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Synthetic phonics and the teaching of readingDominic Wysea; Usha Goswami 1a
a University of Cambridge, UK
To cite this Article Wyse, Dominic and Goswami 1, Usha(2008) 'Synthetic phonics and the teaching of reading', BritishEducational Research Journal, 34: 6, 691 — 710To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01411920802268912URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411920802268912
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Synthetic phonics and the teaching of
reading
Dominic Wyse* and Usha Goswami1
University of Cambridge, UK
A review of the teaching of early reading in England commissioned by the UK Government
recommended that synthetic phonics should be the preferred approach for young English learners.
In response, all English schools have been told to put in place a discrete synthetic phonics
programme as the key means for teaching high-quality phonic work. In this paper we analyse the
evidence presented by the review to support the change to synthetic phonics. We show that the
review provided no reliable empirical evidence that synthetic phonics offers the vast majority of
beginners the best route to becoming skilled readers. We analyse the available empirical evidence in
English, and show instead that the data support approaches based on systematic tuition in phonics.
There is also evidence that contextualised systematic phonics instruction is effective. However, more
research is needed, particularly with typically developing readers, in order to determine whether
contextualised systematic phonics is more effective than discrete systematic phonics.
The importance of systematic phonics instruction in relation to the teaching of
reading has been increasingly recognised by English-speaking countries. In 2000 the
USA’s National Reading Panel advocated systematic phonics instruction as part of a
balanced programme of reading teaching (National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development [NICHD], 2000). In 2005, the Australian government
enquiry concluded that systematic, direct and explicit phonics instruction was
important as part of an integrated approach to reading teaching (Australian
Government, Department of Education Science and Training, 2005). In England,
the government enquiry into the teaching of early reading (hereafter the Rose
Report) reached a narrower conclusion (Rose, 2006). Rose’s recommendation was
that the systematic phonics approach selected by schools should be synthetic phonics.
The Rose Report also put forward a ‘simple view of reading’ (Rose, 2006, Appendix
by Stuart & Stainthorp). This adaptation of the classic ‘simple view’ put forward by
Gough and Tunmer (1986) recommended clear differentiation between word
recognition processes and language comprehension processes, so that teachers could
assess performance separately in each and plan different kinds of teaching for each
dimension. One author of this Appendix explains, ‘confounding the two dimensions
*Corresponding author: Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, 184 Hills Road,
Cambridge CB2 8PQ, UK. Email: [email protected]
British Educational Research Journal
Vol. 34, No. 6, December 2008, pp. 691–710
ISSN 0141-1926 (print)/ISSN 1469-3518 (online)/08/060691-20
# 2008 British Educational Research Association
DOI: 10.1080/01411920802268912
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is not conducive to effective teaching in either’ (Stuart, 2006, p. 9). The simple
model provided the basis for the recommendation in the Rose Report that systematic
phonics should be taught ‘discretely’ (p. 70).
Synthetic phonics and the simple view of reading is being introduced
immediately to all English schools. Hence, a universal intervention is being
introduced on the basis of the evidence reviewed by Rose (2006). As noted by
Rutter (2006), it is always desirable to determine the efficacy of an intervention
under optimal research conditions such as a randomised controlled trial before
launching an intervention universally. For programmes intended to make a real
difference in the long term, such as synthetic phonics, the research evaluation
should be long term, and it must be recognised that subgroups (for example,
children with learning difficulties) may require something different. Our first
question in this article is whether any of these desirable conditions were met by the
evidence base considered by Rose (2006). Rose outlined his remit as ‘to examine
… what best practice should be expected in the teaching of early reading and
synthetic phonics’ (2006, p. 7). We therefore focus on the evidence that he
gathered to meet that remit concerning best practice.
As will become evident, one difficulty in analysing the evidence base underpinning
the report is that Rose did not consider empirical research evidence as the primary
form of data relevant to recommending changes in national policy on the teaching of
reading. His approach is formalised in paragraph 47 of the review:
The review’s remit requires a consideration of ‘synthetic’ phonics in particular …
through examination of the available evidence and engagement with the teaching
profession and education experts. Having followed those directions, and notwithstanding
the uncertainty of research, there is much convincing evidence to show from the practice
observed that … synthetic phonics … offers the vast majority of beginners the best route
to becoming skilled readers … (p. 19, emphasis added)
Stuart (2006), a major adviser to Rose, also argued that the inconclusive nature of
available research evidence required Rose to seek recourse to observation of selected
teaching practices in order to make national recommendations: ‘the available
research evidence is insufficient to allow reliable judgements of the relative
effectiveness of implementing different approaches to systematic structured phonics
teaching’ (Stuart, 2006, p. 11). Rose argued that empirical research evidence cannot
provide the answers that he required, as ‘In recent years, there has been a
convergence of opinion among psychologists investigating reading that little progress
towards understanding how reading happens in the human mind is likely to be made’
(p. 75, emphasis added). He stated, ‘focusing on the practice observed in the
classroom and its supportive context, rather than debating the research, is
[therefore] not without significance for this review’ (p. 62). Our second question
in this article is therefore whether the empirical research base on the teaching of early
reading is really so uncertain.
An alternative view would be that a great deal of progress has been made in
understanding the acquisition and development of reading, and its neural under-
pinning in the human mind. To paraphrase Frith (1998), ‘reading literally changes
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the brain’ (p. 1051). Importantly, it does so in somewhat different ways in different
languages (Goswami, 2006). Understanding the particular demands made by a
language like English is crucial for the successful early teaching of reading in English.
This is because written English is different from many other alphabetic languages.
The phonological complexity of syllable structures in English, coupled with the
inconsistent spelling system, mean that direct instruction at levels other than the
phoneme may be required in order to become an effective reader. In countries like
Greece, Finland, Italy and Spain, syllable structure is simple (mainly consonant–
vowel syllables) and there are 1:1 mappings between letters and sounds.
Accordingly, most children are fluent readers long before the end of their first year
of instruction (Seymour et al., 2003). For such languages, teaching reading by
synthetic phonics can be extremely effective (Landerl, 2000). In English-speaking
countries, such early fluency has proved elusive. Our third question in this article is
what empirical studies can tell us about the effective teaching of reading in English.
As will be illustrated, the complexity of reading acquisition in English makes it
unlikely that the universal adoption of one method, synthetic phonics, without any
evidence of proof of concept (for example, via randomised controlled trials), will
deliver the results expected by Rose and by the UK Government.
The case for systematic phonics
One of the most significant contributions to questions about research evidence and
the teaching of reading was the American National Reading Panel (NRP) report on
teaching children to read in English (NICHD, 2000). This was an extensive meta-
analysis of research evidence which addressed a number of questions about early
literacy, including: ‘Does systematic phonics instruction help children learn to read
more effectively than non-systematic phonics instruction or instruction teaching no
phonics?’ (ch. 2, p. 92), and ‘Are some types of phonics instruction more effective
than others? Are some specific phonics programs more effective than others?’ (ch. 2,
p. 93). As far as differences between analytic and synthetic phonics programmes
were concerned, the NRP concluded that ‘specific systematic phonics programs are
all significantly more effective than non-phonics programs; however, they do not
appear to differ significantly from each other in their effectiveness although more
evidence is needed to verify the reliability of effect sizes for each program’ (NICHD,
2000, ch. 2, p. 93). In the NRP, the effect sizes for the phonics approaches classified
as ‘synthetic’ versus ‘analytic’ were statistically equivalent.
More recently, England’s Department for Education and Skills (DfES) commis-
sioned a large-scale study of approaches to the teaching of reading. The
methodology of the NRP was refined to produce a meta-analysis focused on studies
that were randomised controlled trials (RCTs). On the basis of their study
Torgerson et al. (2006, p. 49) concluded that ‘There is currently no strong RCT
evidence that any one form of systematic phonics is more effective than any other’.
As RCTs are one form of the ‘optimal research conditions’ noted by Rutter (2006),
this is an important finding.
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Two rigorous forms of reviewing large numbers of research studies, the meta-
analyses conducted by the NRP and the meta-analysis restricted to RCTs by
Torgerson et al. (2006), converge in concluding that the systematic teaching of
phonics is crucial for literacy acquisition. This conclusion was also recognised by
Rose (2006), who stated, ‘Having considered a wide range of evidence, the review
has concluded that the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming …’ (p. 20).
However, he continued, ‘… is overwhelming, and much strengthened by a synthetic
approach’. He then listed the core components of any systematic phonics
programme, namely learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences, and learning
to blend and segment. Despite this common ground between systematic phonics and
synthetic phonics, it is stated that ‘synthetic phonics … offers the vast majority of
beginners the best route to becoming skilled readers’ (p. 19). Rose wrote, ‘analytic
phonics is good, but synthetic phonics is better’ (p. 19, quote attributed to Rhona
Johnston). In the section of the Rose Report outlining what best practice should
comprise (pp. 15–28), the footnotes refer to various forms of empirical evidence such
as the NRP and Torgerson et al. reviews, and one published empirical study on
synthetic phonics, Johnston and Watson (2005). The section of the Rose Report
presenting evidence from practice (pp. 61–69) focuses on visits made by Rose and
his team to the Scottish educational authority of Clackmannanshire.
The case for synthetic phonics
The studies known in the UK as the ‘Clackmannanshire studies’ have been written
up in a number of forms by Johnston and Watson (Johnston & Watson, 2003, 2004,
2005; Watson & Johnston, 1998). Subsequent to the adoption of a reading tuition
programme called by these authors ‘synthetic phonics’, children were reported to
make considerable gains in reading. The Rose Report summarised these gains as
follows:
At the end of Primary 7 [Year 6 in England, i.e. age 10 to 11], word reading was 3 years
6 months ahead of chronological age, spelling was 1 year 8 months ahead and reading
comprehension was 3.5 months ahead. However, as mean receptive vocabulary
knowledge … was 93 at the start of this study … this may be an underestimate of the
gains with this method. (p. 61)
Johnston and Watson’s (2005) work is not a research paper, rather it is a summary of
one of their studies written for a government website. However, one of their
publications concerning their Clackmannanshire data sets has been peer-reviewed
(Johnston & Watson, 2004), and Experiment 2 in that paper are the same data
discussed in Johnston and Watson (2005), the main evidence used in the Rose
Report. We therefore focus on analysing the data presented in Experiment 2 of
Johnston and Watson’s (2004) paper.
Johnston and Watson (2004) reported two studies, although chronologically
Experiment 2 was conducted before Experiment 1. Experiment 1 will not be
analysed in depth here (see Goswami, 2008, for a thorough analysis), as it was not
mentioned as evidence in the Rose Report. Experiment 2 was an intervention study,
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with both types of intervention administered by the authors themselves. Intervention
was extra to normal classroom tuition, and began six weeks after school entry. This
extra training was given twice weekly for 10 weeks, and was based on a set of 114
printed words. A control group (‘no-letter training group’) was ‘exposed to the print
vocabulary shown to the other two groups, but a ‘‘look-and-say whole word’’
approach was adopted’ (p. 346). One intervention group (‘accelerated letter learning
group’, also referred to as the ‘analytic phonics’ group) was taught two letters per
week in the initial position in the 114 words. ‘Various games were played where the
pupils matched pictures and words, however their attention was drawn only to
the initial sounds of the words and the letters representing those sounds’ (p. 347).
The second intervention group (‘synthetic phonics group’) was also taught two
letters per week, but learned these letters in all positions of the words (‘accelerated
learning and blending of the letter sounds in initial, middle and final positions of
words’, p. 347). The experimenter demonstrated how the words could be read
by saying each letter sound in a word distinctly from left to right, joining them together
smoothly without pausing between each sound. The children practised reading each
word in this way, first of all with the experimenter, and then independently … using
lower case letters and a magnetic board. (p. 347)
Therefore, only the synthetic phonics group was taught to read the 114 target words
independently.
Johnston and Watson (2004) provide post-test data by group for the participants
three months after the end of the intervention, and nine months after the end of the
intervention. Three months after the intervention ended, the synthetic phonics
group had a mean reading level of 5 years 7 months (mean age in all three groups at
this point was 5 years 5 months). The accelerated letter learning group and the no-
letter control group each had a mean reading age of 5 years 3 months, a significantly
lower level of attainment. The superior performance of the synthetic phonics group
was maintained nine months later, by which time the other two groups had also been
taught (by their classroom teachers) to analyse letters in other positions in words—
yet had failed to ‘catch up’ (p. 351). The authors concluded:
Experiment 2 … [controlled] for speed of letter learning; the synthetic phonics group
still read and spelt better than the analytic phonics group. It is concluded that synthetic
phonics was a more effective approach to teaching reading, spelling and phonemic
awareness than analytic phonics. (p. 351)
Reading comprehension was reported to be equivalent for all three groups (p. 251).
However, the study design is not rigorous enough to enable a conclusion about the
superiority of one teaching method against the other. This is because the absolute
amount taught to the children in each intervention group is confounded with the
labels given to the teaching methods. Johnston and Watson (2004) define ‘analytic
phonics’ as ‘children [learning] letter sounds in the context of words that they have
been taught to recognize by sight’ (p. 329). A stringent comparison of analytic versus
synthetic teaching methods would require each group to be taught the same total
number of letter-sounds in the context of all positions in words, and to be taught the
same component skills of sounding out, blending and decoding the 114 target
Synthetic phonics 695
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words. To compare teaching methods, the required design should contrast whether
this teaching occurred in the context of sight words (i.e. analytically) or began from
discrete sounds (i.e. synthetically). In Johnston and Watson’s study, only the
synthetic phonics group were taught sounding out, blending and reading of the 114
words in the target list. This is not an optimal research design for exploring the
research question of whether synthetic phonics methods are superior to analytic
methods (Experiment 1, which is not cited by Rose, did not use a rigorous research
design either; see Goswami, 2008). It is currently unknown whether any differences
would be found between children’s progress if the correct research design were to be
used. Regrettably, the Rose Report did not recognise that such a study was required
before recommendations about national policy could be made, nor indeed that an
RCT of the method was required before synthetic phonics was rolled out nationally.
This is particularly important in the light of the UK experience with Sure Start (part
of the UK equivalent of No Child Left Behind; see Rutter, 2006). The efficacy of
Sure Start was not determined under optimal research conditions before its launch,
and early evaluations did not find evidence of clear benefit.
It is important to note that the Rose Report did accept that the methodology of the
Clackmannanshire study ‘received some criticism by researchers’ (p. 61). Rather
than presenting these criticisms, the report discussed a visit by Rose and his team to
Clackmannanshire:
The visit provided the review with first-hand evidence of very effective teaching and
learning of phonic knowledge … focusing on the practice observed in the classroom and
its supportive context, rather than debating the research, is therefore not without
significance for this review. (p. 62, emphasis added)
Rose tells us, ‘One teacher said ‘‘I have never seen results like this in 30 years of
teaching’’’ (p. 63). Such anecdotes share similarities with those supplied by teachers
who have received training in various commercial phonics packages ‘THRASS2 is
like a new religion! I have seen the light—the answer to how to teach English
spelling’ (THRASS, 1999); ‘Jolly Phonics has given our children the chance to
succeed in reading and writing’ (Jolly Phonics Case Study, 1999). Regarding such
packages, the Rose Review stated, ‘all these programmes were highly systematic and
the perceived, sharp differences that divided their advocates appeared to make little
difference to the claimed success rates’ (p. 20). Curiously, it is not recognised that
exactly the same logic applies to the Clackmannanshire studies.
The case against synthetic phonics
Recent cross-language research suggests that there are two critical factors that affect
the acquisition of efficient phonics skills across languages. One is the phonological
complexity of the language. Most of the world’s languages have words made up of
syllables with a simple or consonant–vowel (CV) structure. English words made up
of simple CV syllables include ‘yoyo’ and ‘baby’. Languages with a simple CV
syllable structure include Italian, Spanish and Finnish. Words in these languages
tend to be longer than words in English, but easier to segment into phonemes. This
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is because the onset-rime level of analysis of the spoken syllable and the phoneme
level of analysis of the spoken syllable are identical. This is shown in Figure 1.
Children seem to acquire phonic recoding skills much faster when the phonology of
their language has a simple syllabic structure. In English, only 5% of monosyllables
are CV (De Cara & Goswami, 2002). The primary syllable type in English is CVC
(43% of monosyllables), followed by CVCC (21%) and CCVC (15%). Note,
however, that languages like German do not have a simple syllabic structure either.
In fact, words in German are frequently exactly the same as words in English. Words
like sand (Sand), ball (Ball), wine (Wein) and mouse (Maus) are phonologically
identical. For words like these, onset-rime segmentation is not equivalent to
phonemic segmentation.
Nevertheless, German children learn phonics much faster than English children
(Frith et al., 1998; Landerl, 2000). This is because of the second critical factor
Figure 1. Schematic example of the phonological complexity of a familiar, early-acquired word in
English versus Italian
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affecting the efficient acquisition of phonics skills, the consistency of the symbol-to-
sound mapping (Ziegler et al., 1997). In English, one letter or letter cluster can have
multiple pronunciations (e.g. ‘cough’, ‘rough’, ‘though’; this is also true of languages
like Danish). In other languages, letters are always pronounced in the same way (for
example, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish). In English, a single speech sound
(phoneme) can have multiple spellings (e.g. the phoneme /e/ in hurt, dirt, Bert). In
other languages, a phoneme may be almost always spelled in the same way (e.g.
Italian, Serbo-Croatian). English is exceptionally inconsistent, because it suffers
from a large amount of inconsistency in both reading and spelling. This inconsistency
inhibits the rapid acquisition of grapheme–phoneme recoding skills (Wimmer &
Goswami, 1994; Goswami et al., 1998, 2001; Seymour et al., 2003). The acquisition
of phonic recoding skills during the first year of reading tuition across the European
Community nations is shown in Table 1, adapted from Seymour et al. (2003). It
should be noted that the English-speaking children tested were schooled in Scotland
using predominantly phonics methods. The table shows clearly that children
learning to read highly transparent orthographies where the spoken language has a
simple CV syllable structure are extremely efficient in grapheme–phoneme decoding
within months of entering school.
Direct cross-language comparisons of teaching beginning readers by synthetic
phonics support the empirical evidence shown in Table 1. Landerl (2000) compared
English children taught via synthetic phonics to German children taught using
similar methods. She commented that in German initial reading was typically taught
via ‘a straightforward phonics teaching regime … through heavy emphasis on
teaching of letter–sound correspondences and blending and sounding out words’
(p. 240). She therefore sought out schools in England following a similar regime, in
order to compare the progress made by English children receiving ‘straightforward
Table 1. Data (% correct) from the large-scale study of reading skills at the end of grade 1 in 14
European Community countries (adapted from Seymour et al., 2003)
Language Familiar real words Pseudo-words
Greek 98 92
Finnish 98 95
German 98 94
Austrian German 97 92
Italian 95 89
Spanish 95 89
Swedish 95 88
Dutch 95 82
Icelandic 94 86
Norwegian 92 91
French 79 85
Portuguese 73 77
Danish 71 54
Scottish English 34 29
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phonics’ with that of German children. The phonics method chosen was a
commercial programme in use in the UK, Jolly Phonics (Lloyd, 1998). An
additional contrast was with the ‘standard’ method of reading tuition in England at
that time (preceding the National Literacy Strategy of 1998), which was classified as
‘a mixed approach providing a combination of whole word and phonics methods’
(p. 241)—‘children in this school received a phonics lesson once a week’ (p. 247).
Thus two English schools adopting contrasting methods to the teaching of initial
reading were compared to a German school utilising a synthetic phonics approach.
The outcome measure was non-word reading at grades 1, 2, 3 and 4 in each case.
The important study was Experiment 2, for which Landerl herself carried out the
testing of all participating children (in Experiment 1 the synthetic phonics group was
tested by advocates for the Jolly Phonics method, and the data from these children
were compared to children from a different education authority tested years
previously by Goswami’s research group). In Experiment 2 there were 111 children
in the ‘English standard’ group, 87 children in the ‘English phonics’ group, and 102
children in the German group. Non-word reading accuracy at Grades 1 (age 6) and
2 (age 7) was found to be equivalent for the two sets of English children. Both
groups were significantly poorer than the German children. At Grade 3, non-word
reading accuracy was much better, with the English children now making relatively
few errors (28% for the standard group, and 7% for the phonics group). This was the
first time that the two groups differed in non-word reading. By Grade 4, the
difference had disappeared. Landerl concluded:
the main difference between the two English groups was in Grade 3. In Grade 1, both
groups of English children committed a high number of errors, and in Grades 2 and 4
the difference was comparably small, because the English standard children performed
almost as well as the English phonics children. (p. 250)
The equivalence of the English standard and English phonics children is remarkable
given that the English standard teachers reported only administering one phonics
lesson a week.
One objection to cross-language comparisons is that cultural differences may
explain differences that are attributed to language per se. One empirical solution is to
look for cultures where bilingualism is common. In Wales, for example, children
grow up with either Welsh or English as their native tongue. Although they live in the
same geographical areas, their parents can choose whether to have them schooled in
Welsh or English. The schools themselves follow a similar (phonics-based, e.g. Jolly
Phonics) reading curriculum, are in the same catchment areas (in some towns, they
are side by side), and are administered by the same education authorities. Welsh is
an extremely consistent orthography. The mappings from graphemes to phonemes
are unambiguous. However, the syllable structure is complex. Welsh syllables can
have complex onsets, as in streic and cnau, or complex codas (consonant phonemes
after the vowel), as in sinc and peint. Hence, in terms of orthographic transparency,
Welsh and English differ markedly, whereas in terms of phonological complexity,
they are extremely similar. Spencer and Hanley (2003) utilised these unique features
of primary schools in Wales in order to carry out cross-language comparisons of
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reading acquisition when cultural factors were held constant. The children were in
their second year of formal reading instruction, and were on average six years old.
Spencer and Hanley reported that the Welsh-speaking children were significantly
more accurate in both word reading and non-word reading compared to the English-
speaking children. For real words, the Welsh children read on average 81% of words
correctly, compared to 59% correct for the English children. For non-words, the
Welsh children read on average 78% of words correctly, compared to 44% correct
for the English children. This was not due to a disparity in the difficulty of the items
used in English and Welsh. For the non-words, for example, the Welsh-speaking
children decoded 68% of the English items correctly. The English-speaking children
only decoded 33% of the Welsh items correctly. The Welsh children had also
developed superior phonemic awareness (measured by a phoneme counting task).
Recall that the phonological complexity of words in English and Welsh is similar.
The finding that phonemic awareness was better in Welsh hence reflects the
importance of learning 1:1 grapheme–phoneme correspondences for the rapid
development of phonemic awareness. Spencer and Hanley concluded that their
findings ‘provided strong evidence that reading acquisition is heavily influenced by
the transparency of the alphabetic writing system’ (p. 14). When followed up a year
later, the Welsh-speaking children were still significantly better at word reading,
non-word reading and phoneme counting than the English-speaking children.
Children learning to read a transparent orthography will hence acquire reading skills
more quickly, even when teaching methods are based on synthetic phonics. When
tested again three years later, the differences between the Welsh-speaking and
English-speaking children had disappeared (Hanley et al., 2004). This was the sixth
year of formal reading instruction, and the children were now 10 years old. Hanley
et al. noted, however, that at this test point the English children had significantly
better reading comprehension skills than the Welsh children.
Clearly, cross-language comparisons suggest that linguistic factors rather than
teaching method per se explain the slower acquisition rates shown by English-
speaking children. However, one point made by Johnston and Watson (2005) was
that synthetic phonics should be taught first, before any other kind of reading tuition
was received (‘there is evidence that synthetic phonics is best taught at the beginning
of Primary 1’ [the first year of formal schooling], p. 9). A comparable training study
in this respect focusing on English only was reported by Walton et al. (2001). They
contrasted two types of phonics training, one based on phonemes (called letter
recoding) and the second based on larger units (called rime analogy). These two
training methods are characteristic of the wider literature comparing ‘synthetic’ with
‘analytic’ methods. This literature usually regards analytic phonics as going from
‘whole to part’, focusing initially on larger grain sizes (Moustafa & Maldonado-
Colon, 1998). Synthetic phonics is regarded as going from ‘part to whole’, focusing
initially on the smallest grain size of the phoneme. For the children studied by
Walton et al., who were pre-readers, this was the first direct tuition in reading
received by the participating children. The two groups were taught the same pre-
reading skills (phonological awareness of initial, medial and final phonemes,
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rhyming and the letter–sound correspondences), and the treatments were controlled
so that the only differences between the training concerned whether the first steps of
reading were taught using a letter–sound recoding strategy or a rime analogy
strategy. Two training sessions of 25 minutes were given twice a week for 11 weeks.
Reading outcomes were then assessed. For word reading, a significant advantage
was found for the rime analogy group. For non-word reading, the two groups
performed at an equivalent level. In each case, the trained children outperformed a
control group who had received normal classroom teaching. A set of longitudinal
post-tests given four months later showed equivalent patterns. Walton et al.
concluded that ‘the study demonstrated that Grade 1 pre-readers with weak letter–
sound and phonological skills will develop reading ability relatively quickly if given
experience with the rime analogy or letter recoding strategies and the related pre-
reading skills’ (p. 178, emphasis added). The essential finding was that as long as
tuition was systematic, either large-unit (‘analytic’) or small unit (‘synthetic’)
phonics lead to similar gains.
Although carried out with very different samples, the experimental studies by
Walton et al. (2001), Landerl (2000) and Spencer and Hanley (2003) all reach the
same conclusion. The conclusion is that no one method of teaching phonics to
children learning to read in English appears to be superior to any other method. This
is exactly the same conclusion as was reached by the meta-analyses reported by the
NRP and by Torgerson et al. (2006). There is no empirical research base to justify
the Rose Report’s recommendation that the teaching of reading in England must
rely on synthetic phonics.
How do we teach early reading in English?
What, then, should teachers of early reading do? An empirical approach to this
question is to analyse the teaching methods featured in the phonics instruction
studies that were included in the NRP and Torgerson et al. (2006) reviews. Table 2
categorises the 43 studies included in the two reviews by the pedagogical emphasis of
the most effective instruction. Table 2 shows that the largest number of studies
featured instruction where phonics was contextualised at sentence and text level as
part of the teaching programmes. Interventions with an emphasis on discrete
phonics, where comprehension teaching and work with whole texts were covered
separately from the phonics instruction, were smaller in number but were also shown
to be effective. Whole language, whole-word teaching and broader approaches were
also shown to be effective in some studies.
The studies categorised in Table 2 show that a range of different teaching
approaches, including contextualised systematic phonics instruction and discrete
systematic phonics instruction, can be effective. However, in view of the
recommendation by the Rose Report that phonics teaching should be discrete, a
relevant question is, which teaching approach is more effective, contextualised
phonics instruction or discrete phonics instruction? In order to answer this question
there is a need to identify studies which compare directly the two kinds of
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approaches. The selection criteria we used for studies which would address this
question were as follows:
1. explicit comparison of contextualised systematic phonics instruction versus
discrete systematic phonics instruction;
2. rigorous experimental design, preferably randomised controlled trial;
3. sample of typically developing readers;
Table 2. Methods of teaching reading implemented in research studies
Pedagogical emphasis
of effective interventions
Studies Total
Discrete phonics work Bond et al. (1995–96) (included spelling work, songs and
books); Foorman et al. (1991); Haskell et al. (1992)
(onset-rime group outperformed others); Johnston
and Watson (2004); Lovett et al. (2000) (sub-syllabic,
particularly focused on rime); Mantzicopoulos et al.
(1992); Oakland et al. (1998); Snider (1990); Stuart
(1999)
9
Whole language teaching,
including literature
teaching
Eldredge (1991) (included some systematic phonics);
Freppon (1991); Griffith et al. (1992); Klesius et al.
(1991); Wilson and Norman (1998)
5
Contextualised phonics
instruction: Phonics
instruction contextualised
with sentence-level and/or
text-level work such as
reading of connected text.
Reading recovery and
modified reading
recovery type programmes
included.
Berninger et al. (2003); Blachman et al. (1999); Brown
and Felton (1990); Evans and Carr (1985); Foorman
et al.(1997); Foorman et al. (1998); Greaney et al.
(1997); Martinussen and Kirby (1998); Santa and
Hoien (1999); Tunmer and Hoover (1993); Umbach
et al. (1989); Vickery et al. (1987)
12
Whole word teaching Gittelman and Feingold (1983) (included intersensory
phonics method); Lovett et al. (1990); Lovett and
Steinbach (1997) (included metacognitive training for
strategy monitoring); O’Connor and Padeliadu (2000)
4
Broad approach and/or
curriculum focus
Gersten et al. (1988); Lum and Morton (1984) (focus on
spelling more than reading); Marston et al.(1995);
Vandervelden and Siegel (1997) (argued against
sounds pronounced in isolation)
4
No statistically significant
gains overall for any
approach
Lovett et al. (1989) (showed different gains for decoding
skills and OWLS approaches); Silberberg et al. (1973)
(included synthetic phonics); Skailand (1971);
Torgesen et al. (1999) (advocates combined word-
level and comprehension teaching); Torgesen et al.
(2001) (Embedded Phonics as effective as Auditory
Discrimination in Depth); Traweek and Berninger
(1997)
6
Limited information about
teaching approaches
Fulwiler and Groff (1980); Leach and Siddall (1990)
(work with parents); Leinhardt and Engel (1981)
3
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4. standardised measures of comprehension in addition to standardised
measures of word reading included.
None of the studies met all four criteria. This is because no studies of this kind have
been carried out with typically developing readers. Only two studies met three of the
criteria: the studies of children showing delayed development by Berninger et al.
(2003) and Torgesen et al. (2001).
With regard to the methodological criteria for selection of rigorous experimental
trials, we adopted Torgerson et al.’s (2006) quality assessment criteria, used to
identify the RCTs included in their main analysis (and in two cluster trials), which
were as follows: (a) reporting of method of random allocation; (b) sample size
justification; (c) intention to teach analysis, where all participants are analysed in
their original randomised groups as opposed to excluding participants after
randomisation; (d) blinded assessment of outcome.
Of the two studies that met our criteria for comparing discrete phonics instruction
with contextualised phonics instruction Torgesen et al. (2001) was the only study
that also met one of the experimental trial criteria, the intention to teach analysis.
Sixty children between the ages of eight and ten who had been previously identified
as learning disabled were recruited for participation in the study by Torgesen et al.
(2001). The children were randomly assigned to one of two groups: (a) auditory
discrimination in depth (ADD); (b) embedded phonics (EP). The teaching was
provided by educational therapists on a one-to-one basis in two 50-minute sessions
each day of the week. Teaching was provided over a period of 8–9 weeks until 67.5
hours of instruction were accomplished.
The ADD programme had three major goals. The first goal was to provide a basis
for accurate discriminations between phonemes. The second goal was to teach
children to use their knowledge of phonemes to monitor and represent sequences of
sounds in spoken syllables. The third goal was to teach self-monitoring skills that
allowed children to discover methods to correct themselves during their phonics
decoding attempts. All 44 English consonant and vowel phonemes were taught and
the programme provided extensive practice in reading and spelling individual words.
The EP programme was designed to provide direct, explicit instruction in word-level
reading skills while providing extensive opportunities to read and write meaningful text.
The programme included practice in reading sight words; practice in spelling sight
words; word games for fluency with sight words; phonics ‘mini lessons’; oral reading of
trade books or basal readers; and writing activities using sight words.
Outcomes were very similar for both instructional methods. The effects of
intervention were both substantial and stable over the course of the two-year follow-
up period. Torgesen et al. (2001) argued that the goal of any intensive intervention is
to produce large changes in reading ability that were maintained over time and that
‘the clear conclusion from this research is that the EP and ADD conditions were
equally successful’ (p. 51). In view of the fact that two approaches that varied
substantially were equally effective, Torgerson et al. argued that within structured
language approaches the components of instruction could be arranged according to
teacher and student preferences.
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Berninger et al. (2003) did not meet any of the Torgerson et al. (2006) quality
assessment criteria but will be assessed here because it was a cluster RCT. The study
included the hypothesis that ‘instruction that is aimed at all the necessary
components of a functional reading system is more effective than instruction that
is aimed at an isolated component of the reading system’ (Berninger et al., 2003,
p. 103). In the study, second-grade teachers in eight schools serving diverse student
populations were asked to refer their poorest readers. A test battery covering
vocabulary, word identification and word attack was then administered by project
personnel in order to determine the final sample. Forty-eight pairs of children were
randomly assigned to four conditions: (a) explicit and reflective word recognition;
(b) explicit and reflective reading comprehension; (c) combined explicit word
recognition and explicit reading comprehension; or (d) treated control that only
practised reading skills without any instruction. The combined condition featured
explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle and explicit language cueing at the
word, sentence and text level to stimulate the text-based component of reading
comprehension. The teaching consisted of twice-weekly sessions of 20 minutes each
for a total of 24 lessons. The word recognition training began with 10 minutes of
explicit instruction in the alphabetic principle, both in and out of word context. In
any one session, 12 to 24 correspondences were introduced or reviewed, and
altogether, 107 correspondences were practised four or five times during the course
of the tutorial. During the next six minutes of training, children practised applying
these correspondences to decoding, which involved pronouncing single words.
During the last 10 minutes teachers provided explicit language cueing at the word,
sentence and text levels (Berninger, 1998), in order to stimulate the text-based
component of reading comprehension. Levels of language cueing to develop text-
based comprehension always contained word-level prompts, sentence-level prompts
and text-level prompts. An example of a text-level prompt included: ‘Tell the plot or
main events in the story so far’ (p. 107).
Berninger et al. reported that (c), the combined word recognition and reading
comprehension treatment, was the most effective in increasing phonological
decoding as shown by gains in non-word and real word reading. Given that most
at-risk readers have difficulty with phonological decoding, this is an important
finding. However, all three explicit treatments and the practice control treatment led
to significant improvements in reading comprehension. Berninger et al. (2003)
theorised that explicit instruction in comprehension combined with explicit word
recognition training facilitated learning to decode written words because it helped to
develop broad-based metalinguistic awareness. This was thought to generalise across
levels of language in the functional reading system.
The main conclusion to be drawn from this analysis of phonics instruction studies
is that a range of ways of teaching systematic phonics is effective. Considering
contextualised systematic phonics instruction versus discrete systematic phonics
instruction, there is a need for more research to compare the effectiveness of the two
approaches. In particular, no studies of typically-developing readers currently exist.
The two studies that have most rigorously investigated this question differ in their
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findings. Torgesen et al. (2001) found that contextualised instruction and discrete
instruction were equally effective; Berninger et al. (2003) found that contextualised
phonics instruction was more effective for word decoding but that there was no
difference for reading comprehension.
Our analysis of empirical evidence does not support the advice based on the Rose
Report’s ‘simple view of reading’ that schools should put in place a ‘discrete
programme as the key means for teaching high-quality phonic work’ (DfES & PNS,
2006). Rather, the studies reviewed here suggest that many forms of systematic
phonics instruction are successful. Contextualised methods in which systematic
phonics are carefully integrated with whole text work and comprehension activities
are effective (Berninger, 2003, method c). According to our analysis, the key features
of phonics (learning grapheme–phoneme correspondences, learning to segment and
blend) as identified by Rose can be taught by a range of systematic methods.
Conclusion
As a result of the recommendations of the Rose Report (Rose, 2006), the UK
Government’s Primary National Strategy (PNS) Literacy Framework and its
guidance, which affects all early years and primary teachers in England, was
changed. The guidance which accompanies the PNS literacy framework makes it
clear that schools and early years settings should ‘put in place a systematic, discrete
programme as the key means for teaching high-quality phonic work’ and that
‘Shared and guided reading sessions should not be used to replace discrete phonics
teaching but they can provide opportunities to reinforce children’s developing
phonic knowledge and skills, in the context of achieving the ultimate goal of the
sessions, which is the development of comprehension’ (DfES & PNS, 2006, p. 7).
The UK Government in England, under the auspices of the Primary National
Strategy, has also published a detailed programme called ‘Letters and Sounds:
principles and practice of high quality phonics’ (Primary National Strategy, 2007)
which teachers are expected to follow. Following the teaching of general orientation
to sound discrimination in the nursery years, daily lessons for a six-week period
feature ‘discrete phonics’ teaching. Teachers must ‘teach at least 19 letters, and
move children on from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting
with letters’ (p. 48). Application of this knowledge during the Letters and Sounds
lessons is limited to ‘Read or write a caption (with the teacher) using one or more
high-frequency words and words containing the new letter (week 3 onwards)’
(p. 49). This is followed by further discrete teaching, lasting for up to 12 weeks. The
purpose of this phase ‘is to teach another 25 graphemes, most of them comprising
two letters (e.g. oa), so the children can represent each of about 42 phonemes by a
grapheme’ (p. 74). Application at this stage is to ‘Read or write a caption or sentence
using one or more tricky words and words containing the graphemes’ (p. 75). This
pattern of a limited context for application of grapheme–phoneme correspondences
continues through year one (age 5 to 6) until year two (age 6 to 7), at which point
phonics instruction moves to an emphasis on spelling.
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As demonstrated here, the Rose Report’s conclusion that synthetic phonics should
be adopted nationally in England as the preferred method for the teaching of reading
is not supported by empirical research evidence. Rather, as reviewed here, the
available research evidence supports the importance of systematic tuition in phonics
at a variety of grain sizes (e.g. phoneme, onset-rime). There is also evidence that
systematic phonics instruction that is contextualised can be effective although there
is a need for more research. As Torgerson et al. (2006) argued, the current empirical
database suggests that there is no evidence that ‘any one form of systematic phonics
is more effective than any other’ (p. 49).
The main research study which seems to have influenced the conclusions drawn
by Rose (2006), namely Johnston and Watson (2004), does not enable any
conclusions to be made concerning the optimal method of phonics instruction. In
particular, it does not support the claim that analytic methods (from word to sound)
are inferior to synthetic methods (from sound to word). This is because the children
were not taught the same material or the same component skills by the two methods.
Importantly, the findings reported by Johnston and Watson (2004) do not bear at all
on whether phonics should be taught discretely or in isolation.
The rationale for the change to synthetic phonics in England was also, in part,
built on a critique of the previous National Literacy Strategy ‘searchlights’ model.
This model advocated the use of four ‘strategies’ as a means to understanding text:
‘phonic (sound and spelling); knowledge of context; grammatical knowledge; word
recognition and graphic knowledge’ (Department for Education and Employment
[DfEE], 1998, p. 4). In the Appendix to the Rose Report, Stuart and Stainthorpe
(Rose, 2006, Appendix) argue, on the basis of their analysis of cognitive
psychological research, in favour of a ‘simple view of reading’. One of the most
significant differences between their simple view and the ‘searchlights’ model is that
word recognition processes and language comprehension processes are seen as two
separable dimensions of reading for the purposes of teaching: ‘The case for change
that we discuss … rests on the value of explicitly distinguishing between word
recognition processes and language comprehension processes’ (Rose, 2006, p. 74).
However, reading is not simple. Reading is one of the most complex achievements of
the human brain. Human brains that learn to read English may in fact develop extra
neural architecture that is not developed by brains learning to read more consistent
alphabetic orthographies (Goswami & Ziegler, 2006). In written language, as in
spoken language, the ultimate aim is communication and comprehension. We argue
that teachers are more likely to help children to achieve this aim if government
recommendations for practice are built on a rigorous synthesis of the full range of
evidence, including research about different languages and effective reading
teaching.
Notes
1. Significant parts of the research evidence referred to in this article, including its synthesis in an
abbreviated version of the current section entitled ‘The case for synthetic phonics’, were
submitted to the Rose Review as written evidence.
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2. THRASS is the acronym for Teaching Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills (THRASS
UK Ltd).
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