Enthusiasm for the written word at school & home is what really counts

In getting to grips with reading, every child finds their own path. Some show an early interest and enthusiasm for words. Others struggle. They need to be switched onto books, and provided with everything from support, direction and guidance.

In finding my own path, I hit a cul-de-sac thanks to phonetics. Before the program drove me down such a dead end, I could open a picture book with my parents and happily talk up a story through page after page. In my young mind, this was reading. The stuff at the bottom – the words – well, they just got in the way. I chose to ignore them, and made up a tale as I went along. At four years of age, I had a fluent imagination, despite being entirely illiterate. I may not have been able to read, but my interest in making up stories meant I was eager to learn.

Back in the Sixties and Seventies, the hot phonetics program taken up by many primary schools in the UK, Australia and America was called initial teaching alphabet, or i.t.a. (note the dogged insistence on lower case letters). Sir James Pitman, whose grandfather had invented a popular form of shorthand, devised the system. To this day, as a means of helping children read more quickly its effectiveness divides opinion sharply.

Central to any phonetics program, i.t.a. aimed to encourage kids to recognise words by the way they sounded rather than how they were spelled. Weirdly, to achieve this we had to learn all 26 letters of the alphabet plus another 14 characters to represent certain vowel sounds in words such as ‘fate’ and ‘home’, with upper case thrown out of the window.

Mastering the i.t.a alphabet wasn’t rocket science. In class, I did well. My teacher dealt flashcards like a veteran poker hand, and took us through one exercise after another. At home, on producing specially written i.t.a. books, my parents just looked puzzled. Not only were they less literate than me when it came to reading i.t.a, the actual number of titles on offer were slim. The result? I was left to my own devices, reading the same uninspired books that soon bored me.

The i.t.a. program is no longer taught in schools. Times have changed, and with it huge advances made in phonetic teaching. As for the guinea pigs, those thirty and forty somethings who remember the lessons will offer very different opinions. There are some who feel it helped them to identify words through sound, and encouraged them to read and write very quickly. Then there are others, like myself, who believe it was about as useful as learning Klingon.

Like many kids taught i.t.a, I seriously struggled with the transition to standard English. At seven years of age, I could not understand why so many of the letters in the alphabet as I knew it were now out of bounds. It damaged my reading confidence, and left me floundering for many years with basics spelling mistakes.

So, why didn’t it work for me, and what lessons can I draw in terms of how phonetics can benefit kids today? Firstly, there seemed to be a complete absence of communication between school and parents. My folks wanted the very best for me, but had to wait for an end-of-term parents evening before they could address the subject. Even then, they needed to give themselves a self-taught crash course in the i.t.a. alphabet before they could help. By that point, it was too late. I had grown tired of the same old exercises and texts. Frankly, the only book I enjoyed opening contained matches so I could set fire to my Action Men.

Secondly, a phonetics programme is intended to be a springboard into reading. In my experience, I had no understanding that I would soon be asked to make that jump, and nor were my parents forewarned. So, when the i.t.a. flashcards disappeared from my classroom I didn’t feel like I had taken a leap into literacy. It was more like being pushed off a towering stack of books.

Of course, some of my classmates made the transition effortlessly. For them, a phonics system of learning worked wonders, as it does for many kids today. It just isn’t for everyone, which is why a successful program needs to be flexible. The fact is some children just do not benefit from it as much as others. To ensure the system doesn’t have the opposite effect of damaging their reading confidence, progress has to be closely monitored and reviewed. Educational cost is clearly a concern here in offering both phonetics and traditional reading programs, but can we afford to penny pinch when it comes to literacy? Kids who cannot read properly quickly find the odds in life stack up against them. They’re less likely to achieve their full potential, and that’s when society pays a high price.

My children just happened to learn to read without phonetics. One found it harder than the other, but they’re both in the same place now. For them, what counted was the degree of enthusiasm for the written word at both school and in the home. In short, there was a buzz about books. Had they been offered a phonetics program, one that carefully timed and controlled the ultimate crossover into standard English, I would’ve wanted to see that same buzz surrounding it. Backed up by a close working partnership between parents and school, as well as a broad range of titles available, learning to read can be a genuine thrill for kids – however way you choose to spell it.

Author: Matt Whyman, best-selling novelist who is also known for his work as an advice columnist for numerous teenage magazines.

What Is Synthetic Phonics? | The Clackmannanshire Experiment | The West Dunbartonshire Project | A Guide for Head Teachers | Phonics Can Be Fun | Synthetic Phonics Is Not Enough | Why Synthetic Phonics Is Wrong For Our Children | Enthusiasm Is The Key | Phonics Help & Advice

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