For many parents of children who are just starting to learn how to read, the word “phonics” raises a lot of curiosity and questions: what does phonics really mean?
To really understand why phonics is important, we must first discover what the difference between phonics and phonetics is.
Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing using sounds, whereas Phonetics is the study of speech sounds.
What is Phonetics?
To define phonetics in the most simple and easy to understand terms- phonetics is a system of relationships between sounds and letters in any given language.
When your little one in kindergarten begins to learn about the sound that letters have, like the letter B sounds like “buh” while a second-grade student may already be learning that “ion” sounds like “shun” they are learning phonetics.
“The goal of reading is to make meaning from print, but a reader first has to know what the printed symbols represent before meaning can be assigned to them. In English, the printed symbols are letters, and those letters represent the sounds of our spoken language” says Deborah K. Reed, Ph.D. Director, Iowa Reading Research Center.
There have been several debates about the efficacy of phonics as a method of teaching.
Why is Phonetics Important?
Learning phonetics plays a vital role in helping your child to learn how to read and spell words correctly.
Written text can be regarded as a form of code, so if your child is able to develop the skill and the knowledge of letters and the sound that they have, they will be able to decide words ad they read them.
In addition, learning phonics will give your child the skill needed to know which letter combinations to use whenever they are writing.
Phonetics is a very important component in a child’s education.
There are so many ways where phonetics becomes very important in life.
Spelling will be very difficult to achieve if a child does not mean phonetics — this is due to the fact that they do not have the knowledge of the sound that letters have, hence, decoding words become extremely difficult.
Phonetics will equip children with the ability to recognize and associate letters of the alphabet and their corresponding sounds in the words that they read.
This will ultimately improve their reading skills and efficiency.
Phonetics also helps a child to read and speak fluently.
Reading becomes easy as the child will be able to do so accurately and quickly.
Phonetics is an important factor in a child’s improvement in reading comprehension.
It is very difficult to understand a word that is not pronounced accurately.
This brings into perspective the role that phonetics plays in how a child is able to develop their vocabulary.
When a child learns phonetics, he or she becomes confident and want to communicate more.
They get really excited when they realize that they can pronounce words just like older people.
Teaching your child proper phonetics through several phonic instructions are important in helping a child build a former letter-sound knowledge.
One cannot overemphasize how important phonetics is to several aspects of human interaction and communication through vocal and written forms.