Phonics Is Supposed to Lead to Self-Teaching

Phonics Reform England (PRE) is a growing movement focused on one central question:

How do we ensure that explicit instruction successfully kick starts the self-teaching phase so that every child can, and wants to, read for pleasure before they enter KS2?

The goal of phonics instruction is independence.

Children are first taught grapheme-phoneme correspondences so that they can generate a possible pronunciation from print. But skilled reading depends on far more than producing one fixed sound for each grapheme.

Readers must learn to adjust that first attempt when it does not match a known spoken word.

This process has been described as set for variability (SfV), and research suggests it plays an important role in moving from early decoding into fluent word recognition (Tunmer & Chapman, 2012; Steacy et al., 2019).

For example:

• cut versus put

• tint versus pint

• home versus some

• and versus any

Children cannot solve these words through decoding of the GPC content taught in synthetic phonics programmes alone.

They must use their knowledge of spoken language, flexible grapheme-phoneme relationships, and increasing awareness of English orthography to adjust their pronunciation until it matches a known word.

That’s the beginning of self-teaching.

Share’s self-teaching hypothesis (1995) proposes that each successful attempt at decoding an unfamiliar word creates an opportunity for orthographic learning. Ehri’s work on orthographic mapping similarly explains how readers store words in memory through repeated connections between graphemes, phonemes, and meaning (Ehri, 2014).

The critical issue is whether children are successfully making that transition.

Passing a phonics screening check based on around 95 taught grapheme-phoneme correspondences does not automatically mean a child can independently navigate the complexity of English orthography.

For many children, this transition happens naturally through reading experience.

For others, it doesn’t.

And for some children, excessive dependence on explicit phonics instruction can actually delay movement into flexible, independent word-solving if they remain reliant on prompts, segmented drills, or tightly controlled texts rather than developing adaptive decoding and self-correction strategies.

Synthetic phonics programmes can support the beginning of the journey.

But they do not provide sufficient support for every child to become a fluent reader and accurate speller.

Until we address why some children fail to bridge from explicit instruction into self-teaching, we won’t bring about the change we all want.

That’s why PRE exists.

References

• Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5-21.

• Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55(2), 151-218.

• Steacy, L. M., Compton, D. L., Petscher, Y., Elliott, J. D., Smith, K., Rueckl, J. G., & Pugh, K. R. (2019). Development and prediction of children's oral reading fluency and set for variability. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(1), 85-104.

• Tunmer, W. E., & Chapman, J. W. (2012). The simple view of reading redux: Vocabulary knowledge and the independent components hypothesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 45(5), 453-466.