Teaching irregular words: What we know, what we don-t know, and where we can go from here

Abstract

Instruction in regular letter-sound relationships is a key element of teaching children to read. However, in the English language, many words have irregular spellings (e.g. said, are, yacht). What is the best way to help children learn to read these words? To date, a number of different viewpoints have been put forward, but these viewpoints are seldom directly compared, and there is very little empirical evidence to adjudicate between them. Therefore, in this review, we outline the theoretical arguments for and against different methods of instruction, and synthesise the empirical research that does exist. We make recommendations for practice, and outline key areas where further evidence is required.

Keywords::

• irregular words
• reading instruction
• reading
• primary school

Notes

1 Also sometimes referred to as exception words.

2 Note that this process may also occur when decoding unfamiliar regular words.

3 Two studies, one in French (Casalis & Colé, 2009) and the other in Norwegain (Lyster, 2002), have explored the effects of morphological awareness training compared to phonological awareness training for beginning readers. However, these studies have conflicting findings, and the spelling systems of both these languages differ in ways that make it difficult to generalise findings to English.