Nursery World - Study re-ignites debate about use of phonics

New research suggests phonics is the best way to teach children to read and understand words.

The study assessed whether learning to read by ‘sounding out’ words is more effective than focusing on whole-word meanings. It was carried out by researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London and the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, which is funded by the Medical Research Council.

It showed that learning to read by sounding out words – known as phonics – had a dramatic impact on the accuracy of reading aloud and comprehension.

The study of 24 adults revealed that those who were taught the meaning of whole novel words (i.e. made-up words) did not have any better reading comprehension skills than those who were primarily taught the words using phonics. Those using phonics were just as good at comprehension and significantly better at reading aloud (see box).

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