Synthetic Phonics Method

Synthetic phonics recognizes that a single syllable word has two components: vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and consonants (b, c, d, bl, cr, etc...).  Only two words (I and a) have only the vowel component.

Single syllable words have three auditory patterns:

• a beginning vowel sound and an ending consonant sound (at, ape, eat, it, us, art) (37 words out of 2,377 or 2%)
• a beginning consonant sound and an ending vowel sound (go, glow, toe, zoo, cow, glue, moo, hay, hey, they, toy, eye) (252 words out of 2,377 or 11%)
• a beginning consonant sound(s), a vowel sound and an ending consonant sound(s) (cat, cake, drum, pump, crown, known) (2,080 words out of 2,377 or 88%)

In order to sound out words, five skills are required: 

• saying the sound of the initial consonant(s), if part of the word
• knowing the rule for the vowel sound
• saying the sound of the vowel
• saying the sound of the ending consonant(s), if part of the word
• blending the individual sounds to form the word sound