Saturday, January 12, 2008

Why is Phonics IMPORTANT for preschooler?

Phonics is the foundation for success in early reading. Early reading gives your child a HEADSTART in his academic endeavor. So what is phonics all about? It is an approach to reading that begins by teaching letter sounds, then progressively progresses to the blending of those letter sounds to form syllables and words.

English words has 45 sounds; 21 words of which are vowels sounds. Children are taught consonants and short vowels sounds first in three months of a usual phonics preschooler class. With this training, a phonics trained child has the word attack skills to recall in excess of 1200 words, But a child who is not taught phonics lacks the rudimentary skills to decode any word outside his memorized list. He is likely to read only 1500 words when he reaches the fourth grade!

National Ready Panel found that phonics is fundamental in beginning reading. Further research has found that

1) Systematic and explicit phonics instruction is more effective than no clear phonics instruction at all.

2) Explicit phonic guidance is most effective when taught in preschools.

3)Systematic and explicit guidance in phonics improve children’s word recognition, spelling and overall reading comprehension skills.

4) Systematic and explicit guidance in phonic teaching benefits learning disability children the most especially the dysphasia and dyslexia.

To conclude, substantial research has shown that well read readers always use phonics to decipher the codes of new words. What better skills can parents give their precious ones than to equip them with phonic skills to start off their academic endeavor.

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