Traditional Phonics: What It Is and What It Is Not

Recent research into the phonological aspects of children’s early reading development holds that English beginners are more aware of word‐sounds at the onset and rime level than at the individual phoneme level. A link is suspected with the comparative irregularity of English orthography. As it is widely assumed that children need to be aware of phonemes before they can benefit from a traditional phonics approach, a ‘new’ phonics or ‘rhyming analogy’ approach has been recommended as an easier route than traditional phonics for English beginning readers. This paper argues, however, that English beginners are just as capable of a phonemic approach as beginners in other languages, that phonemic awareness is not a precondition, that beliefs to the contrary are based on misunderstanding, and that systematically applying grapheme‐phoneme correspondences throughout each word is an excellent basis for word‐identification even in English. These claims are supported by test results.