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Considering Phonics for my Child
Most parents will do everything possible to give their children every advantage possible in their every day lives, and will set them up with the best arsenal of knowledge they can to help them deal with life’s challenges. Well, when it comes to the task of learning to read, the best tool that you can offer your child may very well be a solid base of knowledge in phonics. There are a dizzying array of phonics products on the market today, and while most are reasonably priced and well worth their expense in the long run, a number of parents still hesitate to actually purchase such a phonics program because they do not understand exactly what phonics is, how it works, and why a good phonics base is so fundamentally critical to the new reader. The Benefits of Phonics The easiest way to understand the fundamental benefits of phonics based learning program is this. It is easier to understand things when they are broken down to their simplest parts. Phonics involves breaking down words into much smaller parts, teaching young readers the specific sounds that each of the 26 letters of the alphabet make, and eventually expanding to teach children the particular 44 speech sounds that exist in the English language. Beyond that, readers are then able to begin using those sounds to decipher longer series of sounds, in the forms of words. Unfortunately, many US schools still use what is referred to as the whole word or whole language approach in which words are not broken down into parts but rather, the child is attempting to read the words as a whole. In cases like this, often times the child is left to merely utilize a reading foundation of memorization and guessing, and when new words are encountered, it is often left to the child to attempt to determine what that word is without fundamentally knowing how to break it down into manageable parts. This can often lead to significant frustration on the part of the child which can ultimately lead to a delay in truly attaining success in reading. Phonics allows children to learn how to read on an elemental level, becoming familiar with many sounds that each individual letter can make in the comparatively difficult language that is English. Phonics also allows students to ultimately improve their spelling ability, as words that have long been spoken but not written will suddenly have a fundamental structure to them that the child can look to when he or she is trying to figure out exactly how that word should be spelled. Why Should I Consider Phonics for My Child? Phonics can often provide a tremendous boost to the otherwise bright child who just seems to be lagging behind in school when it comes to reading, as it will allow him or her to better be able to break words down into more manageable components. This is how the brain is trained to work; it is how the brain wants to work. An excellent visualization of exactly how phonics can help your child can be made in the form of a jigsaw puzzle. When taking a puzzle out of a box, haphazardly attempting to put pieces together does not work. And it is very difficult to attempt to determine exactly how the pieces should be put together from memory. Instead, you develop a strategy, or a system. Perhaps you start with the edges and work your way in. Perhaps would divide your pieces up by colors and work from there. Regardless, it is about breaking the puzzle down into manageable components. That is what phonics does to the English language, and that is why a good phonics strategy is essential as the young child learns to read. How Exactly Can Phonics Help My Child? In many cases, successful completion of a phonics education program and a concerted effort at implementation of that program in a child’s daily routing can elevate a struggling reader to that of an advanced reader in a remarkably short period of time. However, even more tempered expectations would indicate that an effective and balanced phonics program will give your child confidence, will end much of the frustration that he or she may be feeling when trying unsuccessfully to read, and will ultimately motivate your child to want to learn and read more. With that desire to read more will come the ability to more quickly decipher new words rather than relying on memory and/or guessing based on other words that the child has seen, and as the child progresses from simple words to more complex words, sentences, and short paragraphs, this will allow for more time comprehending what the topic of the materials are and less time figuring out individual words. The ability to read is the foundation to everything that is learned. Phonics is the foundation of reading.
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