Learn phonic sounds

Phonics teaching step-by-step | TheSchoolRun

Sort your phonemes from your graphemes, decoding from encoding and digraphs from trigraphs with our parents' guide to phonics teaching. Our step-by-step explanation takes you through the different stages of phonics learning, what your child will be expected to learn and the vocabulary you need to know.

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What is phonics?

Phonics is a method of teaching children to read by linking sounds (phonemes) and the symbols that represent them (graphemes, or letter groups). Phonics is the learning-to-read method used in primary schools in the UK today. 

What is a phoneme?

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound. The phonemes used when speaking English are:

Print out a list of phonemes to practise with your child or listen to the individual sounds being spoken with our phonics worksheets.

Phonics learning step 1: decoding

Children are taught letter sounds in Reception. This involves thinking about what sound a word starts with, saying the sound out loud and then recognising how that sound is represented by a letter.

The aim is for children to be able to see a letter and then say the sound it represents out loud. This is called decoding.

Some phonics programmes start children off by learning the letters s, a, t, n, i, p first. This is because once they know each of those letter sounds, they can then be arranged into a variety of different words (for example: sat, tip, pin, nip, tan, tin, sip, etc.). While children are learning to say the sounds of letters out loud, they will also begin to learn to write these letters (encoding).

They will be taught where they need to start with each letter and how the letters need to be formed in relation to each other. Letters (or groups of letters) that represent phonemes are called graphemes.

Phonics learning step 2: blending

Children then need to go from saying the individual sounds of each letter, to being able to blend the sounds and say the whole word . This can be a big step for many children and takes time.

Phonics learning step 3: decoding CVC words

Children will focus on decoding (reading) three-letter words arranged consonant, vowel, consonant (CVC words) for some time.

They will learn other letter sounds, such as the consonants g, b, d, h and the remaining vowels e, o, u. Often, they will be given letter cards to put together to make CVC words which they will be asked to say out loud.

Phonics learning step 4: decoding consonant clusters in CCVC and CVCC words

Children will also learn about consonant clusters: two consonants located together in a word, such tr, cr, st, lk, pl. Children will learn to read a range of CCVC words (consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant) such as trap, stop, plan.

They will also read a range of CVCC words (consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant) such as milk, fast, cart.

Phonics learning step 5: vowel digraphs

Children are then introduced to vowel digraphs. A digraph is two vowels that together make one sound such as: /oa/, /oo/, /ee/, /ai/. They will move onto sounding out words such as deer, hair, boat, etc. and will be taught about split digraphs (or 'magic e').

They will also start to read words combining vowel digraphs with consonant clusters, such as: train, groan and stool.

Phonics learning step 6: consonant digraphs

Children will also learn the consonant digraphs (two consonants that together make one sound) ch and sh and start blending these with other sounds to make words, such as: chat, shop, chain and shout.

Encoding, or learning to spell as well as read

Alongside this process of learning to decode (read) words, children will need to continue to practise forming letters which then needs to move onto encoding. Encoding is the process of writing down a spoken word, otherwise known as spelling.

They should start to be able to produce their own short pieces of writing, spelling the simple words correctly.

It goes without saying that reading a range of age-appropriate texts as often as possible will really support children in their grasp of all the reading and spelling of all the phonemes.

Phonics learning in KS1

By the end of Reception, children should be able to write one grapheme for each of the 44 phonemes.

In Year 1, they will start to explore vowel digraphs and trigraphs (a group of three letters that makes a single sound, like 'igh' as in 'sigh') further.

They will begin to understand, for example, that the letters ea can make different sounds in different words (dream and bread). They will also learn that one sound might be represented by different groups of letters: for example, light and pie (igh and ie make the same sound).

Children in Year 2 will be learning spelling rules, such as adding suffixes to words (such as -ed, -ing, -er, -est, -ful, -ly, -y, -s, -es, -ment and -ness). They will be taught rules on how to change root words when adding these suffixes (for example, removing the 'e' from 'have' before adding 'ing') and then move onto harder concepts, such as silent letters (knock, write, etc) and particular endings (le in bottle and il in fossil).

Free phonics worksheets and information for parents

For more information about the phonics system look through our phonics articles, including ways to boost phonics confidence, details of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check, parents' phonics questions answered and more.

We also have a large selection of free phonics worksheets to download for your child.

More like this

• Phonics phases explained

• 10 ways to boost phonics confidence

• Spelling in Year 1

• Common phonics problems sorted

• What is a grapheme?

• Phonics games

• Blending sounds: teachers' tips

• Best phonics learning tools

• Teachers' tricks for phonics

Phonics - Oxford Owl for Home

If you have a child at school, you’ll probably have heard of phonics! Phonics (sometimes called synthetic phonics) is the system almost all schools use to teach children to read.

Phonics teaches children the link between letters and the sounds they represent. It has its own vocabulary which can make it sound more complicated than it really is.

Frequently Asked Questions about Phonics

How is phonics taught?

• First, your child will be taught the most straightforward letters and the sounds they make. For example, they will be taught that the letter ‘m’ represents an mmm sound and the letters ‘oa’ represent an oh sound.
  • In phonics we use the word grapheme to talk about the letters on the page and phoneme to talk about the sounds those letters represent.
• Next, they will learn how sounds can be put together (blended) to make words. For example, they will learn that the sounds of the letters ‘m-a-t’ blend together to make the word ‘mat’. Your child will then learn more sounds and will start blending them too.
  • It can take until Year 2/Primary 3 before your child might have learned all 44 sounds in English and the many different spellings used for each sound.
• Then the children will really start to read! They will learn to recognise the different letters or pairs of letters (graphemes) in a word, say the separate sounds (phonemes) slowly, then put (blend) them together. For example, they will be taught that the word ‘boat’ can be separated out (segmented) into ‘b-oa-t’ which represents the sounds bbb-oh–ttt. They can blend these sounds into the word ‘boat’
  • In phonics we use the word decode to talk about reading a single word. We use the word segment to talk about breaking a word down into separate sounds and blend to talk about putting the sounds together to make a word.

What is synthetic phonics?

Synthetic phonics is just the technical term for the style of phonics teaching taught in our schools. Synthetic phonics requires the early reader to locate and sound out the individual sounds in a word and blend (or synthesise) them together to say the word.

How can I help at home?

There are lots of simple things you can do at home to help your child learn phonics.

1. Learn how to say the sounds using our Oxford Owl: Phonics or How to pronounce pure sounds.
2. Use flashcards to help your child practise saying sounds. Use the flashcards to make words for your child to read through blending. These words could be silly or even made up.
3. Listen to your child read every day, even just for five minutes. It really will make a difference. If your child gets stuck on a word, model how to say the sounds and blend them together. If you are worried that the book is at the wrong level for your child, check with your child’s teacher.
4. Read aloud to your child every day to show them that reading is fun.

Find more tips on our phonics support blog.

Find more tips for developing reading skills in our Reading pages >
Browse our Read with Oxford range of early readers to use at home >

What is the Year 1 phonics screening check?

If you live in England, your child will be given a phonics screening check in Year 1. The phonics screening check will find out how your child is progressing in phonics.

The test will be carried out informally by your child’s teacher in a one-to-one session. The teacher will ask your child to:

1. Sound out and blend graphemes (letters representing sounds) in order to read simple words.
2. Read phonically decodable (can be read using phonics) one-syllable and two-syllable words, for example cat, sand, windmill.
3. Read a selection of nonsense words (known as pseudo words) to check that your child is not guessing words and is able to read new words.

You can find more information and links to past papers on our phonics screening check page.

What is Letters and Sounds?

Letters and Sounds is a phonics programme published by the Department of Education and Skills. Many published phonics schemes follow the structure of Letters and Sounds. Find out more on our Letters and Sounds page.

Video: What is Phonics?

Find out how to best support your child in their discovery of phonics at home.

Read the blog

Learn more about Read Write Inc. and how their books can support your child in learning about phonics.

Find out more

Your child’s school might use a phonics scheme such as Letters and Sounds, Read Write Inc. Essential Letters and Sounds or Floppy’s Phonics, part of the Oxford Reading Tree series. A phonics scheme teaches the sounds and their spellings in a structured order. Most schemes also include flashcards and books that match the sounds they have learned so far.

Each scheme teaches the sounds in a slightly different order and will use slightly different vocabulary for talking about phonics. Your child’s school will be able to tell you about the phonics scheme they use.

English phonetics for beginners ∣ Enguide.ru

You need to know the correct sound in order to learn how to speak English correctly. The study of speech sounds is phonetics, which we will talk about in this article. And we will try to make the phonetics of the English language become understandable for you and not cause problems.

The study of any foreign language begins with the study of its alphabet. After that, it turns out that these letters sound and are used in words in different ways. So in English there are 26 letters, but as many as 48 sounds, which are indicated by these letters. The rules for pronunciation of sounds, letters and, accordingly, words are studied by the phonetics of the English language.

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the sounds of speech and the sound structure of a language (syllables, sound combinations, patterns of connecting sounds in a speech chain).

Theoretical phonetics of the English language explores the close relationship between oral, internal and written speech. But phonetics as a whole explores not only the language function, but also the material side of its object: the work of the pronunciation apparatus, as well as the acoustic characteristics of sound phenomena and their perception by native speakers. This is the practical phonetics of the English language. It is not by chance that we mention the theoretical and practical components. The thing is, sounds as intangible phenomena are those elements of the language system that allow you to translate words and sentences into a material sound form. Otherwise, oral communication would be impossible. That is the importance of English phonetics and that is why we have devoted a separate article to it.

English phonetics for beginners

In one of the recent articles on the rules of reading in English, we talked about how to pronounce English sounds and the syllables in which they are used, and presented them in tables with pronunciation - transcription. Then they found out that transcription is a very convenient tool for understanding how English sounds.

Transcriptions are special characters that indicate how to pronounce speech sounds. Transcription helps to understand the difference between spelling and pronunciation in English.

As we said, there are 48 sounds in the English language. This means that 48 signs of English transcription have been created - one sign for each sound:

Each letter sounds in a certain way, but sometimes two letters at once denote one sound, as can be seen in the tables. This combination of letters is called a digraph. Examples of digraphs:

• gh [g] - ghost [gəʋst]
• ph [f] – photo [‘foutou]
• sh [ʃ] – shine [ʃaɪn]
• th [ð], [θ] – think [θɪŋk]
• ch [tʃ] - chess [tʃes].

A vowel sound that smoothly passes from one to another is a diphthong. Examples of diphthongs:

• ea – bread [bred]
• i.e. friend [friend]
• ai – again [əˈɡen]
• au - autumn [ˈɔːtəm].

It is important to consider that the number of letters and sounds in a word may vary. For example, the word “help” has 4 letters and 4 sounds [help], and the word “six” has three letters, but 4 sounds [sɪks].

Practical phonetics of the English language

In the article about English pronunciation training, we mentioned the inseparable connection between English phonetics and anatomy. Phonetics exercises are designed specifically to turn theoretical knowledge into the skills of correct English pronunciation of words and sentences. In addition, the practical phonetics of the English language helps to hear and understand the speech of its native speakers.

We also advise you to pay attention to English courses for beginners.

In practice, we all feel how, during the pronunciation of sounds, the air encounters barriers formed by our tongue, lips, teeth, and even alveoli. Depending on this, two types of consonants are distinguished: deaf and voiced:

But these are not all options. A more detailed classification distinguishes consonant sounds in English according to those specific barriers that the air meets:

• Stop consonants . The organs of speech close in such a way that they completely block the passage for air: [p, b, t, d, k, g].
• Nasal consonants . Air passes out through the nasal cavity: [n, m, ŋ].
• Slotted consonants . The organs of speech do not close completely and a narrow passage remains - a gap for air: [θ, ð, ʃ, ʒ, s, z, h, f, v, w, r, j, l].
• Stop-fricative consonants . The barrier opens slowly and at the same time passes into the gap: [tʃ, dʒ].
• Labio-labial consonants . The lower lip approaches the upper one: [f, v].
• Interdental consonants . The tip of the tongue is between the lower and upper front teeth: [θ, ð].
• Alveolar consonants . The tip of the tongue touches or rises to the alveoli: [t, d, l, s, z].

As for vowels, they are also not the same. They are affected by different positions of the tongue relative to the palate:

• Front vowels. The tip of the tongue rests against the base of the lower teeth, and the back of the tongue comes quite close to the palate: [ i: ].
• Back vowels. The tongue is pulled back and the tip of the tongue is lowered, and the back of the tongue is raised to the soft palate: [a:].

At first glance, this classification may seem difficult, but believe me, in practice you will feel and immediately understand what's what. And understanding the origin of the sound will help pronounce it correctly. Well, for children, it is desirable to combine the study of English phonetics with the game. For example, as in this phonetics exercise:

Exercises in English phonetics

To practice English pronunciation, it is also necessary to take into account stress - that is, the selection of one or more syllables in a word. The stressed syllable is pronounced more vigorously, with greater tension of the organs of speech. Stress helps to distinguish words and understand their meaning both in themselves and in context. For example:

• to ex`port (verb “to export”)
• ` export (noun “export”).

The second important aspect of the pronunciation of phrases and sentences is intonation . Through intonation, we understand or “explain” whether a sentence is a narrative, a question, a request, or an exclamation.

The simplest exercise in English phonetics is done at the Beginner (Elementary) level:

1. Write your name in English.
2. Now spell your name.
3. Do the same with three to five more names (you can think of friends, family members and/or classmates).

You can practice English phonetics like this:

1. Spell the words: Yes, Last, Key, Yellow, Funny, Girl, Toy, Now, Sleep, Drama, Kiss, King.
2. Say the words according to the transcription: Yes [jes], Last [la:st], Key [ki:], Yellow, Funny, Girl [gз:l], Toy [tɔi], Now [nau], Sleep [sli:p ], Drama ['dra:mə], Kiss [kis], King [kiŋ]

But we advise you not to forget about additional resources for learning English, such as channels and blogs. With them, the development of English phonetics will be simpler, more entertaining and more effective.

English sounds with pronunciation. Classification of sounds of the English language.

The English (British) pronunciation system has 44 sounds, which are divided into 24 consonants and 20 vowels, including 8 diphthongs. The following table lists individual English sounds and their corresponding English transcription marks, as well as examples of words in which they are pronounced.

English sound table:

Classification of English sounds

In accordance with the mechanics of education, English sounds are primarily divided into vowels and consonants phonemes. The pronunciation of vowels is associated with active vibration of the vocal cords and the free passage of exhaled air through all organs of speech. Consonants, on the contrary, are formed by overcoming various barriers, cracks and passages formed by the muscles of the vocal apparatus when the air stream exits.

Let us consider in more detail the classification of the sounds of the English language according to individual signs of articulation (the position of the speech organs when pronouncing sounds) and their comparison with Russian sounds.

English consonants

When pronouncing consonant sounds, the air on its way encounters various barriers formed by the active organs of speech: tongue, lips, teeth and alveoli.

If the organs of speech are closed in such a way that they completely block the passage for air, then we pronounce stop consonant . Such consonants are also called explosive , since a small explosion is heard when the organs of speech are opened.

[ p ], [ b ], [ t ], [ d ], [ k ], [ g ]
stops English plosives

[ n ], [ b ], [ t ], [ d ], [ k ], [ g ] stop plosive Russian sounds

If the air passes out through the nasal cavity, then such closing sounds are called nasal .

[ n ], [ m ], [ ŋ ]
nasal stop English sounds

[ n ], [ m ]
nasal stop Russian sounds

If the organs of speech do not close completely, but leave a narrow passage - a gap for air, then we pronounce slot consonant.

[ θ ], [ ð ], [ ʃ ], [ ʒ ], [ s ], [ Z ], [ h ], [ F ], [ V ], [ W ], [ R ], [ J ], [9000 L ]
Sloping English sounds

[ with ], [ С ], [ f ], [ in ], [ Sh ], [ Sh. ], [ F ], [ L ]
slotted russian sounds

Among the consonants there are occlusive-slit sounds. They are called so because the opening of the barrier in them is slow; the complete obstruction goes into the gap.

[ tʃ ], [ dʒ ]
occlusive-slit English sounds

[ c ], [ h ]
stop-slit Russian sounds

An obstruction to the path of exhaled air can be formed by various organs of speech. If the lower lip approaches the upper, then labial-labial consonants appear.

[ p ], [ b ], [ m ], [ w ]
labial English sounds

[ n ], [ b ], [ m ]
lip-labial Russian sounds

If the lower lip touches the upper teeth, then such consonants are called labiodental .

[ f ], [ v ]
labiodental English sounds

[ f ], [ to ]
labio-dental Russian sounds

If the tip of the tongue is between the lower and upper front teeth, then 9 is pronounced0753 interdental consonant. There are no such sounds in Russian.

[ θ ], [ ð ]
interdental English sounds

Russian consonants [ t ], [ d ], [ n ], [ l ] - dental , since the end of the tongue rises to the inner surface of the upper teeth. English consonants [ t ], [ d ], [ n ], [ l ], [ ŋ ] - alveolar because the tip of the tongue touches or rises to the alveoli.

According to the work of the vocal cords, deaf and voiced consonants are distinguished. When pronouncing deaf consonant sounds, the glottis is opened and the exhaled air passes through the larynx silently.

[ k ], [ p ], [ s ], [ t ], [ f ], [ h ], [ tʃ ], [ ʃ ], [ θ ]
voiceless consonants of the English language

[ to ], [ n ], [ s ], [ t ], [ f ], [ 9 x 7 0 ], 90 08 w ], [ w ]
voiceless consonants of the Russian language