The phrase “tricky words” reveals more about the programme than it does about the words themselves. It reflects an assumption that the grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) taught within the programme represent what is “normal” or “common”, and that anything outside this limited set is therefore irregular. In reality, these correspondences are not inherently tricky. They are simply not included, or not yet included, in the programme’s sequence.
 

In Reception, the pace of introduction is often slow, with children learning a relatively small number of correspondences, often around forty. This creates an artificial divide between words that are labelled decodable and those that are labelled “tricky”. Many high-frequency words fall into this second category, not because of any linguistic complexity, but because the knowledge required to map them has not been made available to the learner.

We have found, across thousands of children in Australia, that chant videos of these words, mapped to show which letters are graphemes, can bypass this, as children can access the learning at their own pace and no direct instruction is required. Teachers in England are told to highlight the part of the word that makes it ‘tricky’, yet when children see the word mapped and hear the sounds, they understand it immediately. No explanation is required. There is less ‘teaching’ and more learning. It is also easy to measure mastery. This constant need to instruct takes considerable time, and many children do not need it. It is a constrained skill, and asking teachers to teach in this way reflects an aspect of the system we are seeking to change. For example, the <ai> in the word said represents the same sound each time it appears in that word. Just show children the word, the mapping, and the sounds.

The Department for Education describes common-exception words as those containing unusual correspondences or correspondences not yet taught, and recommends introducing them gradually while drawing attention to the exceptional part. However, this framing is problematic. Many of these correspondences are not unusual in English. They are frequent and predictable within the wider system, even if they are not prioritised within a particular teaching sequence. Some grapheme–phoneme correspondences that appear in so-called exception words are not taught at all within phonics programmes, meaning that learners are expected to store these words without ever being shown how they work.
 

Many so-called “common exception words” are only exceptions in certain accents, not in others. Words like past, last, fast, path and bath follow expected sound–spelling patterns for many speakers. The problem arises when a limited mapping is taught as fixed. For example, if a child has only been taught <a> as /æ/ and then encounters grass but pronounces it /grɑːs/, the word is labelled “tricky”. In reality, the word hasn’t changed. The mismatch sits between the teaching and the child’s speech. What is being treated as an exception is often a result of instructional limitation, not a property of the word itself. This is also why we are calling for reform in teacher understanding of the self-teaching brain. When children are shown a word, see it mapped, and actively assign the phonemes while referring to the Phonics Pronunciation Code, the speech–print connection is secured. The word is no longer treated as something to remember or work around. It is understood. When this process is in place, there are no “exception words” for the learner, only words whose structure can be seen, heard and mapped.
 

This leads to a shift from mapping to memorisation. Instead of analysing the word and securing its sound structure, children are often encouraged to remember it as a visual whole or to focus on a “tricky bit”. This fragments the word and can undermine the development of a coherent orthographic system. It also creates unnecessary cognitive load, as learners are asked to treat some words as fundamentally different from others.

Ironically, the concern about cognitive overload can limit learning further. When children struggle with early phonics, teachers may reduce the number of words introduced, particularly high-frequency words, on the assumption that this will make learning more manageable. Yet if phonemic awareness is secure, the opposite is often true. Learners can approach any new word by identifying the sounds and mapping them to graphemes.

The process is consistent, regardless of whether the word has been pre-taught within a programme.

Starting with the word itself supports this process. The learner says the word, segments the speech sounds, and then maps each sound to its corresponding grapheme. In doing so, they demonstrate both decoding and encoding. The word is not treated as an exception, but as an instance of the same underlying system. This reinforces the alphabetic principle and supports the development of stable orthographic representations.

Crucially, this approach also increases opportunities for application. When words are no longer restricted by programme lists, they can be used more freely in reading and writing activities. Learners encounter them in meaningful contexts, revisit them, and strengthen their representations through use. This repeated, connected exposure is what supports fluency and independence.

Reframing so-called “tricky words” in this way shifts the focus from exception to explanation. It makes clear that the difficulty does not sit within the words themselves, but within the instructional model that withholds or fragments the code. When grapheme–phoneme relationships are made visible and learners are supported to map speech to print, every word can be approached in the same principled way. The label “tricky” is therefore not a linguistic reality, but a reflection of limited instructional scope.