Analytic and synthetic phonics
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- čas přidán 2. 07. 2024
- ANALYTIC AND SYNTHETIC PHONICS
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Today I want to talk to you about the differences between analytic and synthetic phonics.
In previous videos, you might have heard me talking about the importance of phonics and phonics teaching and that there are several different phonics teaching approaches, not all of them being equal.
I want to start off first with analytic phonics. Analytic phonics is the process of going from the whole to the part. We come across a word incidentally in the text and we look at the whole word and then we make analogies to other words so we might say something to the student like, this is LATE, now you can spell mate and fate.
There tends not to be a huge amount of explicit instruction in an analytic phonics approach. It's just kind of implied and assumed that the student will pick it up. For some kids this will work but for struggling readers and spellers they might not connect those dots so closely.
Another feature of analytic phonics is that the focus tends to be on the initial sound or the onset and rhyme patterns so for example we might look at a list of words like sat, pat, mat, fat, cat but not really break those down into their individual phonemes.
We're just really looking at how we can switch up the first sound and the rhyme.
We know that one of the best indicators for how well a child will be able to pick up reading and spelling is how well they can manipulate phonemes or those individual sounds in spoken language.
So we really want them to be able to do something like change sat to sap and change sap to sip so that we're switching around those individual sounds.
This helps children to self-teach so once they know all of the code and they're really good at manipulating those sounds they're able to figure out new words in different contexts because they have strategies for being able to sound the word out once they've got good phonics knowledge.
Another feature of analytic phonics is it tends to promote guessing. So looking at the first letter and guessing what the word might be or looking at the first letter and thinking about the context of the sentence and guessing what the word might be and we never want to teach struggling readers that the purpose of reading is to guess.
Reading is not about guessing it's about cracking the code.
So it's a less effective approach than a synthetic phonics approach.
A synthetic phonics approach, well synthetic actually comes from the word synthesis so it's where we blend together individual phonemes and words and make sure that we're sounding out the entire word so in a synthetic phonics approach all of the sounds in sat are equally important.
We look at the S but we also look at that A and T and we carefully decode the word from beginning to end blending together each phoneme and each grapheme that represents those phonemes.
A synthetic phonics approach involves explicit teaching of each part of the code so we go from the part to the whole.
We would teach the children that S quite often makes s sound, A quite often makes an a sound and T quite often represents a t sound. Then we get them to blend those sounds together, S A T, until they can think of the word sat.
So, it's very explicit, it's very broken down and we make sure that we teach each part of the code really carefully. In a synthetic phonics approach, we usually teach reading and spelling as being reversible or being kind of inverse of each other, to use a mass term. If we can read and blend all of the sounds in sat, we're also learning that we can segment those sounds to be able to encode the word sat. So, we're teaching those things in reverse of each other.
Handwriting is a really important skill in this process because handwriting helps children to build up the motor memory of the word as well as getting all of the sound properties and the visual representation of the phonic patterns that we use to represent those sounds in written words.
In a synthetic phonics approach, we only introduce texts that we know contain words that we have explicitly taught previously and this makes sure that students have the maximum amount of success when reading texts. Of course, we also teach oral language skills through genuine literature, reading to children, talking to children about texts and play based learning but when it comes to teaching that code it's really important that we use a synthetic and explicit approach because reading is not natural. Learning how to code crack is very hard and so we need to make sure that we're teaching it in a really explicit and synthetic way.
I hope this has helped you have a think about what you're doing in your phonics teaching and whether you can make any tweaks to your program to make it slightly more synthetic
Thankyouu this helped me do my assignment
Thank you Sarah. I am watching this from Papua New Guinea and you have presented well the difference between synthetic and analytic phonics.
Glad it was helpful!
What a clear and helpful explanation! Thank you.
You're very welcome!
Many thanks to you, Sarah. I am from Djibouti and I am grateful for watching this video.
Thank you for writing I'm glad to hear that!
YESSSSS! Super simple and most importantly, helpful. Thank you!
Thanks Danilsa! Glad it was helpful!
Thank you for explaining this, I am in school for teaching right now and this is such a great resource.
Glad it was helpful!
Hi Sarah
I love your videos and it’s very helpful. I would love to learn more about different methods to teach phonics. Especially with students who can’t speak or understand English.
Thanks kindly! Great suggestion!
great video. thnx!
Thanks
You left out the most important part of the analytic approach where readers are encourage and taught explicitly how to think about the story as they read too by modeling how to think with “think alouds” for what makes sense & how to make sure the word they think it is looks right or not. Teachers who have been trained with this approach also know to have the child cross check to make sure the word has the visual match to the letter sounds they see in the word they are solving. We😢 explicitly teach how to do that. Students will always naturally guess whether we encourage it or not - yes even when they are decoding therefore We as instructors need to have prompts to promote independents through the gradual release approach showing students how to check to see if a word looks like what they have said, guessed & or decoded. For words that have meaning but cannot be decoded students need to be taught explicitly how to think of the meaning and think of how it should be said. Therefore both approaches are necessary & need to be used when instructing reading. It is not just a one size fits all method or approach. Students who are only promoted to only “sound out” at the point of error will always do which in my 31 years of observing interferes with fluency and comprehension. It promotes choppiness. Yes students absolutely need to decode words that should be and can be decoded if they are unsure of them. Some of my students who have been instructed to only sound out words when they come to the point of difficulty are relying on that too much sounding out even words that they know saying things like t..he for the. Many words need to be taught as a whole. Words like, said and the and they and so many more that do not follow the phonics rules. The systematic controlled vocabulary in decodable reader are limiting as they need exposure to real kids language books as well to develop language acquisition vocab build background knowledge, language structure & grammar.
Hi Lisa, thanks so much for interacting! I can see from your response that you use the 'three-cuing' method. I.e., the graphophonic, semantic and syntactic clues. Looking for what 'looks right' and 'makes sense' are habits of poor readers. Sure, sometimes it works, but it's not a great way to go, especially if you have a phonological deficit underpinning your reading difficulties, as you're likely to over-rely on these rather than doing the harder work of decoding. Add to that most dyslexics have a great visual memory, and so cling to memorising whole word shapes even though only around 400 words can be learned this way. This leaves them vulnerable when the words are too complex to remember visually and the pictures disappear (around the end of Year 2). We can see this phenomenon in the data - we call it 'the middle school slump'. The reading circuit is the same in all brains, there are not many ways to wire a brain to read. We all process spoken sounds and map them onto letters. Some students are good at this, some not so good, but all need to learn to do it this way to achieve fluency. I completely agree on your point about always 'sounding out', this is where morphology and etymology instruction come into play, which is also best done through explicit, cumulative and systematic word instruction because English is morphophonemic, not phonetic as is commonly thought. Fluency and therefore comprehension are achieved when decoding is so fluent and effortless, it leaves cognitive attention left over to comprehend. Kids absolutely need exposure to high level vocabulary and language, which can be done by reading rich texts to them while they are still learning to read (decode) themselves. I couldn't disagree more that many words need to be memorised as a whole shape. There are a tiny number (about 5) that have their own, unique spelling not shared by other words. Said is one, but in your examples, 'the' is perfectly decodable by teaching schwa vowels as it 'they' which is made up of 'th' digraph and 'ey' making the /ay/ sound, same as 'grey', 'prey' and 'obey'.
Brilliant! You just rescued my essay hahahahahahaha
Ha ha, well I'm super happy I could help! I know the feeling. :)
it was simple and easy to understand Thanks
Thanks so much for the feedback
May allah reward you.. can you give us the analytic and the synthetic sounds of letters.. and if you can give us examples of the analytical phonics ... we are so grateful to you
Hi! I would love to look at the link to the free phonics assessment but the link does not work. Is there an updated one or is this no longer available?
Thank you!
Sorry Kayla it's not available at this time
Please tell me what is wrong with guessing? Before your answer please consider different learning processes and in particular the processes which include failing. Thank you.
Further, if a student is struggling with either system, what are your views on trying the other?
Lastly, if cracking the code works best, how is it explained where it fails, for example silent letters? I would argue that a more analytical mind would struggle with an imperfect code. Different brains need different systems. Therefore, research should be robust and implementation of systems which stem from research should be scrutinised and there should be more than one system which is favoured and certainly not one-size-fits-all pupils.
Hi Fire VR, thanks for interacting. There are a few questions to unpack there! Dyslexic students who are taught to guess early on will hold on to that strategy in a very literal sense, and it can become their primary method. This doesn't serve them as they get older and need to read multisyllabic words as they never master accurate, basic decoding (sounding out and blending). Most silent letters can be explained using morphology or etymology, something I also teach explicitly so that students can understand how the English language is constructed within a logical system. All human brains read the same way; by accessing print, converting that to speech sounds, then accessing words in the lexicon. Some are good at it, some not so good, but we really only have one way to do it, or develop others that are not very effective, such as using 'sight' memory. The challenge with dyslexic students is to 'rewire' the way they do it to become fluent in phonological awareness and decoding, something we delay when we allow them to guess. Maryanne Wolf describes the reading circuit beautifully.