Learning to read (Letter Sounds Vs Letter Names???)

During the course of this Literacy multiple fold series, we shall be discussing how to easy your little one into reading. Encouraging them to be ardent readers; introduction, sustenance and progressing in the right path to becoming a book lover. So which is it? Should we teach letters or letter sounds? There is a widely-used teaching approach which teaches letter sounds first and letter names next. As a teacher, I also support and engage in this practise as well. However, another school of thought based on facts suggest letter names are a preferred option based on some of the following points;

1.     Letter sounds are more abstract and aren’t as consistent as letter names. Take for example the A in Target. In my experience, it seems more consistent to say, “Oh, I see the letter A in Target,” than “I see an /a/ (short a sound) in Target…but it doesn’t make the /a/ sound. It makes the /r/ sound.” Huh?

2.    Letter names make great labels for letters, as many of the letter sounds are harder to make in isolation. For example, b’s sound in isolation tends to sound more like /buh/, which can make blending it with other letter sounds difficult for beginning readers.

3.    The majority of letter names give the child a huge clue as to the sound (or one of the sounds) they make. For example, the letter D has the /d/ sound at the beginning and the letter F has the /f/ sound at the end. W, Y, and H are the only three exceptions.

On the contrary we could also argue that;

1.     We have a simple sentence, "the dog jumped." Simple enough. However, it's really not that simple for a beginning learner, starting with "THE" which is a sight word that must be known by "sight", and it is a word that cannot be decoded.

2.    Now we move on to "DOG". What makes dog sound like "DOG"? There are 3 phonemes (sounds): /d/ /o/ /g/. Knowing only the letter names will provide you with little to no clue on decoding this word - "dee" "oh" "gee". Well, that sounds nothing like /d/ /o/ /g/ "DOG". The reader must not only know the 3 aforementioned phonemes, he or she must then be able to quickly (instantly) connect those 3 sounds to form the sound of the word "DOG".

3.    The same process continues with "JUMPED".

So as you can see, reading is a fairly involved process that requires 1) the ability to recognise and know the letter, 2) the knowledge of letter sounds represented by the printed text, and 3) the ability to quickly connect those sounds together to form the complete word. Here, we're just covered 2 absolute critical components of learning to read: Phonics and Phonemic Awareness.

But before I go too much further, please hear me say this: if teaching your child her letter sounds first is working, GO FOR IT!

Let’s continue on Thursday…..