“They Can Decode the Words” … But Can They?

I see this so often: “they can decode the words”. Or “once they can decode…”

We are constantly told children can decode the words but can’t understand them, as though this proves phonics isn’t enough. In reality, it often demonstrates a lack of understanding about what is and isn’t actually taught in phonics lessons.

It’s a myth repeated over and over. I’ve seen versions of this at least five times on social media this morning alone.

If I give you a word that you don’t already have stored in your spoken language, you don’t actually know the word or how it’s pronounced, so you can’t truly decode it. You can produce an approximation of what it might be, but that isn’t the same as accurate decoding.

You can only accurately decode a word that already exists within your spoken language system.

Struggling students often can’t figure out words unless they consist mainly of the taught code, because they are not yet successfully applying partial decoding with cues, set-for-variability, or other self-teaching processes. They are not yet securely in the self-teaching phase.

Language knowledge helps because children search for the word that best fits. For example, if you know the word “put” and try to decode it only through the Core Code, it may initially rhyme with “cut” until lexical knowledge kicks in and you adjust it.

So yes, knowing words matters because children are constantly searching their brains for the word that fits the speech pattern, context, and meaning.

But almost everyone talking about phonics seems to miss what the reading brain is actually doing, and why word mapping throughout the day and using the 60 second spelling routine matters so much. It bonds speech sounds, graphemes, and meaning together while also boosting statistical learning.

Word mapping also shows how much of the code isn’t taught, and why we need the ‘core code’ mastered really early and easily. Unfortunately this is being done badly by most having to follow structured literacy and synthetic phonics programmes. That’s why we launched Phonics Reform England (PRE) Emma Hartnell-Baker aka The Word Mapping Nerd #phonics #wordmapping #phonicsreformengland