Getting to Grips with Phonics Jargon (Part 1)

 

As in any field, education is loaded with jargon and terminology that can sometimes be confusing.

 

 

 

To address this, here are some of the terms encountered in Word for Word and their meanings.    

 

Decoding: Reading. Children learn to move from saying individual letter sounds to blending (combining) them to read whole words.

 

Encoding: Spelling. Children must be able to segment (break) whole words into their component sounds and encode them using the correct graphemes. This is a complex skill as some graphemes represent more than one phoneme. Consider the sound of ch in challenge, chef, and chaos.

 

Phoneme: A distinct unit of sound.

 

Grapheme: The written representation of a phoneme, i.e. a single letter or a letter string.

 

Morphology: The study of words – their formation, meaning, and links to other words. Morphology encompasses analysing the structure and root of words and word parts (such as prefixes and suffixes).

 

Morpheme: The smallest meaningful units in language. Morphemes may be free or bound. Free morphemes are real (root) words that can stand alone e.g. job; bound morphemes are attached to free morphemes and serve a grammatical function, such as prefixes/suffixes, e.g. less in jobless.  

 

Phonics: The study of the link between phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (letters/letter strings) in print.

 

Phonological awareness: Awareness of the sound structures of speech from sentence to word to syllable to sound level. Children must understand sentences are made of words, words are made of syllables and syllables are made of phonemes.

 

Phonemic awareness: This falls under the umbrella of phonological awareness and refers to awareness of the individual phonemes (smallest units of sound) in spoken words, and the ability to manipulate those sounds.

 

Our Word for Word manuals are packed with suggestions and activities to build phonological and phonemic awareness. They guide readers through the step-by-step teaching of phonics such that anyone who commits to doing so can implement the programme and support their child on the journey to becoming a successful reader.