[senco-forum] a defintion of synthetic phonics

From sunny Calgary,

There is some evidence speech therapy research that says blending is more difficult 
than segmenting.   Young children stop playing with v & vc combination is in the second year and so asking them to join disconnected phonemes might be difficult especially if they have experienced 'glue ear'.  If the word is spoken the motor programme for its execution is available, if you say it yourself you will have feedback from the process to help with segmenting and many find this an easier way to connect print and speech.  In blending there is no feedback until the blending is carried out and also the voice providing the model will that of another and so will need to be translated from the speaker's voice to the listener's voice with possible signal loss.  However most children do seem to be able to learn from a synthetic approach where the sounds are provided as single items to be connected.  It is those who have difficulties in dealing with blending that benefit from the segmenting or analytic approach.  Synthetic phonics involves synthesizing (blending) phonemes into a word and is not in any way synthetic as in cream or oil.  Analytic phonics is saying the word and then segmenting it into its constituent phonemes.

>From sunny Calgary,

Philip EP   

________________________________

From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk on behalf of Mmilesep at aol.com
Sent: Tue 09/10/2007 20:42
To: senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: Re: [senco-forum] a defintion of synthetic phonics

In a message dated 09/10/2007 20:30:10 GMT Daylight Time, 
alice.chenneour at btinternet.com writes:

I would  really like to pick your brains on how you would describe synthetic
phonics in  relation to analytic phonics - it's just that when I put it to
staff that the  focus of literacy teaching had moved from an approach which
favoured analytic  phonic to one favouring synthetic phonics, they jumped on this
saying that all  phonics teaching was largely of the synthetic variety. I did
point out  teaching literacy along the lines of onset and rime was an example
of the  analytical approach but I flapped. What do you understand by these 
terms!?

You either synthesis or analyse. Synthesise - build up; analyse break  down.

So, the word "Cat" can be synthesised or built up from the phonemes /c/ /a/ 
/t/ or can be analysed or broken down from the whole word to its separate 
sounds. Also same analysis applies to the onset (initial sound) and rime (rest 
of the word).

Sounds first or words first? Discuss. Where are you Julie?

Martin