Research Papers in Education

ISSN: 0267-1522 (Print) 1470-1146 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rred20

‘English has 100+ phonemes’: some errors and confusions in contemporary commercial phonics schemes

Greg Brooks, Roger Beard & Jaz Ampaw-Farr

To cite this article: Greg Brooks, Roger Beard & Jaz Ampaw-Farr (2019): ‘English has 100+ phonemes’: some errors and confusions in contemporary commercial phonics schemes, Research Papers in Education, DOI: 10.1080/02671522.2019.1646795 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2019.1646795

Published online: 11 Sep 2019.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 72

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rred20 RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2019.1646795

‘English has 100+ phonemes’: some errors and confusions in contemporary commercial phonics schemes Greg Brooks a, Roger Beardb and Jaz Ampaw-Farrc aUniversity of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK; bUCL Institute of Education, London, UK; cIndependent Consultant, Milton Keynes, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY From 2006 the British government strongly favoured synthetic pho- Received 24 May 2019 nics as the principal approach for the teaching of initial literacy in Accepted 12 July 2019 state-funded primary schools in England, and since 2010 has made it KEYWORDS – mandatory. In 2007 2013 just over 100 commercially published pho- Phonics schemes; phonetic nics schemes were available, and in that same period the govern- errors; phonic errors; ment maintained a system of quality assurance, in the form of two misguided pedagogies; (successive and non-overlapping) panels of independent evaluators. classification criteria Their task was to judge whether commercial publishers’ self- evaluations of their phonics schemes and materials were correct, in the sense of justifying statements that they met the government’s criteria for such schemes, etc. Of the schemes that were judged, just over half (54) were found to contain linguistic errors. In this article the errors are analysed in detail, and classified into three main categories: phonetic inaccuracies, phonic inaccuracies, and misguided pedago- gies. The criteria for that classification are stated, and conclusions and recommendations drawn – the main recommendation being that existing schemes need to be scrutinised in detail to ensure that they are fit for purpose. And this would apply to all phonics schemes used anywhere in the English-speaking world, not just in England, even though the criteria for phonetic and phonic accuracy would neces- sarily differ across accents.

Background Context The task facing children learning to read and spell is to relate the marks on paper to the words and meanings already known to them in spoken and auditory form. For those learning to read and spell in languages with alphabetic orthographies, attention to the correspondences between the phonemes of spoken language and the graphemes of written language is one element in this process. For children learning to read and spell in English, teaching focusing on the correspondences between phonemes and graphemes (that is to say, phonics) is known to be beneficial as one part of early instruction (NICHD 2000; Ehri et al. 2001; Torgerson, Brooks, and Hall 2006; Torgerson et al. 2019), despite the inconsistencies of the language’s deep orthography.

CONTACT Greg Brooks g.brooks@sheffield.ac.uk University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 G. BROOKS ET AL.

Given this, and given that the British government has mandated a particular variety of phonics, synthetic, to be used in the initial teaching of literacy in state-funded schools in England, it is no surprise that a plethora of phonics teaching schemes and materials is available in this country. And given all that, it ought to be possible for teachers of initial literacy in England to have confidence in the accuracy and quality of the available schemes and materials. This confidence is likely to be enhanced if insights from linguistics are used to inform investigations into the quality of these schemes and materials. Such application of linguistics is in line with long-standing arguments that linguistics has been under-used in educational research (e.g. Wardhaugh 1969; Spolsky 1978;Dörnyei2007). These arguments have become more compelling in recent years after the publication of new research into the English spelling system that is referred to below. The present article is effectively an application of this research. By addressing the question ‘How accurate and pedagogically sound are some contemporary phonics schemes available in England?’,weshowthat teachers need to be cautious in assuming that available phonics schemes and materials are accurate and pedagogically sound, and to exercise diligence in making their selections. The emphasis on schools in England evident in the previous paragraph needs to be justified; there are two aspects to this. First, in the United Kingdom, education is a devolved responsibility of the four national administrations, and the British govern- ment’s requirements on state schools in England do not apply to those in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland (or even to other types of school in England). However, teaching materials and approaches transcend national boundaries, and the criteria used here to judge phonics schemes available in England will apply, subject to the caveat in the next paragraph, to such schemes across the entire English-speaking world, as do the conclusions and recommendations that arise from those judgments. Secondly, the criteria for phonetic and phonic accuracy stipulated in this article are based squarely on the British English spelling system and the standard southern British accent often known as Received Pronunciation (RP). We draw attention later to three major regional variations in the accents with which English is spoken within England, but it would be outside the scope and feasibility of our analysis to attempt to deal with how phonics schemes and materials should be judged against (say) the Scottish Standard English accent, with its systematic differences from RP. Afortiori, it would be even more unrealistic to attempt to deal with phonics schemes and materials available in the United States, where both the spelling system and the most widely understood accent, General American, differ substantially from those we are concerned with here. Nevertheless, we consider that the criteria we adopt and the conclusions we draw have lessons for phonics teaching throughout the English-speaking world, provided relevant accents and spelling systems are taken into account. This is so despite the database used dating from 2007–2013. Most of the schemes analysed here are known to be still in use in 2019. Some have ceased to be available, and others may well have been revised, but we do not have access to that information. We maintain that the analysis and conclusions have value independently of that.

Introduction There has been relatively little systematic research into the content of schemes that areusedfortheteachingofearlyreading.Theseschemesoftencomprise RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 3 incrementally graded books, with supporting materials and activities. They may also reflect particular emphases, such as controlled vocabulary, systematic coverage of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, or the use of syntactical structures that are suitable for young children. There is sometimes explicit attention to age-appropriate subject matter, narrative, poetic or factual. However, when the content of these schemes has been discussed, this has often been part of wider pedagogical debates. Concentrated attention on the linguistic accuracy of such schemes is rare. For instance, the use of ‘decodable’ books in the USA, mandated by the federal government, prompted a review of how different kinds of text facilitate or hinder reading acquisition, how different types of words are acquired, and the characteristics of current texts. The authors of that review noted the lack of research in this area of literacy education, and suggested that ‘One of the reasons that research on [early reading] textbooks has fallen between the cracks is the gulf between the publishing industry and academe’ (Hiebert and Martin 2002, 372). The federal mandate also prompted an empirical study of the features of the texts of basal reading books (Hoffman, Sailors, and Patterson 2002). The authors investigated the general features of student texts, including instructional design, ‘accessibility’, and ‘enga- ging’ qualities. Using a variety of analyses, these authors suggested that such mandates heavily influence the materials presented to beginning readers, but that there was an apparent lack of attention to other features that support beginning readers, specifically predictability and the engaging qualities of the texts. In the UK, after a period when there was a largely rhetorical debate about the respective merits of reading schemes and individual (or ‘real’) books (Root 1988; Meek 1988; Donaldson 1993; Perera 1993; Beard and Oakhill 1994), more recent investigations have been largely focused on the effectiveness of systematic schemes, both ‘mainstream’ (EEF 2018) and intervention (Brooks 2016). However, the linguistic accuracy of reading schemes, especially in relation to how they deal with the grapheme-phoneme correspondences between written and spoken English, appears to have been largely taken for granted on both sides of the Atlantic. This may have been something else ‘You wanted to know about phonics (but were afraid to ask)’ (Stahl, Duffy-Hester, and Stahl 1998) – or perhaps were unable to investigate with the requisite rigour. Yet it might well do both teachers and children a disservice if the phonics materials they use and are exposed to contain systematically misleading inaccuracies about the nature of English orthography. Two recent developments in the field have afforded original and rigorous investigations into this area: first, the greater focus on phonic teaching methods in the USA and the UK, following the publication of, respectively, the report of the National Reading Panel (NICHD 2000) in the US, and the Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading (Rose 2006) in the UK; and secondly, a study of the English spelling system that was completed in unprecedented detail (Brooks 2015). This study can inform not only the way in which children can be helped to learn about the English spelling system, but also the accuracy of references to the spelling system. 4 G. BROOKS ET AL.

Phonics in the national curriculum for English in England Curiously, the first version of the National Curriculum for English in England was notably limited in its references to phonic knowledge. In the 43-page document, prepared by a committee set up by the quasi-autonomous National Curriculum Council, there was only one mention of phonics, and that one mention appeared to give phonics similar status to picture and other cues: ‘Pupils should be able to . . . use picture and context cues, words recognised on sight and phonic cues in reading’ (DES 1989, 7). The reasons for this have recently been discussed by Beard, Brooks, and Ampaw-Farr (2019), and the discrepancy was not fully rectified until ten years after the centralised curriculum was introduced in England (DfEE 1999; see also Beard and Willcocks 2002). Once the teaching of phonics was firmly established in the National Curriculum and accompanying guidance documents, central government initiatives then turned from ‘whether’ issues to the ‘how’ of phonics teaching, sparking substantial professional debates (e.g. Cook 2002). The central issues to be addressed included (i) how far such teaching should be ‘systematic’ and, if so, (ii) the relative merits of ‘analytic’ phonic methods, in which children are taught whole words which are then analysed into their constituent grapheme-phoneme correspondences, and of ‘synthetic’ phonics, in which children are taught to sound out the letters and letter combinations (graphemes) first, before combining (blending) the resulting phonemes to form words (Strickland 1998). The empirical sources that were regularly cited included a report of an intervention programme in a disadvantaged community (Stuart 1999), an expert panel research review in the USA (NICHD 2000; Ehri et al. 2001), a longitudinal study in Scotland (Johnston and Watson 2004; see also Johnston, McGeown, and Watson 2012), and a systematic research review in the UK (Torgerson, Brooks, and Hall 2006). These empirical sources on systematic phonics were accompanied by reviews of related inspection evidence (HMI 2002), the proceedings of a Parliamentary Select Committee (House of Commons Education and Skills Committee 2005), and the report of an Independent Review commissioned by central government (Rose 2006).TheRoseReview (2006, 4) appeared to endorse synthetic phonics in particular, even though it acknowledged that analytic approaches also had merits, and that comparative research studies were largely inconclusive (Torgerson, Brooks, and Hall 2006: see also Wyse and Goswami 2008).

Implementing the Rose criteria Nevertheless, the ways in which early reading schemes refer to the spelling system became the focus of two policy phases that followed the publication of the Rose Review. Publishers of teaching materials for early reading were invited to submit self- assessments of their materials to demonstrate that these materials met the criteria of an effective phonics scheme, as outlined in the Rose Review. The first phase (2007–2010), introduced under the Labour government, involved self-assessments that addressed ten criteria concerning ‘high-quality systematic phonic work as the prime approach to decoding print’. This included the teaching of daily sessions progressing from simple to more complex phonic knowledge and skills, and covering the major grapheme-phoneme correspondences. The approach was to cover multi-sensory approaches, phonemic seg- menting and blending, assessment, and the teaching of high-frequency words that do not RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 5 conform completely to grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules. As early as possible, children were to have opportunities to read texts (and spell words) that were ‘within the reach of their phonic knowledge and skills’, even though every single word in the text might not be entirely decodable by the children unaided. The second phase (2010–2013), introduced under the Coalition government (Conservative-Liberal Democrat), involved self-assessments that invited publishers to demonstrate how their products met similar criteria, but with the additional provision for the reading of texts that are entirely decodable for children, so that they experience success and learn to rely on phonemic strategies. There was also a requirement that publishers demonstrate fidelity to their teaching framework for the duration of the schemes, to ensure that irregular words are fully learnt; and, unlike in the first phase, the schemes had to implement synthetic phonics and no other variety. Additional explanatory notes were provided on the central government website that administered the self-assessment exercise, and staff from the Department for Children, Schools and Families/Department for Education were available to advise publishers on procedures, as needed. The self-assessments were submitted to the DCSF/DfE together with appropriate samples of the materials (and web-access for online materials/activities). The accuracy of the submissions in relation to the content of the schemes was then judged by small panels of independent evaluators, appointed after a tendering process. A list of schemes judged to have met the criteria was posted on a central government website, so that schools could take them into account when devising their provision for early reading. In this article the authors have drawn upon their work as members of the panels of independent evaluators.

Mandatory synthetic phonics and its implications Children learning to read and write in English need an efficient method for identifying unfamiliar printed words while reading, and for writing words whose spelling is not yet overlearnt and automatic. The British government has decreed that, for state-funded schools in England, the pedagogy that best meets that need is synthetic phonics, even though the research evidence does not (yet) show that that form of phonics is more effective than any other particular variety of phonics (for the most recent systematic review and meta-analysis, see Torgerson et al. 2019), and, as Jim Rose himself has said. ‘Phonics is necessary but insufficient.’ (Rose, J., presentation to The Children’s Literacy Charity day conference, London, 23 March 2018). However, given the government’s stance, it is obviously imperative that the commer- cially-produced phonics teaching materials which are available to schools in England, and which are intended to prescribe and determine synthetic phonics teaching, should demonstrate accurate knowledge of the underpinnings of phonics. This article shows in detail how some commercial phonics schemes fall short of this, resulting in confusion. We would emphasise that none of what is said here applies to how teachers actually use the schemes in classrooms, only to the schemes themselves – though we hope that teachers will use our analysis to guide their choices of phonics schemes. 6 G. BROOKS ET AL.

Method Assumptions and conventions Knowledge of a broad International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcription of the British accent often called ‘Received Pronunciation’ (RP), including the marks for pure long vowel (ː) and main word stress (ˈ), is assumed throughout this article. (For details, see Brooks 2015,14–17; Gimson’s Pronunciation of English, various editions 1962–2014; and for a teacher-friendly introduction to all this; Burton 2011. Also, a key to the symbols for the 44 phonemes of RP has been provided in the Appendix.) IPA symbols have been standard throughout the world since the 1880s, and represent phonemes unambiguously. Using IPA symbols makes it unnecessary for authors of dictionaries (for example) to invent their own, possibly idiosyncratic, sets of symbols, and their inclusion and use in the latest National Curriculum for English in England (see DfE 2013,49–73) should ensure that teachers of literacy become accustomed to them. Given this, we consider the use of non-IPA symbols to be outmoded (though it should be said that this was not one of the aspects considered by the panels of independent evaluators in 2007–2013), and that schemes which use non-IPA symbols should be revised to use only IPA symbols. Accordingly, in this article IPA symbols have frequently been substituted for those used by the original authors. Choosing the RP accent as the basis for the use of IPA does not imply that IPA can only apply to RP – quite the opposite. Any phoneme in any accent of any language in the world can be represented in IPA, including, in particular, all three of the most recognisable sources of regional variation in England:

● In words like path, the vowel varies between RP /ɑː/ and (Midlands and Northern) /æ/, though some words have /ɑː/ almost everywhere, e.g. father /ˈfɑːðə/ (the pronunciations /ˈfæðə/ with ‘short a’ and /ˈfeɪðə/ with ‘long a’ seem much more restricted regionally) ● In words like butter, the vowel varies between RP /ʌ/ and (Northern) /ʊ/, to the extent that some speakers in the North of England may not have the /ʌ/ phoneme in their accent at all; ● In words like car, the vowel varies between RP /ɑː/ and (South-western and Lancastrian) /ɑʴ/ - a retroflex or ‘r-coloured’ vowel. In this case, having such a rhotic accent could be an advantage – it will help indicate where graphemes including a letter are needed for correct spelling.

Teachers routinely handle these differences on a common-sense basis – but devisers of schemes need to ensure their materials support this. Some other conventions need to be noted: phonetic transcriptions are enclosed in double forward slashes, //, and graphemes in double angle brackets, <>, and split digraphs are shown hyphenated, e.g. . These conventions too have frequently been applied here to citations where they were not used in the originals. The double forward slashes and double angle brackets conventions are also extended to word-parts and whole words where necessary, and to word-structure descriptions such as ‘CVC words’. The latter extension is needed because several of the programmes reviewed use expressions like ‘CVC words’ as though written words which fit that description must RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 7 also fit it phonetically, when this is not the case. For example, far may be orthographically, but in RP and many other accents is /CV/ phonetically: /fɑː/. One special conventional sign (adopted from Carney 1994) also needs to be mentioned here, namely ‘≡’. This is used as shorthand to indicate that a phoneme-grapheme correspon- dence and a grapheme-phoneme correspondence are mirror-images of each other, and both are referred to. For example, ≡/g/ means ‘ pronounced /g/ AND /g/ spelt ’ and can be read as ‘ pronounced and spelling /g/’.

Criteria The present authors take the view that ‘accurate knowledge of the underpinnings of phonics’ implies that the phonics schemes and materials which developers produce must be both (1) phonetically and (2) phonically accurate, and (3) that specified or recommended teaching approaches must be appropriate to the task at hand and to the age of the pupils. This trichotomy structures the remainder of this paper. For a scheme to be phonetically accurate, it must show that its devisers have a sound grasp of the definitions of and distinctions between the terms phoneme, consonant, vowel, pure vowel and diphthong, and of how many there are in each category. As shown in the Appendix, in RP there are 44 phonemes comprising 24 consonants and 20 vowels; 12 of the vowel phonemes are pure vowels (7 short and 5 long), and 8 are diphthongs. Devisers of schemes also need to be clear about the phonetic distinction between short and long pure vowels – which is quite different from the common usage of the terms ‘short vowel’ and ‘long vowel’ in teaching (see Brooks 2015, 5). For example, the letters are often said to have the ‘short’ sounds /æ, e, ɪ, ɒ, ʌ/, and that is correct, as far as it goes (each of them has several other pronunciations), but there are two other short pure vowel phonemes in many accents of English, namely /ʊ, ə/, which are respectively the sound represented by the letter in pull, and the sound (the ‘schwa vowel’) represented by the letter in about. Since /ə/ is the most frequent phoneme in English, knowledge of its occurrences and spellings (there are over 30, but letter is the most common) should be part of every literacy teacher’s repertoire. Of the ‘long vowel sounds’ traditionally ascribed to the letters (actually their letter names), only the name of , /iː/, is a long pure vowel in the phonetic sense. Three of the others, /eɪ,aɪ, əʊ/ (the names of ), are diphthongs, and /juː/ (), as its phonetic transcription shows, is a sequence of two phonemes. The five phonetically long pure vowels in many accents are /ɑː, ɜː,iː, ɔː,uː/ (as in ah, err, ee!, or, Oo!) of which all but /iː/ seem mostly to be taught late in phonics sequences. Also, /uː/ is often conflated with /juː/, partly because there is regional variation in which of these occurs in which words (e.g. news as /njuːz/ or /nuːz/), but also because lack of phonetic knowledge may lead to the distinction not being noticed. For a scheme to be phonically accurate, it must show that its devisers have a working knowledge of the most used graphemes (of which there are about 90), of their principal correspondences with phonemes (of which there are about 140), and of the four types of grapheme – single letters, digraphs (pairs of letters representing single phonemes), trigraphs (sequences of three letters representing single phonemes), and four-letter graphemes. Within digraphs, there is the special category of the six split digraphs . The term ‘magic ’ to describe the final letter of 8 G. BROOKS ET AL. these digraphs is now considered unhelpful because it obscures their functioning within the larger set of digraphs. Examples of the various sizes of grapheme are /uː/ spelt in super, moon, rule, manoeuvre, through. For details of all this, see again Brooks (2015) and Burton (2011). For our views on appropriate pedagogies, see the introduction to the section headed Inaccuracies 3, below. How did the commercial phonics schemes available in 2007–2013 match up to this quite detailed specification? It needs to be said firstthatmanyfitted it well. Of the just over 100 schemes appraised by the present authors and colleagues in 2007–2013, just under half were judged accurate – but about half (54) exhibited at least one of a number of inaccuracies.

Database and analysis Adatabaseoftheflaws identified in the 54 schemes had been gathered by the independent evaluators during their work, and had been retained by one of the present authors. In 2017 permission to use the database for research purposes was granted by the Department for Education. The holder of the database prepared both an anonymised, numbered version of the database for analysis, and a separate key to the identities of the schemes. The only scheme which was not anonymised was Letters and Sounds (DfES 2007), which was not a commercial product. In addition to anonymising all the other schemes, no attempt was made to state the number of errors in individual schemes, to protect their developers. Initial findings based on the anonymised database were reported in Beard, Brooks, and Ampaw-Farr (2019). The findings reported in the present article were based on a much more detailed analysis performed by Brooks, again using the anonymised database, and without access to the key to the schemes’ identities. The database contained notes of at least 150 inaccuracies – amoreexacttotalwouldbedifficult to arrive at because (as will be apparent in the Tables below) quite a few entries in effect contained more than one error; also, some errors are analysed in the text and do not appear in the Tables. Since the entire anonymised database is in effect contained in the Tables, it is available to others to use. The key to the identities of the schemes will not be made available. Each identified inaccuracy was considered, and placed in a category. Some categories were relatively easy to define, for example, if the number of phonemes in English was misstated, or if any of the 44 phonemes of RP were not covered in a scheme or, more seriously in some cases, were omitted from manuals and other support materials for teachers. There is clear justification for a category listing confusions between (spoken) diphthongs and (written) digraphs, but some category boundaries had to be flexible; for example, the letters rarely form a single grapheme (digraph), and more often are two graphemes relating separately to the phonemes /k, w/- but and its major correspondence with /kw/ had to be treated alongside and its major correspondence with /ks/. As will become apparent, some inaccuracies could have been placed in more than one category, but for simplicity of exposition (and avoidance of repetition) each identified error, with very few exceptions, has been placed in one and only one category. All the identified inaccuracies will now be categorised and described, sometimes in lists, sometimes in Tables with comments, occasionally in the text. Readers may well con- sider that different categories could have been applied, and/or that individual examples RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 9 have been misclassified. We accept that, but would nevertheless draw attention to the overall message: some of these schemes leave a lot to be desired. In our analysis, the inaccuracies fall into three main categories: (1) Inadequate knowledge of phonetics, leading to errors, some of them very basic, about the nature of spoken English; (2) Inadequate knowledge of grapheme-phoneme and phoneme- grapheme correspondences, leading to errors, some of them very basic, about the relationships between spoken and written English; and, as a result, (3) Recommendations of inappropriate teaching approaches.

Inaccuracies, 1: inadequate knowledge of phonetics 1a Wrong number of phonemes The most studied British accent of English is that generally known as ‘Received Pronunciation’ (RP), and in that accent it is generally agreed that there are 44 phonemes (see Gimson’s Pronunciation of English, various editions 1962–2014); many other British accents have about thesamenumber.Severaloftheschemesreviewed stated other totals; these are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Wrong numbers of phonemes. Inaccuracy Comment One teachers’ guide referred to ‘100+ phonemes’. Very few languages have that many – English certainly hasn’t. Most languages operate with far fewer, and some with small numbers (as few as 15). Another teachers’ guide referred to coverage of 42 It was not clear what was being counted under the latter phonemes, ‘plus 32 common spelling patterns’. heading. Elsewhere, on an assessment sheet, there were 64 These were effectively grapheme-phoneme ‘phonemes’. correspondences with extensive phoneme duplication. In a different scheme there were references to six ‘first’ Even then, close inspection of the programme suggested phonemes, ‘a further 38 . . . by the end of the that some phonemes had been omitted, including /ɪə, Reception year’, and later ‘a further 18ʹ, 62 in all. ʒ, ə/. One product ‘introduced 42 phonemes of the English However, the ‘Forty-two phonemes grid’ only presented 39 language’. phonemes, as there were duplications in the correspondences of with /k, kw, s, ks/. A Teachers’ Guide stated that the product ‘covers 27 (i) Graphemes are not ‘sounds’–they have sounds in sounds including ’. the sense of pronunciations; (ii) It was not clear why only 27 ‘sounds’ were targeted; (iii) There were several duplications involving , so that effectively only 24 phonemes were represented. The focus of one CD-based product was on the However, much of it actually involved the presentation of ‘presentation of phonemes’. graphemes, as there was no audio element on the CDs. In the same product, one of the suggestions for what to But the presentation was only visual. tell children to say was ‘I am learning my phonemes.’ One scheme began with ‘the basic 26 phonemes’ which Because duplications of were involved, only 23 actually comprised the letters of the alphabet, minus phonemes were covered in this stage. but including the digraph . In another, the activities were largely limited to single Inadequate – or did the developer assume that children alphabet letter sounds, effectively covering only 24 would self-teach beyond this point? phonemes, with brief reference to another four. The progression did not extend to more complex phonic knowledge involving diphthongs and the full range of vowel and consonant digraphs, etc. In one scheme’s three sets of books, the total number of It is unclear how a scheme can restrict its vocabulary to phonemes covered ranged from only 20 to 25. This stay within such limits. Again, was it being assumed was achieved by omitting many single consonant that children would self-teach beyond this point? letters and some vowel and consonant digraphs. 10 G. BROOKS ET AL.

These errors ranged from slightly misleading, and requiring additional research or inputs from different schemes before being classroom-ready, to wholly inaccurate. The latter are so basic that, if the schemes involved are still available, they should be withdrawn, or at least thoroughly revised.

1b Missing phonemes Given that the phonetics of RP and its 44 phonemes, and their counterparts in other accents, are well-established, it might be expected that commercially-produced schemes would cover all this knowledge. Table 2 below shows that some do not. In order to deliver effective phonics teaching, teachers need to know all the phonemes, so that they can make professional judgments on which omissions or conflations might be justified in teaching on pragmatic grounds, and which schemes have omitted so many phonemes that they too should be withdrawn, or at least thoroughly revised. Pragmatic grounds: For example, in the spelling direction /θ, ð/ are both over- whelmingly written , and there are only about a dozen exceptions (e.g. /ð/ spelt in breathe,/θ/ spelt in Matthew). In the reading direction, since there are large numbers of words containing (including the most frequent English word, the), it might be thought that confusion would arise – but it appears not to because (a) /θ/ occurs mainly in content words and /ð/ in function words; (b) the /ð/ pronunciation is much more frequent than /θ/ (88% v. 12% – see Brooks 2015, 329–330); (c) even after scraping large dictionaries for obscure words, in the entire language there are only 10 minimal pairs, words distinguished solely by one having /θ/ and the other having /ð/ (see Brooks 2015, 331). So the communicative load of the distinction is very small, and children sounding out (say) bother who render as /θ/ and the word as /ˈbɒθə/ will quickly self-correct to /ˈbɒðə/. In general, therefore, sliding over the /θ, ð/ distinction does no harm, but for children whose accents (e.g. Cockney) have /f, v/ instead of /θ,ð/ respectively it is essential to teach very clearly when must be used in spelling instead of – bovver will not (normally) do. A somewhat different pragmatic instance is /ʒ/. It is the rarest consonant phoneme in English, and has no predominant spelling (candidates would be as in vision, treasure). This appears to be why it was the only one of the 44 RP phonemes that Letters and Sounds did not cover in the early stages – but did introduce systematically later. So its absence from teaching materials for beginners may be understandable – but this would not excuse its absence from teachers’ manuals or notes, or from supposedly comprehensive lists of phonemes intended for teachers. The /ʊə/ phoneme is rare and disappearing in RP, and many, perhaps most, people now pronounce poor, sure, tour as /pɔː, ʃɔː,tɔː/(‘paw, shaw, tor’) instead of /pʊə, ʃʊə, tʊə/(‘pooer, shooer, tooer’). If /ʊə/ were to disappear entirely, RP would have 43 phonemes, but it seems to be hanging on in poor, sure, tour in some people’s accents, and more generally in words like rural, jury, brochure, mature, obscure, so does need to be covered at some stage. Table 2. Missing phonemes. Omission Comment In the scheme mentioned above with 62 ‘phonemes’,/ɪə, ʒ, ə/ were nevertheless omitted. Totals: In one scheme, there appeared to be no coverage of /ʒ, ɔɪ,eə, ɪə, ʊə, ə/ in the reading books, although /ʒ/ was completely missing from at least 10 schemes, and from parts of two most of these phonemes were featured in the spelling books (where only /ɪə, ʊə/ appeared to be more; missing). /ɪə, ʊə/ were completely missing from at least 8 schemes, and from part of In a scheme that included letter tiles, nearly 40 phonemes were covered, but /ʒ, ɪə,eə, ʊə/ appeared to be another; missing. /ə/ was completely missing from at least 5 schemes; In one scheme 2 phonemes were missing: /eə/ as in the whole pronunciation of air, and /ʒ/asinbeige, /eə/ was completely missing from at least 3 schemes, and from parts of 2 television. others; In the lists of phonemes in another scheme, /ʒ/ was missing. /r, ð/ were completely missing from at least one scheme, and from part of In yet another scheme, /ɪə/asinnear was missing. another; At least two phonemes were missing from another scheme: /ɪə/asinnear and / ʊə/asinpoor, sure, tour /ɑː, ɔː,aɪ,b,d,k,g,h,m,p,r,v,ŋ/ were each completely missing from at pronounced /pʊə, ʃʊə,tʊə/. least one scheme; In one scheme, the first series of books omitted phonemes /b, d, k, g, h, p, r/. /ɔɪ/ was missing from part of one scheme. The teaching notes at the bottom of the page in one scheme did not appear to make specific reference to On /ʒ, ʊə/ see also text. several phonemes, including /m, ɑː, ɔː,aɪ, ʒ, ə/. In another scheme, there appeared to be no entries for /ʒ, ʊə, ə/. In one scheme’s ‘Phonic Code’ there was no explanation of why at least two phonemes were missing: /ʊə, ɪə/. EDUCATION IN PAPERS RESEARCH Phonemes /r, v, ʒ, ð/ did not appear to be represented in the three main sets of books in a scheme, although /r, ð/ did appear in a supplementary set. In a further scheme there appeared to be no coverage of /ŋ, ɪə, ʊə, ʒ/ and no distinction between the two phonemes for . In the scheme which ‘introduced 42 phonemes of the English language’ there was only one phoneme for and no representation of /eə, ɪə, ʊə/, even though later reading books specifically focused on some of these sounds. There was also no representation of /ʒ, ə/. A Teachers’ Manual referred to coverage of 43 phonemes but no aggregate list was evident. The voiced and unvoiced versions of were only differentiated by a margin note to the teacher and there appeared to be no coverage of /ʒ, ʊə/. (Continued) 11 12 .BOK TAL. ET BROOKS G.

Table 2. (Continued). Omission Comment A computer-based program had blue ‘phoneme buttons’ on a ‘Word board’. Although the program’s screen Incomplete and inaccurate phonemic analysis has led to words being displayed a list of ‘all phonemes’, there were omissions, namely /eə, ɪə, ʊə, ʒ, ə/. It was therefore presented with inaccurate grapheme-phoneme correspondences. impossible to use the program’s blue phoneme buttons to sound out all the constituent phonemes from left to right of a range of common words, e.g. where, hear, sure, despite the related whole-word pronunciation being elicited through the ‘pronunciation’ button. The program did include the grapheme, but this was apparently only included in the range of graphemes provided for /ɜː/, and not for /ɪə,eə/. Nor could the program be used to construct a range of irregular words, e.g. leisure, as it did not provide appropriate graphemes for /e/ or /ʒ/ in this word. The program did not ensure that children would apply phonic knowledge and skills as their first approach to reading and spelling irregular words, because it did not necessarily demonstrate the phonemic structure of words that are not completely phonically regular, e.g. (i) bank could be made from /b/, /a/ [= IPA /æ/], /n/ and /k/, with /n/ being retained when the pronunciation was elicited through the use of the ‘speed’ button. The correct pronunciation /bæŋk/, including /ŋ/, was only elicited through the use of the ‘pronunciation’ button. However, even then, the /n/ was still retained in the blue phoneme buttons on the Word board; (ii) the pronunciation of the sequence was retained as /kw/ even when the grapheme was used singly, e.g. in Iraq; (iii) some tricky words could only be constructed in a potentially misleading way, e.g. the could be made from /ð/ and /e/, with the /e/ being retained when the pronunciation was elicited through the use of the ‘speed’ button. The correct /ə/ pronunciation of the vowel was only elicited through the use of the ‘pronunciation’ button. However, even then, the /e/ was still retained in the blue phoneme buttons on the Word board. Often (and in many more schemes than those mentioned above), no distinction was made between the It could be argued that this omission or conflation is a minor concern – see text. voiced and voiceless pronunciations of : /θ/asinthink and /ð/ as in this . For example, in the scheme that included letter tiles there was only one for . In another scheme, only voiceless /θ/ was introduced, but an activity included several sentences containing voiced /ð/. RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 13

1c Two quasi-phonemes and a quasi-grapheme In numerous schemes, were listed as ‘phonemes’ when they are clearly graphemes; the 2-phoneme sequences /kw, ks/ were meant. And, strictly speaking, when relates to /kw/ it is two graphemes. In one teachers’ guide was treated as a ‘phoneme’, but was not: there was a note to the effect that ‘ =2sounds’.Inadifferent scheme, was labelled as a ‘digraph’ in the same listingas– it’s only a digraph when it relates to /k/ alone (which is rare, but cf. conquer, mosquito, quay). Where is concerned there is of course no sensible alternative to teaching it initially as spelling and being pronounced /ks/ - all its other correspondences are rare (see Brooks 2015, 336–337). In one scheme, the ‘initial sound’ representations for were x-ray and xylophone, where represents /eks, z/ respectively. Since the consonant cluster /ks/ does not occur word-initially in English, devisers of materials must either use inappropriate examples for (asjustillustrated),or (preferably) use much more regular word-final examples such as box, fox. In schemes where /kw/ was treated as a separate ‘phoneme’, and as a separate ‘grapheme/digraph’, it would have been more accurate to say that /kw/ is a spoken consonant cluster, as in /kwiːn/, and is a written consonant cluster, as in queen. However, the correspondences ≡ /kw/ are so frequent, and the spoken and written clusters are so closely tied together, that teaching them as units is pedagogically justified. Accurate understanding of the correspondences between /kw, ks/ and would enable devisers of schemes to avoid inaccuracies such as those in Table 3.

Table 3. and /kw, ks/. Inaccuracy Comment A Teachers’ Manual stated ‘ is actually two sounds are not ‘sounds’ but graphemes, and no made very closely together (/k, w/) as is (/k, s/) phonetician would accept the notion that the ‘sounds’ but they are counted as one.’ they relate to are made more closely together than other phoneme clusters. Counting either cluster as ‘one’ sound is misleading for teachers and even more so for children. In one scheme, quick and another four words containing All of these have 4 phonemes, e.g. /kwɪk, tæks /. , and tax and another six words containing , Imagining that quick has only 3 phonemes implies that were all listed as ‘3 phoneme words’. /kw/ was counted erroneously as one phoneme. In one scheme (only), quay was used to illustrate the Perhaps the fact that in represents /k/ has been pronunciation of as /k/. overgeneralised. The correspondence here is more plausibly analysed as pronounced /k/, and treated as an exception to the usual link between /kw/ and . Some of the materials in one computer-based product Although Phase 3 of Letters and Sounds (DfES 2007, 74) did not appear to extrapolate accurately from Letters advises that children do not, at that stage, need to be and Sounds: and were allocated single taught that both of these represent two phonemes, sound buttons. the advice does not appear to justify teaching that they represent only one phoneme. The introductions to phonemes in another such scheme If the program cannot cope with getting the child to included ‘On your keyboard, press the letter that press , the 2-phoneme sequence /kw/ should represents the sound you hear, /kw/’. Pressing not be presented. elicited the response, ‘Fantastic’. 14 G. BROOKS ET AL.

1d Other 2-phoneme sequences Including ≡/ks/ there are, according to Brooks (2015,256–261), 21 two- phoneme sequences represented by single graphemes in British English spelling. All but three of these are minor aspects of the system, and of no immediate concern to those teaching beginners (unless the children really, really want to know how to spell pizza, for example). Those that do need to be introduced to beginners are ≡/ks/ (see above), ≡/əl/, and ≡/juː/. The grapheme is a frequent spelling of /əl/ in unstressed final syllables after a short vowel phoneme and a consonant phoneme, and needs to be made explicit to children so that they do not write, for example, tabul. However, this correspondence was rarely mentioned in the schemes reviewed, and in one was mis-handled: ‘ul’ (sic) was listed as a separate ‘phoneme’, and appeared to be an entryfor/l/ratherthan/əl/. This representation apparently equates the ‘short’ sound of , /ʌ/, with the schwa vowel /ə/, and is one of the many cases where accurate use of IPA would have avoided confusion and error. The 2-phoneme sequence /juː/ does have 2-grapheme spellings, e.g. in you, Yule, but is much more often spelt with single graphemes, to such an extent that both Carney (1994, 200–202) and Brooks (2015, 214–216) accord it special quasi-phoneme status. Just two of the schemes reviewed mentioned the distinction between /juː/ and the long pure vowel /uː/ - and both got it right or nearly so, which is worth celebrating in the midst of all these errors. One illustrates the difference explicitly with these examples:

/uː/ boot, screw, glue, flute; /juː/ cue, unicorn, news, cube.

The other scheme, Letters and Sounds, is just as accurate about the distinction, but does not draw either children’s or teachers’ attention clearly to it. /uː/isexplicitly introducedinPhase3,giventhesymbol/ue/,anddifferentiated from the short vowel /ʊ/ symbolised /oo/. But /juː/ does not appear until Phase 5, where it is introduced almost surreptitiously, beginning with the word rescue followed by lists of other words with /juː/ spelt , and then lists of words with other common spellings for the sequence. /juː/ is also given the symbol /ue/, so that the distinc- tion from /uː/, in particular the presence of the /j/ glide, is glossed over in silence – unless explicit attention is meant to arise when the teacher ‘Ask[s] the children for thesoundsin...thesecondsyllable’ of rescue (DfES 2007,149).Perhapsthe authors of L&S thought this was an appropriate point for children to begin to self- teach by subconsciously internalising new correspondences. Whether this was so or not, it would seem essential to make the /juː,uː/ distinction explicit to teachers, so that they understand more clearly what is happening if (when) children mix up the relevant spellings. RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 15

Inaccuracies, 2: inadequate knowledge of grapheme-phoneme and phoneme-grapheme correspondences 2a Phonetic errors leading to errors over grapheme-phoneme correspondences Given the widespread confusion over the phonetics of English, it is perhaps not surprising that the schemes showed a range of errors in this category – see Table 4. Pragmatically, the examples presenting /n/ instead of /ŋ/ may be of minor concern. Attempting to pronounce post-vocalic will automatically produce /ŋk/. And in the spelling direction, though /ŋ/ is spelt 75% as and 25% as , errors are rare precisely because of the influence of pronunciation. Nevertheless, in the unlikely event that a child writes (for example) bangk, thingk, fingger the teacher needs to know enough about these correspondences to say ‘You’re quite right – there’san/ŋ/soundthere– but if the next sound is /k/ or /g/ we write it just with .’

2b Confusions between diphthongs, digraphs, and clusters The inaccuracies listed here involve somewhat larger units than those in the previous category – see Table 5.

2c Errors about correspondences and their frequencies A plethora of information about the frequencies of phoneme-grapheme correspon- dences has been available since the publication of Carney (1994), and should have ensured that errors of this sort should not occur. Accessible information about the frequencies of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, on the other hand, has been available only since the publication of Brooks (2015). Even so, reflection on the facts of English vocabulary would have prevented errors such as those listed in Table 6. Within this category, one scheme made four statements, three of which attempt to make generalisations out of too few instances, and one sort-of works – see Table 7.

2d Omitted graphemes and correspondences This is in a way the mirror-image of category 1b (Missing phonemes), but in a limited fashion. There are almost 300 graphemes and over 500 correspondences in the English spelling system (Brooks 2015), so even the most assiduous developers of schemes cannot be expected to cover them all explicitly. Even so, there are some surprising omissions, as shown in Table 8. Comment on them would seem redundant.

Inaccuracies, 3: recommendations of inappropriate teaching approaches Young children learning to be literate are not best served if teaching approaches expect too much of them, or are based on misunderstandings about phonetics, or have an incon- sistent focus, or are simply muddled. Our analysis revealed examples of all these categories. 16

Table 4. Errors over grapheme-phoneme correspondences.

Error Comment AL. ET BROOKS G. ‘Quizzed, grinned, yelled, winked and jumped all take the /d/ phoneme.’ winked /wɪŋkt/ and jumped /ʤʌmpt/ have /t/. In some early screen animations, /s/ was introduced as one of the first six phonemes, but the The pronunciation of is is /ɪz/, with spelling /z/. supporting sentence contained is. In a computer-based scheme, the word as was presented first as /æ/+/s/ but then Misleading. synthesised as /æz/. The same issue was evident elsewhere: (i) the ‘button’ for is elicited the voice-over ‘/ɪ,s,ɪz/’; (ii) in later books in relation to the pronunciation of has. One level of a scheme contained the words has and rolls, in which the is used to Even before children can cope with the idea that all grammatical endings pronounced /z/ represent /z/, without a related guidance note. are spelt , they could be told that /z/ at the end of a word is usually spelt . The Foreword in one book equated the number of phonemes in fog with the number in /fɒg/ = 3, /frɒg/ = 4. frog. Another scheme said ‘The word “song” has four sounds.’ /sɒŋ/=3. In a computerised spelling game: Both words have four phonemes: /bɒks, kwɪk/. ● If ‘4ʹ was clicked in answer to the question ‘Box: How many sounds can you hear?’ it was counted as incorrect. ● If ‘4ʹ was clicked in answer to the question ‘Quick: How many sounds can you hear?’ it was counted as incorrect. A list of ‘CCVCC words’ included crisps. crisps /krɪsps/ is CCVCCC both orthographically and phonetically. An introduction to /t/ was followed by an activity that included the. /t/ does not occur in /ðə/. A word-allocation activity for /s, m, t/ included shoes to be allocated to /s/. /ʃuːz/ does not contain /s/. There were discrepancies in some of the summary tables of grapheme-phoneme In each case, letters were presented in bold that were not part of the grapheme/phoneme correspondences in one scheme: correspondence being addressed. ● pronounced /j/: lying. In lying, there is in fact a /j/ phoneme in the pronunciation of the word, /ˈlaɪjɪŋ/, but it is an ● pronounced /æ/: painkillers automatic glide between the /aɪ, ɪ/ phonemes (spelt ) and is arguably not ● pronounced /r/: arm, car,warden, parking, grocers represented in the spelling at all. ● pronounced /ʌ/: menu,burgers ● pronounced /w/: who In the same summary table, an example for pronounced /ʃ/ was extinguisher, with Possibly a misprint or oversight. only the in bold. There was also a note under the table: ‘Note and : two letters, one sound’. This is partly inaccurate, in that always represents two phonemes: /ŋk/. In one ‘supplementary’ product, there was exclusive use of single alphabet letters as a basis It was as though multi-letter graphemes did not exist. for learning phonic knowledge and skills. In a ‘Sound It Out’ blending activity, only one phoneme per letter was included. This could lead to inaccurate pronunciations e.g. has as /hæs/ not /hæz/, for as /fɒr/ not /fɔː/ - but syllable-final /r/ does not occur in the majority of English accents, and in the case of for only becomes overt before a following vowel phoneme, as in forever (where represents /ə/, not /ɒ/). (Continued) Table 4. (Continued). Error Comment In another scheme, two letter sounds were sounded out for or and three for for, but no Grossly inaccurate. attention appeared to be given to the digraph . Furthermore, was said to have the sound /əʊ/, not /ɒ/, and the in for was said to have the sound /r/. Similarly, the words for and seem were presented, but only the grapheme had the appropriate sound line for a digraph. The word for was shown as having three sound lines. In a teachers’ guide, one level of books was said to ‘concentrate on double letter sounds and thus conflating graphemes and phonemes. new letter sounds’ including , Another scheme said: ‘Note that c-all is technically two sounds but features double letter The word call has three phonemes: /kɔːl/. See Table 10 for comment on teaching rimes as so is included for discussion.’ units. Attempts in one scheme to cover some word-initial ‘long vowel’ sounds included a picture But this word is phonetically /ɪə/ and does not begin with /iː/. of an ear, presumably intended to illustrate phoneme /iː/. In Year 1 ‘CVCC words with Phase 3 graphemes’, a picture-labelling activity featuring paint, Even if ‘sounds’ is interpreted (as seems to be intended) as ‘consonants’, this statement is bench, chimp, sixth had the commentary ‘All these words end with two sounds’. true neither phonetically (sixth /sɪksθ/ ends in three consonant phonemes), nor in terms of spelling (bench and sixth end in three consonant letters). A glossary entry for ‘split digraph’ stated ‘In the word “aeroplane ”, the sound “ae” [/eɪ/] No, once: /ˈeərəpleɪn/. occurs twice.’ There were inaccuracies in a ‘digraphs’ list: ● the list contained aim, fail, grain /eɪ/, and fairy /eə/; In fairy, should not be treated as a digraph, especially since the word does not contain the diphthong /eɪ/. Here the grapheme represents /eə/. ● the list contained ear /ɪə/, earth /ɜː/, and pear /eə/. In all of these the grapheme is . In some ‘Introduction’ notes, was represented by images of an apple /æ/, an ant /æ/, Confusing for beginners. EERHPPR NEDUCATION IN PAPERS RESEARCH and an apron /eɪ/. The lists of CVCC words used in the books of one scheme included bank, tank, sank, etc. However, there was no previous reference to the /ŋ/ phoneme in either the ‘sounds previously taught’ or in the ‘high-frequency words the reader might need help with’ in notes inside the front covers of the books. Also, the inclusion of bank in the ‘game page’ inside the back covers, together with and, help, lost, end, etc. implied that was being equated with /æ-n-k/ (which is unpronounceable) rather than /æ-ŋ-k/. Similarly, in another scheme the ‘CCVCC words’ included drink. But no attention was drawn to the fact that drink includes the variant spelling of /ŋ/ as . Elsewhere, bank was analysed as /b-æ-n-k/ rather than /b-æ-ŋ-k/. And in a computer-based scheme think was orally blended in the voice-over but presented instead of /θ-ɪ-ŋ-k/. as /θ-ɪ-n-k/ In another such scheme, the introduction to /t/ was followed by a ‘click on’ activity that Neither word contains the target phoneme. included the, and a word allocation activity for /s/ included shoes. /ʊ/ was illustrated by oral presentations of put (correct) but then cut, which was pronounced Many people in the North of England pronounce cut as /kʊt/ - but then a different speaker on the accompanying video with the vowel sound /ʌ/, as in RP. would be needed on the video, or a separate video. In another program, blending /b, ɒ, l, t/ was presented as producing bolt. The correspondence of in bolt is /əʊ/, not /ɒ/. 17 18 G. BROOKS ET AL.

Table 5. Errors over diphthongs, digraphs and clusters. Error Comment Consonant clusters and consonant digraphs were To be consistent at the grapheme level, the cluster inconsistently allocated within phoneme frames, e.g. should have been hyphenated as shown and ‘ch-i-mp’, ‘s-o-ck’. given 2 boxes. The focus of the activities in much of one programme It would be better to be consistent at the grapheme lacked a consistent phonemic focus, e.g. letter-by- level. letter spelling, e.g. ‘Fitting the word into the right shape’ with one cell per letter instead of one per grapheme. In a ‘Finish the sentences’ activity, there was switching Ditto between treating digraphs as units and as sequences of letters, e.g. ‘This is a fi_’ (fish); ‘I can see a duc_’ (duck). Several books erroneously listed single-letter graphemes Possibly a confusion between digraphs and diphthongs. as digraphs on the inside front covers, specifically the The names of letters are diphthongs: /aɪ, əʊ,eɪ/, letters . while the name of letter consists of a consonant phoneme followed by a diphthong: /waɪ/. A scheme confused consonant digraphs with consonant The term ‘blend’ for ‘consonant cluster’ should be phased clusters. For example, the digraphs and the out. It may cause confusion with the blending of consonant string (which includes the digraph phonemes that is one of the defining characteristics of ) were included under the heading ‘Final synthetic phonics, and/or mislead teachers into consonant blends’. thinking clusters need to be taught as units – see In another, there was insufficient differentiation between Table 10 below on why they should not. a card display of digraphs (e.g. ) and the display of consonant clusters (e.g. ). In a section on ‘Adjacent Consonant Phonemes’ (meaning graphemes), consonant clusters (e.g. and ) were listed together with consonant digraphs (e.g. and ) without any distinguishing comments in the accompanying text. There were references in a teachers’ guide to ‘triple consonant blends’ which actually included a digraph and another consonant letter. The Programme referred to ‘four phoneme words . . . with is a cluster, (here) is a digraph. final consonant clusters, e.g. left ... crash’. Flashcards in a Teachers’ Book were listed as ‘Digraph By definition, a digraph is a pair of letters representing Flashcards’ when they also included single-letter one phoneme. graphemes and trigraphs.

Table 6. Errors about correspondences and their frequencies. Error Comment ‘Only a few words use to make the long Carney (1994, 173) lists dozens of such words (e.g. bravo, cargo, halo, o[/əʊ/] sound.’ hello, judo, photo, solo, trio), and Brooks (2015, 223–226) shows that in non-final syllables is the overwhelmingly predominant spelling of /əʊ/, with only 13 exceptions amongst hundreds of words. ‘The (magic e) at the end makes the Such an unequivocal statement does not account for words like into the long o [/əʊ/] sound.’ come, done, gone, love, none, some, etc. However, Brooks (2015, 452–454) shows that the split digraph generalisations are mostly reliable, not just for but for the other five as well. This implies that exceptions like those just listed, and those involving other split digraphs, need to be taught as ‘tricky’ words. ‘ is a very common way of spelling the Carney (1994, 172) shows that is used to represent /əʊ/ in only long o [/əʊ/] sound.’ about 4% of its correspondences, even though it occurs in a few common words, e.g. boat, soap. RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 19

Table 7. 3½ misleading statements about correspondences. Statement Comment ‘ says /u/ [/ʌ/], Only in 9% of correspondences of , and word-initially only in onion, other, oven (Brooks other.’ 2015, 402, 405–406). ‘ says /w/, once.’ This account seems to imply, bizarrely, that the following vowel phoneme /ʌ/ (in RP) has no spelling. The here and in one (the only other example) is better analysed as pronounced /wʌ/, especially to reinforce the need not to write the /w/ separately when attempting to spell once, one – see the story ‘A dog I wons new’ (Gubb 1982). ‘ says /or/ [/ɔː/], This correspondence accounts for 67% of the occurrences of (Brooks 2015, 416), but your.’ this is largely due to the high frequency of your; otherwise this correspondence occurs only in bourne, court, courtesan, course, four, mourn, pour, source, yours, most of which beginners are unlikely to encounter. ‘ says /all/ [/ɔːl/], Perhaps a useful rule of thumb for beginners, especially if extended to the preponderance always.’ of /ɔːl/ pronunciations of word-final in monosyllables. Exceptions such as alight, altitude, emerald will probably not be seen as falling under this generalisation by the time they are met.

Table 8. Omitted graphemes and correspondences. A scheme referred to ‘a route through blends [sic], CVC, vowel digraphs’ but there appeared to be no coverage of vowel digraphs. Many of the 44 phonemes of English were omitted from the early stages of one product, including those mainly represented by vowel and consonant digraphs. Indeed, some quite frequent digraphs did not seem to appear in any part of the product. Some grapheme-phoneme correspondences were not featured separately in a product, e.g. pronounced /ʃ, θ, ʧ/, although some appeared within consonant strings, e.g. . The first table in a Teachers’ Guide included only 30 grapheme/phoneme correspondences, with unexplained duplications (e.g. and omissions (e.g. no correspondences for /ŋ, ʒ/). In the scheme where the Teachers’ Manual referred to coverage of 43 phonemes, was apparently only presented in correspondence with /ɜː/, and there was no mention of its predominant word-final correspondence with /ə/ in several of the example words (e.g. bigger, batter, farmer). The sound ‘ee’ (/iː/) was presented as having correspondences with five graphemes, but not with as in field. /h/ was presented as having a correspondence with but not with (as in who), even though was included in the graphemes for /w/.

3a Failures of sequential progression: expecting children to know or infer things they have not yet been taught Even though it would be impossible to teach all of the nearly 300 graphemes and over 500 correspondences explicitly, and children will therefore have to begin to ‘self-teach’ at some point, those in the early stages need more guidance than some schemes provide – see Table 9.

3b Failure to focus consistently on phonemes At least ten of the programmes did not maintain a consistent focus in how they dealt with grapheme-phoneme correspondences. The content of these programmes some- times veered abruptly from phonemes to graphemes and then to individual letters without any supporting comment – see Table 10. 20 G. BROOKS ET AL.

Table 9. Failures of sequential progression. Example Comment A teachers’ guide stated ‘Check that the children can even though this word contained some grapheme- blend the sounds in the word b-a-ll-oo-n’, phoneme correspondences that had not been systematically introduced, including pronounced /b/, pronounced /l/, and pronounced /uː/. Level 1 of a scheme was said to ‘concentrate on CVC However, one book in this level contained the word for words plus and, the, to’. on its first page. This word may be CVC in spelling, but phonetically is CV: /fɔː/. A teachers’ guide did not refer to the use of to spell even though the names of three characters in the /iː/, scheme’s books ended with this grapheme. One level of books was said to ‘concentrate on adjacent but it also contained garden and corner (phonetically consonants (CVCC/CCVC words)’ plus several high- /CVCVC, CVCV/ respectively) without a related frequency, irregular words, guidance note. In one scheme’s activities for /g/, the screen animations without additional guidance on the phonemes included gate, goat, gran and girl, represented by and the three vowel digraphs. Blending activities for /e/ included /h-e-n/, even though /h/ had not yet been systematically introduced. A CVC activity for words beginning pronounced /k/ even though this had not yet been systematically included /ʌ/ spelt (cat-cut-cup-cap-cat), introduced. An introductory activity for stated: ‘Come and This use of is bizarre: that rare and almost always explore the letter “a”. It makes the “ah” sound.’ word-final grapheme is mainly pronounced /ə/ (e.g. in Comparison with the audio provided by the scheme cheetah, Sarah)or/ɑː/ (as in hoorah and ah itself). It is revealed that ‘a’ was intended to be pronounced as never pronounced as /æ/, and is pronounced /eɪ/ only the letter name /eɪ/, and ‘ah’ as the short vowel in dahlia. Examples of words in the activity included phoneme /æ/. apple, ant and alligator – as shown, this last word had both ’s in bold, even though they represent different phonemes (/æ, eɪ/). This might be interpreted as encouraging the ‘set for diversity’ that all users of English orthography must develop, or might be more likely to confuse beginners. An introduction to the sound /m/ was followed by an apparently with no introduction of the phonemes /aɪ,æ/ introduction to the word I and then to ‘the sound “am”’ or guidance for blending /æ, m/. [sic], This was then followed by a whole-word recognition and, erroneously, /æ-s/ into /æz/. activity (ram, jam, stamp, etc.), some demonstration of blending (/æ-m/ and /s-æ-m) I and i were then introduced, with a related book but also ice and ice-cream, with no comment on the split showing ink, ill, insects, vowel digraph and its different correspondence. The only previous coverage of /aɪ/ was as the whole word I. The grapheme/phoneme correspondences presented in It was not clear how the informed application of phonic the very first books of a scheme assumed some knowledge and skills as a first approach to reading complex phonic knowledge and skills. could be ensured, e.g. I, is, who need to be treated (at least at first) as ‘tricky’ words, not as material for sounding out; the /iː/ phoneme was immediately presented in two different spellings, in see and me; two geminate consonant spellings, , featured early; and the /w/ phoneme was presented in what, even though constitutes only 5% of the spellings of /w/ (Carney 1994, 253). Books in the first two levels of another scheme contained Perhaps it was assumed that children would work this words with different grapheme-phoneme distinction out for themselves. correspondences for without any related guidance, e.g. but in one book, put in another book, and bug in a later one. Some pupil-activated computerised games for CVC If children could read the instructions independently (e.g. blending were dependent on children reading and ‘Drag the pieces of the word back together’), they understanding the on-screen instructions. would be well beyond needing this game. It was also possible to make ‘words’ whose whole-word For example, makes /ˈæʧe/, not /eɪk/ (ache), pronunciation does not match that of the ‘dragged and makes /ˈʧɪme/, not /ʧaɪm/ (chime). and dropped’ GPCs. RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 21

Table 10. Failure to focus consistently on phonemes. Example Comment The underlying rationale of one scheme appeared to be rather than on the 44 phonemes and their related based on a list of graphemes, graphemic correspondences. The focus of the activities in much of one programme This lack of a consistent phonemic focus seems veered between inconsistent and probably confusing. (i) letter-by-letter spelling, e.g. ‘Fitting the word into the right shape’ with one cell per letter instead of one per grapheme; (ii) sentence completion, e.g. ‘This knife will not cut. It is ____.’ Nine possible answers were provided, including blunt; (iii) word matching, e.g. ‘a c-v-c bingo game’ using whole words, sit, cup, ten, etc. A ‘finger game’ involved saying a complete word, then It looks as though children were meant to indicate one holding up or pointing to a finger for each sound in finger for each letter. A consistent phonemic a word and then saying the complete word again, e.g. approach would be ‘sock’, /s-ɒ-k/, ‘sock’, with the ‘sock’, /s-o-c [/k?/]-k/, ‘sock’. grapheme taught when appropriate. One scheme had what might be called ‘phoneme cards’. Both would be fine if these were deliberate moves to The cards for /j/ [/ʤ/] included jug, jelly and jig-saw, show children that /ʤ, n/ have more than one but also giraffe, and the cards for /n/ included nest, spelling, but potentially confusing at this stage of the necklace and nose but also knife. scheme if links to letter recognition are to be made. The cards also covered some initial sounds that are but there were no cards for other common initial normally represented by digraphs (archer, owl, shell), digraphs such as , even though words containing them occurred. In one computer-based scheme, blending was sometimes In synthetic phonics, blending should proceed visually demonstrated through onsets and rimes, e.g. grapheme-by-grapheme, and, in order not to confuse the blending in a ‘missing sound’ activity involved children, preferably not be applied inconsistently to and . smaller and larger units. Later in the programme was blended with . open syllables /eɪ/ is mainly spelt . The present authors take the view that it is better to focus on the phoneme and grapheme level, where there are fewer units to learn, and therefore less memory load for children. Much of the evidence for using larger units has been found wanting (Macmillan 2002). The present authors also reject the notion that has gained some currency, namely that many of the alternative spellings of vowel phonemes and alternative pronunciations of vowel graphemes, considered as unpredictable in isolation, are more predictable if rimes are treated as units. For evidence against that, see Brooks (2015, 466–469).

3c Reference to some words as ‘irregular’ and warranting ‘sight word’ learning, when some words or parts of them were not irregular In many schemes, there was some coverage of high-frequency words, but often no distinction was made between regular words and those that do not conform completely to grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules. No printed English word is completely irregular in the sense that no part of it can be sounded out to yield a correct phoneme in its spoken counterpart. Even in the arguably most irregularly-spelt word, choir, the initial /k/ phoneme is represented by , admittedly one of its lesser correspondences, even if the other three phonemes, /waɪə/ (the whole sound of the word wire), are, most unusually, all represented by the single grapheme . Hence, after an initial phase in which some high-frequency irregular 22 G. BROOKS ET AL. words have of necessity to be taught as ‘sight words’, quite soon both they and other words that are not fully decodable using each grapheme’s most frequent correspon- dence should be analysed into ‘regular’ and ‘tricky’ parts. Confusion on this point was rife – see Table 11.

Table 11. Confusion over ‘irregular’ words and word-parts. Example Comment On the first ‘matching board’ in one scheme, in, and In, and are regular. were included alongside of, the, is. ‘Teaching children a small number of irregular words as However, a number of words listed as irregular in the sight words helps them . . . children should not reading books appeared to be ‘regular’ in terms of attempt to blend or segment an irregular word.’ This capable of being blended from the list of phonemes advice appeared to apply to at least 56 ‘irregular’ in the teachers’ guide e.g. for, away, like. words listed in the product. The list of ‘new words’ in a teachers’ guide included but no similar convention was provided for some some high-frequency words that do not conform irregular, single-letter vowel sounds, e.g. in the, completely to grapheme-phoneme correspondence we and in go. rules. Digraphs (including double consonant letters) and trigraphs were underlined, presumably to indicate ‘two/three letters; one sound’, Some ‘new words’ in a subsequent list contained some Inconsistent. high-frequency, irregular words which were not listed in the high-frequency list for those books: is, me, this. There was a similar apparent mis-match in other lists (e.g. who, with, what). The guidance on the back cover of some books stated No guidance was provided to ensure that children that ‘There are also a few “tricky” words, which would apply phonic knowledge and skills to the more children need to learn by sight.’ These words included regular parts of these words, which are often found in we, be, do, to, the, of in the (easiest) books, and here, their initial graphemes. your, said, they in the (next easiest) books. The guidance inside the cover of some later sets of reading rather than focusing on the tricky parts of words like books stated that ‘Tricky words will not sound out and said and me which have regular initial and/or final need to be remembered visually.’ Examples given correspondences. included the, be, to, he, she, into. A DVD also indicated that such tricky words have to be treated as sight words, Some of the ‘phonemically irregular, exception words For example, out contains the default spelling for /aʊ/in (that is, “tricky words”) . . . [which] cannot be read by non-final position, and the frequency of /ɜː/as regular letter to sound correspondences’ (e.g. out and a pronunciation of in stem words is virtually bird) cited in one scheme are in fact phonically 100% (there are only tiny numbers of exceptions). regular. Other words containing digraphs of a similar nature to those in out and bird (off, duck, king, fish, then, cake) were described as ‘phonemically regular’, which is accurate. In a different scheme there appeared to be no Where ‘tricky words’ were listed, there were apparent systematic presentation of high-frequency words that inaccuracies, e.g. part is not generally considered to do not conform completely to grapheme-phoneme be a tricky word. correspondence rules. In a computer-based scheme, the and I were presented Inconsistent: sound buttons were used for other ‘tricky’ without sound buttons. or ‘tricky for now’ words, e.g. to, no, go. Adifferent program did not ensure that children Inconsistent. continue to apply phonic knowledge and skills because the voice-over support in the initial demonstration (e.g. for no and my) was not carried through to the subsequent pupil activity with to, the, go, I, he, was and another ten words in a later phase. For these remaining target words, there was only visual presentation of sound buttons, ‘tricky word parts’ and the whole word. Also, in a later phase, and was treated as a ‘tricky word’. RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 23

3d Unhelpful mnemonics Three of the programmes reviewed presented mnemonics apparently intended to help children remember the spelling of irregular words. The 10 mnemonics identified are listed in Table 12, with comments. Of the mnemonics listed above in Table 12, only the first two seem to the present authors to have any utility, and they would still need to be rephrased as shown. The rest all seem more difficult to remember than the spellings, so they may be an unnecessary extra burden on memory, and therefore worse than useless. Also, such mnemonics rely implicitly on children knowing letter names, and that they need to take the first letter off each word in the mnemonic, rather than attempting to write a grapheme for each phoneme in their target word. As such, this seems an odd procedure to find in supposedly synthetic phonics materials, and in the cases of having to treat every day (mentally) as one word, and underground (mentally) as two words, it is inconsistently applied in the examples shown. Most of these mne- monics therefore seem to be (no doubt, well-meant) distractions.

Final example: the most bizarre statement encountered ‘Say the word looked. Hear how the /e/ Taken literally, this makes no sense whatever: there is no schwa in /lʊkt/, & is not pronounced.’ no-one can hear something that is not pronounced. Perhaps the author [A direct quotation from a Glossary meant: entry for ‘schwa’.] ‘If you sound looked out you get /l-ʊ-k-e-d/, with the pronounced /e/ ’ [not /ə/!], ‘but when you say the whole word, there is no /e/ sound.’ Even then, the final /t/ would go unremarked. Better to say ‘Here is pronounced /t/.’

3e Further inappropriate pedagogy The examples in Table 13 almost defy classification, except that they all seem misguided.

Conclusions and recommendations About half the commercially published phonics schemes available in England in 2007–2013 exhibited one or a number of errors. The present authors were startled to discover the number and range of errors (some quite bizarre). Comparable findings of besetting flaws in teaching materials would not, we suspect, be tolerated elsewhere in education, where the knowledge base is more established and the pool of expertise is greater. Many of the errors could be attributed to inadequate knowledge of phonetics, or lack of phonic accuracy. These two categories of errors included: stating wrong numbers of phonemes; not covering various phonemes; misstating the relationships between /kw/ and , and between /ks/ and ; misanalysing the correspondences between phonemes and graphemes; confusing diphthongs, digraphs, and consonant clusters; and misstating the frequency of some correspondences. The third major category of errors was misapplied teaching approaches. These included: expecting children to know or infer things they had not yet been taught; not focusing consistently on phonemes; confusions over ‘irregular’ words and word- 24 G. BROOKS ET AL.

Table 12. Unhelpful mnemonics. Mnemonic Comment A mnemonic for what and want was ‘the short o sound Rephrased more accurately as ‘After a /w/ sound, for after a w is spelled with an a.’ example in want, squash, what, the /ɒ/ sound is mainly spelt with letter ’, this generalisation is true – but might be more helpful with more examples, and a warning about (e.g.) swop, swot, whopper. Extending this rule (as just shown with squash) to spelling /w/ mostly as after /k/ spelt would not only have improved its generality, but also reinforced the /kw/ ≡ pairing. A mnemonic for has, as, is, his states ‘sounds like z but Given that /z/ in word-final position is overwhelmingly it’s really s’. spelt with , and that is rare except in word- initial position, it seems probable that children will pick this up without explicit instruction. But if such a rule were felt to be helpful, it would need to be rephrased (to avoid giving children the impression that it applies only to these four words) more accurately as ‘The /z/ sound at the end of a word is mostly spelt .’ In this form it is true, and the few exceptions (e.g. fez, jazz, bruise, cheese, noise) can be picked up as ‘tricky’ words. A Teachers’ Manual did not offer any guidance for the application of phonic strategies to the regular part of irregular (‘tricky’) words, stating instead that the teaching notes included ‘many alternative (largely mnemonic) strategies’. For instance: - the mnemonic for bird was ‘bird is really In bird only the spelling of /ɜː/ as is irregular – the dumb’; most frequent spelling of this phoneme is . - the mnemonic for here was ‘here elephants run It would seem better to teach here, there, where as a set everywhere.’ to build on the common spelling pattern. A mnemonic for magic was ‘mythical animals go in cars.’ Let’s imagine a child who wants to write magic and is trying to use sounding-out to do so. All five phonemes in /ˈmæʤɪk/ are represented by their most frequent graphemes, so this mnemonic seems rather purposeless. Perhaps it is meant to help some children remember that the /ʤ/ is not spelt – but if a child produced it might be more helpful for the teacher to say, ‘Well done for remembering that spelling of /ʤ/, but in magic the /ʤ/ is spelt ’ (using the letter name), thus treating as a ‘good error’. A mnemonic for saw was ‘was backwards’. This assumes that children will already know how to spell was, and can ignore the complete non-equivalence of phonemes between the two words. A mnemonic for please was ‘police like eggs and Even ignoring the bizarreness of the sentence (or was sausages everyday.’ that the point?), this could encourage the bad practice of writing the adverbial phrase ‘every day’ identically to the adjective ‘everyday’. A mnemonic for like was ‘lollipops in Kim’s ear’. Amusing, but is it helpful? A mnemonic for through was ‘Tiny happy rabbits occupy This would require children not only to remember this underground homes’. complicated sentence, but also to mentally separate ‘underground’ into two words. In one programme, high-frequency ‘Tricky’ words are This risks distracting the child from any part of the word introduced using mnemonic cards with pictures which that might be seen as regular. This is evidenced on the the child is meant to draw: e.g. the presentation of the training DVD in which a child, in attempting to write is accompanied by the phrase ‘the hairy elephant’. the, writes before . In responding to this, the teacher does not draw attention to the /ð/ phoneme or the grapheme, and concentrates instead on the child re-writing the letters in the correct order. Also, this approach may risk confusion by introducing two irrelevant phonemes (/h, e/). RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 25

Table 13. Misguided pedagogy. Example Comment ‘Students are given “The 1000 Most Commonly Used Too much memory load, and eschews the efficiency of Words” ... on flashcards that students memorize.’ phonics. One teachers’ guide included advice on ‘pointing to each Sounds cannot be pointed to. phoneme [sic] in turn through the words from left to right’. One scheme said ‘Some phonemes share the same Even supposing this sort of explanation should ever be grapheme or letters but sound different.’ Examples given to children, it would be better expressed as given included in yak, sunny and fly. ‘Most graphemes and letters have more than one pronunciation, for example in yak is /j/, in sunny it’s/iː/, and in fly it’s/aɪ/.’ And /ɪ/asincrystal would need to be added. A teachers’ guide specified a focus on , but Inconsistent. elsewhere advised the adult to ‘Ask the children to say the sounds’ for 11 different graphemes (representing 10 different phonemes). Blending practice was encouraged for six words, but the Children who can sound out and blend competently are teacher guidance then stated, ‘The children may need likely to be able to work these words out. help with the following words: “see, jet, balloon, nest, you”.’ A scheme using tiles stated: ‘When given a group of However, it was not possible to locate where the word tiles children decode or blend the phonemes programme actually demonstrated how words can be together to read what word was formed. Afterwards segmented into their constituent phonemes for they are given a word and break it down into its spelling. The rationale for the tiles was also unclear: phonemes to spell a word with the associated tiles.’ some contained alternative graphemes for a specific phoneme on the same tile (e.g. ); some did not (e.g. ). There was also inconsistent use of diacritical marking. In a scheme which made extensive use of tiles there was Cluster tiles should be avoided – for the reason, see just no guidance to help ensure that the digraph tiles were below. not pronounced in the same way as the cluster tiles (e.g. as /k, h/). Similarly, there was no provision to enable the split Design fault. vowel digraph tiles to be incorporated into words that demonstrate their correspondences: a word like tile had to be made from four separate tiles and the tile could not be directly used. The design of the above programme also risked Teaching consonant clusters as units is wasteful of time confusion if the consonant cluster tiles were to be and burdensome for the children, so such tiles should used in segmentation activities. The tiles displaying either not be produced or, if provided within a set of consonant clusters (about 25 in total) could not in materials, be cut apart to provide more single-letter themselves be segmented to demonstrate their tiles, or even discarded. constituent phonemes. In a different scheme, there was a lack of differentiation Ditto for flip cards. in the flip cards between the display of digraphs (e.g. ) and the display of consonant clusters (e.g. ), which could compromise the demonstration of blending. Another scheme encouraged teachers to ask such Confusing – better to ask more direct questions, e.g. question as ‘Does [the target word] sound/look like ‘[The word-sound the child has produced] isn’t a word, any word you know? Can you swap the vowel around is it? What do you think it should be?’ to make it sound right?’ One scheme gave initial priority to letter names (e.g. Phonics by definition operates on phonemes, hence in eight, in money, in sail, in rain letter sounds; and creating compound words is not and in little, and there was little systematic part of synthetic phonics. blending of phonemes. Instead, there was early use of synthesis to make compound words (shoe-lace, snow- ball, hot-dog, tooth-paste, pop-corn). The emphasis on letter names was continued into Hardly qualifies as phonics. subsequent lessons, e.g. ‘Touch the letter ’; ‘Touch the letter ’. A later lesson included , for which names were presented before the associated phonemes but for which no provision for phonemic blending was apparently included; and then, similarly, . (Continued) 26 G. BROOKS ET AL.

Table 13. (Continued). Example Comment There were also quality issues in the way some high- Muddled. frequency, irregular words were introduced, e.g. both no and me were taught through the synthesis of the consonant letter sound and the vowel letter name, without any reference to the other GPCs involving these vowel letters in many CVCs and other words. The same approach was not taken later in the programme with do, perhaps for obvious reasons. In a section on ‘Ensuring the use of segmentation in the If computer programs cannot provide digraphs, words spelling of irregular words’ in a computer-based containing them should not be presented. scheme, an activity had no segmentation, only involving the addition of single letters to a given letter. Digraphs were only treated as single letters, e.g. were added separately to to make the, and were added separately to to make she. There was potential confusion in the presentation of This seems more likely to cause it. as /s/ in a Teachers’ Manual: ‘In this lesson /c/ will refer to the “soft c” sound for the letter . The sound is the same as /s/, but /c/ will be used to avoid confusion.’ The main emphasis in one computer program appeared This smacks more of analytic phonics as traditionally to be on the learning of grapheme/phoneme defined. Also, It seems odd to include monkey and correspondences with extensive reinforcement using money with the irregular correspondence of ≡/ʌ/ screen animations, but often involving only whole- at this point. word recognition. For example, the introduction to /m/ was illustrated by the presentation of monkey, moon, man, money, milk, mouse and map with the initial highlighted. There was little segmentation in the scheme; where it It is unclear how this would reinforce correct use of occurred, it was demonstrated largely through letter- synthetic phonics. by-letter activities, with repetitive whole-word voice- overs. There was some blending (of Sam, sat, mat), but this was Ditto followed by a rhyming activity (including green, queen, bean), whole-word matching and whole-word sentence making, with no provision for phonemic segmentation. In one computer program: None of this will reinforce correct use of synthetic - Pronunciation of the whole word was only secured by phonics. the child saying it, with no immediate feedback on errors; - Clicking on the ‘Listen’ button for tricky words only elicited whole-word pronunciations, whereas other words in the text used in the activity were sounded out, but without a final blended pronunciation of the whole word; - The ‘Help’ button only elicited a reading of the whole text, with no sounding-out of individual words. In another, the on-screen demonstration of synthetic Since blending of phonemes into words is crucial to phonics elements appeared limited to auditory synthetic phonics for reading, it is questionable information on (i) the displayed graphemes and (ii) the whether a computer-based program which does not displayed words. Although the adult could move the do this can either demonstrate the full process or help graphemes to a new screen position and elicit repeats children learn it. of the auditory information, the actual blending of the phonemes did not appear to be demonstrated by auditory means. In several programs, ‘Blending’ activities did not actually This seems even more of a limitation than the previous present the whole, blended word, only the constituent problem, and might be considered as rendering the phonemes, sometimes with a residual schwa after the activities pointless. final consonant. Also in several programs, some audio demonstrations of Computer-based programs that cannot match the clarity consonant blending (e.g. /s-t/) were compromised by of a human voice are of questionable use. the final acoustic quality RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 27 parts; unhelpful mnemonics; and a gallimaufry of misguided pedagogical practices including such illogical gems as (e.g.) ‘pointing at phonemes’. Some of the schemes reviewed may no longer be available, and others may have been revised in recent years; but we nevertheless recommend that all publishers of currently- available phonics schemes scrutinise their offerings carefully to ensure that errors of the kinds we have highlighted are removed. As remarked below in comments on Tables 1 and 2,some of the phonetic errors are so basic that withdrawal of the schemes perpetrating them should be considered. It would be particularly concerning if any schemes exhibiting major flaws were currently receiving government endorsement and/or funding. This entails that the Department for Education has a responsibility to undertake due diligence on any such schemes. Authors and publishers of new materials and compilers of catalogues need to ensure that their products embody fully accurate phonetics, using only IPA and no other symbols, and accurate knowledge of the relationships between spoken and written English, and are based on suitable pedagogies. Schools in turn have a responsibility to ensure that they choose only schemes that embody fully accurate phonetics and correspondences, that they match their teaching approaches appropriately to the schemes, and that they avoid reproducing in their materials any errors that are present in schemes they already have. No professional should be required to follow a scheme willy-nilly, especially if it is riddled with errors. Every primary school containing Reception and Years 1 and 2 should have a ‘phonics lead’ whose responsibilities must include oversight of the phonics materials in use. This should not be left to a ‘literacy lead’ who is not a KS1 specialist. For this to come about, institutions of initial teacher education should themselves be fully equipped to develop these competencies in intending teachers.

Checklist The following list of criteria for judging that a scheme is phonetically and phonically accurate can and should be used by professionals in the field to ensure that only reliably accurate materials are used:

● the number of phonemes in English is stated to be 44 or thereabouts ● phonemes (including short and long pure vowels, and diphthongs) are carefully distinguished ● all the phonemes are exemplified in manuals for teachers, together with a rational and justified sequence for introducing them ● as that implies, initial teaching should work from phonemes to graphemes and not vice versa: ‘ . . . it makes more sense to talk about how sounds are represented by symbols in the writing system than to say how letters are pronounced because the latter approach is sure to create endless confusion.’ (Wardhaugh 1969, 105) ● the principal graphemes (including not only single letters but also digraphs, split digraphs, trigraphs and 4-letter graphemes) are exemplified ● the principal phoneme-grapheme and grapheme-phoneme correspondences are listed. A plethora of information about the frequencies of phoneme-grapheme 28 G. BROOKS ET AL.

correspondences in particular has been available since the publication of Carney (1994) and should have ensured that errors about such frequencies should not occur ● the main graphemes representing 2-phoneme sequences are identified, and they are accurately described as representing two sounds, even though teachers may well need to describe them to children as (single) ‘sounds’.

Teachers of literacy would be much better equipped to follow these technicalities, and therefore to spot errors, in our opinion, if they were to become familiar with IPA and a modicum of associated technical terminology. Literacy is based on phonetics and linguistics, and teachers therefore need the necessary specialist knowledge. Only then can literacy teaching become well-founded and not reliant on inaccurate and misleading guesses and ‘intuitions’ about the English language and its orthography. This will also support the necessary adjustments of some teaching of correspondences to take account of regional variations; and publishers and developers have a responsibility here too. If taken seriously, and followed through with practical implementation, our findings could provide just the sort of renewed focus on the link between ‘curriculum research and curriculum design’ emphasised in the recent HMCI commentary on the new education inspection framework (Spielman 2018). In particular, the findings demon- strate the value of using linguistics to strengthen teachers’ understanding of the English spelling system and how this understanding may be deployed when judging commercial materials. As will be clear, this article has criticised some inappropriate or misguided teaching approaches, but said very little about appropriate pedagogies. This topic will be tackled in a subsequent article, which will seek to draw out practical implications of this and the first article in the series, and to state the lessons that should be learnt for implementation.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge permission to use the database analysed here granted by the Department for Education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

No funding was sought or received for the research reported here.

Notes on contributors

Greg Brooks is Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Sheffield, UK. In 2005–2006 he was a member of the Rose committee, and in 2008–2009 of the dyslexia subgroup of the Rose review of the primary curriculum in England. He has published widely on phonics and on what works for those with literacy difficulties. RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 29

Roger Beard is Emeritus Professor of Primary Education at the University College London Institute of Education, London, UK. He has researched and published extensively on children’s reading and writing. His recent funded projects have included an international seminar series on Reconceptualising Writing 5–16, and a research project on Writing Development at the End of Key Stage 2. Jaz Ampaw-Farr is an independent educational consultant resident in Milton Keynes, UK. Having qualified in 1994, she began her career as a teacher, and now runs a phonics and school development consultancy. She is an expert on literacy and its improvement, especially via phonics, and has provided training and advice in Britain and overseas.

ORCID

Greg Brooks http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9054-5156

References

Beard, R., G. Brooks, and J. Ampaw-Farr. 2019. “How Linguistically-informed are Phonics Programmes?” Literacy (journal of UK Literacy Association) 53 (2): 86–94. doi:10.1111/ lit.12147. Beard, R., and J. Oakhill. 1994. Reading by Apprenticeship?: Critique of the Apprenticeship Approach to the Teaching of Reading. Slough: NFER. Beard, R., and J. Willcocks. 2002. “The National Literacy Strategy in England: Changing Phonics Teaching?” In 51st Yearbook of the National Reading Conference, edited by D. L. Schallert, C. M. Fairbanks, J. Worthy, B. Maloch, and J. V. Hoffman, 94–105. Wisconsin: National Reading Conference. Brooks, G. 2015. Dictionary of the British English Spelling System. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. http://www.openbookpublishers.com/reader/325 Brooks, G. 2016. What Works for Children and Young People with Literacy Difficulties? the Effectiveness of Intervention Schemes. 5th ed. Frensham: Dyslexia-SpLD Trust. http://www. interventionsforliteracy.org.uk/assets/What-Works-5th-edition.pdf Burton, M. 2011. Phonetics for Phonics. Leicester: NIACE. Carney, E. 1994. A Survey of English Spelling. London: Routledge. Cook, M., ed. 2002. Perspectives on the Teaching and Learning of Phonics. Royston, Herts: UK Reading Association. DES (Department of Education and Science). 1989. English in the National Curriculum. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. DfE (Department for Education). 2013. English Programmes of Study: Key Stages 1 and 2 National Curriculum in England. London: DfE. DfEE (Department for Education and Employment). 1999. The National Curriculum Handbook for Primary Teachers in England. London: DfEE and Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. DfES (Department for Education and Skills). 2007. Letters and Sounds: Principles and Practice of High Quality Phonics. London: DfES. Donaldson, M. 1993. Sense and Sensibility: Some Thoughts on the Teaching of Literacy (occasional Paper No. 3). Reading: Reading and Language Information Centre, University of Reading. Dörnyei, Z. 2007. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. EEF (Educational Endowment Foundation), 2018. “Projects and Evaluation Projects: Language and Literacy.” Online. Accessed 12 October 2018. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org. uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects Ehri, L. C., S. R. Nunes, S. A. Stahl, and D. M. Willows. 2001. “Systematic Phonics Instruction Helps Students Learn to Read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s Metaanalysis.” Review of Educational Research 71 (3): 393–447. doi:10.3102/00346543071003393. 30 G. BROOKS ET AL.

Gimson, A. C. 1962. An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. London: Edward Arnold. 8th edition published as Cruttenden, A. (ed.) 2014. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. London Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203784969. Gubb, J. 1982. “‘A Dog I Wons New’ - the Logic of Non-standard Spelling.” Remedial Education, Journal of the National Association for Remedial Education 17 (2): 70–74. Hiebert, E. H., and L. A. Martin. 2002. “The Texts of Beginning Reading Instruction.” In Handbook of Early Literacy Research, edited by S. B. Neuman and D. K. Dickinson, 361–376. New York: Guilford Press. HMI (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate). 2002. The National Literacy Strategy: The First Four Years. London: Office for Standards in Education. Hoffman, J. V., M. Sailors, and E. U. Patterson. 2002. “Decodable Texts for Beginning Reading Instruction: The Year 2000 Basals.” Journal of Literacy Research 34 (3): 269–298. doi:10.1207/ s15548430jlr3403_2. House of Commons Education and Skills Committee. 2005. Teaching Children to Read (Eighth Report of Session 2004–05). London: Stationery Office Limited. Johnston, R. S., S. McGeown, and J. E. Watson. 2012. “Long-term Effects of Synthetic versus Analytic Phonics Teaching on the Reading and Spelling Ability of 10 Year Old Boys and Girls.” Reading and Writing 25 (6): 1365–1384. doi:10.1007/s11145-011-9323-x. Johnston, R. S., and J. E. Watson. 2004. “Accelerating the Development of Reading, Spelling and Phonemic Awareness Skills in Initial Readers.” Reading and Writing 17 (4): 327–357. doi:10.1023/B:READ.0000032666.66359.62. Macmillan, B. M. 2002. “Rhyme and Reading: A Critical Review of the Research Methodology.” Journal of Research in Reading 25 (1): 4–42. doi:10.1111/jrir.2002.25.issue-1. Meek, M. 1988. How Texts Teach What Readers Learn. Stroud: Thimble Press. NICHD (National Reading Panel). 2000. Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Perera, K. 1993. “The ‘good Book’: Linguistic Aspects.” In Teaching Literacy: Balancing Perspectives, edited by R. Beard, 95–113. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Root, B. 1988. Defence of Reading Schemes. Reading: Reading and Language Information Centre, University of Reading. Rose, J. 2006. Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading. London: Department for Education and Skills. Spielman, A. 2018. “HMCI Commentary: Curriculum and the New Education Inspection Framework (speech Delivered 18/9/18).” (accessed 18 October 2018). https://www.gov.uk/ government/speeches/hmci-commentary-curriculum-and-the-new-education-inspection- framework Spolsky, B. 1978. Educational Linguistics: An Introduction. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers. Stahl, S. A., A. M. Duffy-Hester, and K. A. D. Stahl. 1998. “Everything You Wanted to Know about Phonics (but Were Afraid to Ask).” Reading Research Quarterly 33 (3): 338–355. doi:10.1598/RRQ.33.3.5. Strickland, D.S. 1998. Teaching Phonics Today: A Primer for Educators. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Stuart, M. 1999. “Getting Ready for Reading: Early Phoneme Awareness and Phonics Teaching Improves Reading and Spelling in Inner-city Second Language Learners.” British Journal of Educational Psychology 69 (December): 587–605. doi:10.1348/000709999157914. Torgerson, C. J., G. Brooks, L. Gascoine, and S. Higgins. 2019. “Phonics: Reading Policy and the Evidence of Effectiveness from a Systematic ‘tertiary’ Review.” Research Papers in Education 34 (2): 208–238. doi:10.1080/02671522.2017.1420816. Torgerson, C. J., G. Brooks, and J. Hall. 2006. A Systematic Review of the Research Literature on the Use of Phonics in the Teaching of Reading and Spelling. London: Department for Education and Skills Research Brief 711. http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/ RB711.pdf RESEARCH PAPERS IN EDUCATION 31

Wardhaugh, R. 1969. Reading: A Linguistic Perspective. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Wyse, D., and U. Goswami. 2008. “Synthetic Phonics and the Teaching of Reading.” British Educational Research Journal 34 (6): 691–710. doi:10.1080/01411920802268912.

Appendix Table of IPA symbols for the 44 phonemes of RP

Each phoneme is represented by the grapheme highlighted in the example word. For more detail and audio demonstrations, try http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm

24 consonant phonemes 20 vowel phonemes /b/ as in by 7 short pure vowels /d/ as in dye /æ/ as in ash /g/ as in goo /e/ as in egg /m/ as in my /ɪ/asin in /n/ as in nigh /ɒ/asin on /p/ as in pie /ʌ/asin up /t/ as in tie /ʊ/asin pull /r/ as in rye /ə/asinabout /k/ as in coo 5 long pure vowels /ʧ/asinchew /ɑː/asin ah /f/ as in few /ɜː/asin irk /ʤ/asinjaw /iː/asin eel /l/ as in law /ɔː/asin or /s/ as in sue /uː/asin ooze /v/ as in view 8 diphthongs /z/ as in zoo /aɪ/asin eye /h/ as in high /eɪ/asin aim /ŋ/asinring /ɔɪ/asinoyster /∫/asinship /aʊ/asin ouch /ʒ/asinvision /əʊ/asin open /θ/asinthing /eə/asin air /ð/ as in this /ɪə/asin ear /w/ as in well /ʊə/asinmature /j/ as in yell