hooked on phonics, hooked on phonics review, learn to read

1. Learning is Fun with Hooked on Phonics
Teaching young children how to read using phonics is a fairly new method of teaching children to
speak English. Many teachers and parents have now got hooked on phonics learn-to-read system.
Of course, like with any new teaching method, phonics learn-to-read system is not without its
share of criticism.
Those people who are an authority on the English language know that the English language may
have just 26 alphabets, but the pronunciation of a letter can vary with the context it is used in.
Therefore, rather than confusing a child and getting him/her to mispronounce words, phonics
teaches them the correct pronunciation.
There are different approaches that have been adopted in the phonics system to teach children to
learn English. The two major approaches used are; synthetic phonics and analytical phonics.
Synthetic phonics involves teaching the child how to spell each word and then blend their sounds
together to form the word. In analytical phonics, children are not taught how to blend the sound
of each alphabet, rather they are taught to blend a group of alphabets in a word to form the
sound.
Analytical phonics is further divided into two streams which are; analogy phonics and embedded
phonics. Both the methods are used by parents and teachers to teach reading and pronouncing
English language words to children.

2. In phonics methods of language teaching, children are taught to pronounce an alphabet and then
the alphabet is used in simple words. From here, the children are taken to an advanced level and
taught how to pronounce the alphabets in more complex words; and in the variety of how the
sound of an alphabet changes in sound in different words.
There are a number of phonics language teaching methods available on the internet. You have to
make a selective choice as each tries to expound how good their system is. But before getting
hooked on and investing in any phonics teaching method, it would be best to evaluate them on
your own. You can, with the help of audio and video introductions, evaluate each program. Do not
get caught in the advertising lingo of the website, as this can be misleading.
The use of phonics as a method of teaching English dates back to the Eighties in America. The
debate went to the extent that the US congress had to intervene and get a research conducted on
using phonics as a teaching method. It was only after getting positive results from the research
team that the government decided to allow its usage as an approved English language teaching
method.
Those who stick with the conventional method of teaching English by cognitive reading skills are
fighting a lost battle against phonics teaching methods. The correct pronunciation of words in
English is quite difficult to comprehend and understand. But the phonics teaching method is
helping children understand and learn how to use the different sounds that an alphabet can
acquire in different words. Audio- visual aids are a great help, as is the internet in teaching
children to read using the phonics method.
Source: Ezine Articles