Topics in Early Reading Coherence:
Phonics Rules
Author: Sebastian Wren
Price: Online only
• Published: 1999
Children clearly need to be explicitly taught to sound out words -- to develop what some call "word attack" skills. That much is not in question -- what is in question is the best approach for teaching children the system that is used for decoding English text. Some advocate teaching children explicit rules, and showing the children how these rules can be applied to unfamiliar words (which for young children describes most of the words they encounter). Others argue that the human brain is not good at applying abstract rules -- what the brain is good at is finding patterns, and that instruction should exploit this pattern finding skill.
