Does phonics help in spelling?

[tankee]

from my P3 DS experience, phonics helps a lot in his spelling

[fightingmom]

Yes, Phonics does help in spelling

[jenniferpass]

Yes. Learning phonics helps a lot to spell the words…

[isabella.026990zola]

Sorry but is it me or is it that recently there are a lot of postings by possibly the same person in this part of the forum and they all seem repetitive and it is clogging up the posts unnecessarily…anyone can do something about it?

[abbyxx]

Yes, phonics can definitely help in spelling. Although only about 40% of the English words can be formed phonetically, while the other 60% are sight words, it is an achievement to already be able to spell 40% of these words as they can greatly help in reading and writing.


Building a foundation in phonics is the first building blocks in learning to spell as without a knowledge of the letter sounds, children only learn recognize words by memory. Eg. Child may be able to spell the word ‘sit’ and not ‘hit’, however if he understands that the letters ‘i’ and ‘t’ make the ‘it’ sound, even when the first letter is replaced by another letter, he would still be able to spell it, thus he would be able to recognize and read more words instead of solely memorizing the words. There is only so much our brain can remember, thus phonics is really beneficial in helping a young child to spell. Once he/she is familiar with the letter sounds, spelling will come naturally to them.

Kidz Literacy Cove is offering phonics programs using Jolly Phonics and Jolly Grammar and we boost an interactive and holistic curriculum. We build the foundation of the English language to aid children in both reading and writing. We also offer trial classes at 50% off should you be interested in enrolling your child.

We are located at Serangoon Gardens, you may contact us at 97800786 for further queries!

[Han Seo]

@Twinkerbell

There is a difference between sight words and high frequency words.

Sight words are words that you recognise by sight and it differs for each one of us. A 5 years old child’s first sight word is likely to be his or her name. A cardiologist’s sight words are likely to be troponin, atrial fibrillation, Wolfe Parkinson White etc.

High frequency words are words that researchers have agreed that occur very frequently in most text eg the, is, you etc.

Hence, a child’s sight word (her name) may not be a high frequency word. A high frequency word may or may not be this child’s sight word.

Many high frequency words are decodable eg me, the (th is a digraph and ‘e’ is the schwa sound). However, if the child has not learnt the rules yet, it is “undecodable” at that point in time until he or she has learned the rule. For eg, the word ‘me’. The ‘e’ in me is a long vowel sound because this word is an open syllable. An open syllable rule states that there is no other consonant after the vowel.

Help the child to see patterns. For example, when teaching the word me, teach other words with the same rule: be, he, she (if digraph sh has been taught) and we.

Hope this helps. Phonics teacher here.

[Han Seo]

@Musicstar

Phonics can help in spelling but spelling is a harder process compared to reading. Spelling requires many similar concepts as reading, including sound (phonological) and written language (orthographic). In spelling, the child must be able to use his phonological awareness skill to break up the words into their sounds and then recall which letter or letters match the sounds. And because the same sounds can be spelled in different ways, the sound to spelling matching is not always straightforward.

I had a child who was able to spell ‘we’ after some practice but when I introduced the vowel team ‘ee’, she spelt ‘we’ as ‘wee’. I praised her for her effort and explained the meaning of “wee” and then asked her which one made sense in the context of the sentence. ‘We’ is also an open syllable and the vowel ‘e’ is a long e.