Definition of synthetic and analytic phonics
Glossary of terms
The following definitions of 'synthetic' and 'analytic' phonics
have been taken from Greg Brooks' report Sound Sense:
The Phonics Element of the National Literacy Strategy - A Report
to the Department for Education and Skills, University of
Sheffield (2003)
Synthetic phonics — refers to an approach to the
teaching of reading in which phonemes [sounds] associated with
particular graphemes [letters] are pronounced in isolation and
blended together (synthesised). For example, children are taught
to take a single-syllable word such as cat apart into its
three letters, pronounce a phoneme for each letter in turn /k,
æ, t/, and blend the phonemes together to form a word. Synthetic
phonics for writing reverses the sequence: children are taught
to say the word they wish to write, segment it into its phonemes
and say them in turn, for example /d, ›, g/, and write a
grapheme for each phoneme in turn to produce the written word,
dog.
Analytic phonics — refers to an approach to the teaching
of reading in which the phonemes associated with particular graphemes
are not pronounced in isolation. Children identify (analyse) the
common phoneme in a set of words in which each word contains the
phoneme under study. For example, teacher and pupils discuss how
the following words are alike: pat, park, push
and pen. Analytic phonics for writing similarly relies
on inferential learning: realising that the initial phoneme in
/p i g/ is the same as that in /p æ t, p a: k, p u ƒ/
and /p e n/, children deduce that they must write that phoneme
with grapheme <p>.
The following terms and their definitions have been taken from
Jim Rose's (2005) Independent Review of the Teaching of Early
Reading - Interim Report.
blend (vb) — to draw individual sounds together to
pronounce a word, e.g. s-n-a-p, blended together, reads snap
cluster — two (or three) letters making two (or three)
sounds, e.g. the first three letters of 'straight' are a consonant
cluster
(vowel) digraph — two letters making one sound, e.g.
sh, ch, th, ph. Vowel digraphs comprise two vowels which, together,
make one sound, e.g. ai, oo, ow
split digraph — two letters, split, making one sound,
e.g. a-e as in make or i-e in site
grapheme — a letter or a group of letters representing
one sound, e.g. sh, ch, igh, ough (as in 'though')
grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) — the relationship
between sounds and the letters which represent those sounds; also
known as 'letter-sound correspondences'
mnemonic — a device for memorising and recalling
something, such as a snake shaped like the letter 'S'
phoneme — the smallest single identifiable sound,
e.g. the letters 'sh' represent just one sound, but 'sp' represents
two (/s/ and /p/)
segment (vb) — to split up a word into its individual
phonemes in order to spell it, e.g. the word 'cat' has three phonemes:
/c/, /a/, /t/
VC, CVC, CCVC — the abbreviations for vowel-consonant,
consonant-vowel-consonant, consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant,
and are used to describe the order of letters in words, e.g. am,
Sam, slam.
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