implicit phonics'' because the understanding of the sound-letters connection is implied and not necessarily taught directly. ''Analog phonics'' is a subset of analytic phonics that uses the ''onset-rhyme'' of many words. In the word ''snap'', "sn" is the ''onset'' and "ap" is the ''rime'' (the part starting with the vowel). So, ''snap'' rhymes with ''map'', ''sap'', ''clap'', and so on. Analytic phonics is different from

(that starts at the individual sound/phoneme level and builds up to the whole word), and

whole language Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and ...

(that starts at the word level and does not encourage the use of phonics). It may, however, be used as a part of the balanced literacy approach.

Practice and approach

Implicit phonics is moving from the whole to the smallest parts; "blending-and-building" is not usually taught. A student will identify new words by its shape, beginning and ending letters, any context clues from the rest of the sentence or any accompanying pictures.

Shortcomings of this approach

A major problem with analytic phonic methods is the erroneous assumption that all students will already have the fairly sophisticated phonemic awareness skills needed to enable the comparison of sounds within the various words. Implicit instruction relies on readers "discovering" clues about sound-spelling relationships; good readers can do this, but poor readers are not likely to do so.

Controversy: analytic vs. synthetic approaches

Phonics Phonics is a method for teaching people how to read and write an alphabetic language (such as English, Arabic or Russian). It is done by demonstrating the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters or gr ...

has become an acceptable practice and approach to teaching students to read. However, there are different methods in which it is used, and disagreement over which approach is best. There are two primary approaches to teaching phonics: analytic phonics and

. Both approaches require the learner to have some phonological awareness (the ability to hear and discriminate sounds in spoken words). Both approaches can also contribute to furthering the student's phonological development. Phonological awareness is an essential skill for reading, writing, listening and talking. Synthetic phonics involves the development of phonemic awareness from the outset. As part of the decoding process, the reader learns up to 44 phonemes (the smallest units of sound) and their related graphemes (the written symbols for the phoneme). In contrast, analytic phonics, involves the analysis of whole words to detect phonetic or orthographic (spelling) patterns, then splitting them into smaller parts to help with decoding. Supporters of synthetic phonics argue that if the systematic teaching of phonics doesn't take place, analytic learners can fall behind and fail to develop the tools they need for decoding words.

References

External links

Reading Rockets

Independent review of the teaching of early reading: Final Report Jim Rose 2006
{{DEFAULTSORT:Analytic phonics Learning to read Phonics Phonetics Reading (process)

Practice and approach

Shortcomings of this approach

Controversy: analytic vs. synthetic approaches

See also

References

External links