Many words in the English language are not phonetically regular and cannot be learnt using a solely phonetic approach. These words may be tricky to learn, but also very important as they are high frequency words which children will regularly encounter when reading and writing. Even seemingly simple words such as “the”, “they” and “like” cannot be “sounded out” in the usual way.
In the phonic method, the word “the” would be broken down into its constituent phonemes of /th/ and /e/ (/e/ has a short “eh” sound rather than a longer "ee" sound). However, if these phonemes are put back together and blended in a strictly phonetic way, they would not produce the word “the” as it is typically spoken, but would make a word sounding more like “th-eh” (not “th-uh”).
Whole-Word Recognition
Although children need to recognise the /th/ sound at the start of irregular words like “the”, “they” and “there”, a whole-word approach is likely to be more helpful. Sight recognition encourages children to build up a store of vocabulary which can be used in reading and spelling when rapid recall is required, rather than phonetic segmenting and blending.
There are many games which can be used to reinforce whole-word learning using flashcards. For example, a double set of word cards can be used to play “Snap” or memory pairs. “Lotto” or “Bingo” games can be made to teach words in sets of four or six.
Look-Say-Cover-Write-Check
An effective way to help children spell irregular, tricky words, is the “Look-Say-Cover-Write-Check" method. This is simple rote learning where the child looks at a word, covers it up, visualises it internally and then tries to re-write it independently. This method takes advantage of multi-sensory learning in that it has a visual element (seeing the word and visualising it internally), an auditory element (saying the word aloud) and a kinaesthetic element (re-writing the word and transferring the formation pattern into muscular memory).
Learning is more effective if children have a go at writing words independently, rather than copying letter-by-letter from a word card. This is because the child is internalising the complete word and committing it to memory - not simply copying from a visual prop. It is also important for children to keep checking their spelling attempts against the correct model so that incorrect spelling habits are not developed.
Although accurate, rapid recall is the key objective, children should be reassured that this is a learning process – each new word bringing a challenge and sense of accomplishment. It should not be allowed to become a chore which bores children and disengages them from reading and spelling.
High Frequency Words
Commonly occurring words are useful for children to know and be able to recall quickly for the purposes of reading and spelling. Many of these are phonetically irregular words such as the following:
- the
- said
- was
- you
- they
- she
- are
- my
- what
- there
- like
- some
- were
- go
- when
- very
- come
- came
- could
- called
- here.
The Look-Say-Cover-Write-Check method would be an effective way to boost children’s sight vocabulary so that these useful words can be read and spelt automatically, with little effort and a high degree of accuracy.
