A TEST OF THE UTILITY OF PHONICS RULES

The study reported on here investigated the ability of 49 second‐grade pupils to listen to, infer and produce the correct pronunciations of 14 high‐frequency words given in a story‐like context. The 14 key words of this study were mispronounced according to specified phonics rules. The study postulates that the mental processing required in its experimental task is similar to that undertaken when beginning readers decode irregularly‐spelled written words. It was discovered that only 7 percent of the responses of the pupils in the study to its experimental task were unsuccessful. It is concluded that the findings of this study fail to support the assumption currently held by some reading experts that the application of phonics rules by beginning readers to be useful must result in the true pronunciation of a word being decoded 75 percent of the time. It is argued that this assumption has failed to consider the probability that if beginning readers can gain approximate pronunciations of irregularly spelled written words they then can infer and produce the true pronunciations of such words. The findings of the present study are seen as evidence of the likely validity of this position regarding the utility of phonics rules.