Synthetic phonics and Analytic phonics

Kay Evans-Bentley
Synthetic phonics and Analytic phonics

The two main approaches to teaching children phonics contribute to developing phonological awareness and consequently the ability to read, write, listen and talk. Synthetic phonics and analytic phonics both require the learner to have the skill to hear and discriminate sounds which are in spoken words.

The synthetic phonics approach is a key recommendation of 'The Rose Review' headed by former Ofsted inspections director Jim Rose. The Rose report recommends that for most children, systematic phonics should start by the age of 5 and that extra help should be given to those who fall behind. Phonics, therefore, has been given priority and is of great importance to children in primary school. Synthetic phonics focuses on the process of sounding out and blending words in order to be able to decode them.
Synthetic phonics encourages phonemic awareness from the beginning, allowing the reader to learn up to 44 phonemes and graphemes by using the decoding process. By segmenting words into the smallest unit of sound and then teaching children to blend these sounds together, results in the child being able to form the word.

One phoneme can be represented by various graphemes, e.g. 'oa', 'ow', 'ough'. This is one of the reasons that the English language can be extremely difficult to learn.
The learner would be expected to recognise each grapheme then sound out each phoneme in a word, building up through blending the sounds together to pronounce the word phonetically.

Synthetic phonics teaches main digraphs (letter combinations) for blending and segmenting which identify the sounds throughout the word. Irregular keywords are tackled and by blending them, the learner can recognise the regular and irregular parts.



In contrast, the analytic phonics approach places the emphasis on the opening (onset) and the ending (rime) of words and establishing the word as a whole. The understanding comes from breaking down the word in order to be able to focus on the complete word and does not necessarily break them down to their smallest phoneme.
Analytic phonics involves analysis of whole words to detect phonetic or orthographic (spelling) patterns, then splitting them into smaller parts to help with decoding. The rimes of words can be used to help the learner to read and spell. When the right rime is known, it can be used to generate another 96 words. It is therefore an efficient way to help children develop a large sight vocabulary for both reading and spelling. It works particularly well for those words that young children cannot work out sound-by-sound, such as 'light', 'through' and 'rake'. It is also an effective way of helping children to adopt the common sight words, for example when teaching the word 'could', children would be supported to generate and read the rhyming words that share the same written pattern as 'would' and 'should'.
Analytic phonics uses picture cues, initial letter cues and context information for guessing words and gradually introduces the alphabet letter names and sounds. The focus on the initial letter is used to help with identifying the word and by emphasising sight vocabulary, keywords are taught visually.

What do I really think?

I think that both of these approaches should be encouraged.....to compliment each other and not to divide professionals or to confuse those trying their best for young impressionable minds!!
Phonics are one of the most important parts of a balanced approach to the teaching of reading and therefore, would support a positive attitude to reading for pleasure and for information. It is essential however, to involve all of the necessary strategies and skills and by ensuring that texts are chosen at appropriate levels (to include interest, decoding and comprehension levels).
It is essential to motivate and encourage reading and recognise that each learner learns in different ways. There is more than just one way of teaching and therefore, more than one idea or concept ready to be developed.


My brain hurts!!

Has anyone actually developed a phonics scheme that almagmates synthetic and analytic? If not, why don't we, seeing as we've got all this free time on our hands....!!!!!