STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF PHONETIC APPROACH | TEC
Letter identification is a vital process in teaching reading at an early age. One of the common methods of learning how to read is the phonetic approach. This technique can be achieved by letting a child assimilate the shape of the letter to match its corresponding sound and incorporate them together to form a new word. The phonetic Approach focuses on understanding a child’s ability of decoding; part-to-whole processing of text.
Advantages:
- MEMORIZATION TRAINING
A child’s cognitive skills will be developed as he studies the pairing of sound and letter. It also aids the familiarization of a child with the English alphabet in a short period of time.
- AVERAGE SPELLING RECOGNITION
Most of the basic words can be spelled through sound identifications. This is one of the main reasons why the phonetic approach is very common to use especially when introducing a new language to a child or even to young adults.
Disadvantages:
- POOR COMPREHENSION SKILL
Since the phonetic approach is a letter sound basis, it draws too much attention and limits the child’s apprehension to the point and deeper meaning of the sentence or even the word he reads.
- SPELLING INCOMPETENCE
Not all words, especially the complex and longer ones, are spelled phonetically. This
restrains a child’s vocabulary and may even intimidate him into lengthy words to spell.
- PHONETIC DEPENDENCY
There is a big tendency that a child will be more dependent on how a word is pronounced to spell after hearing a word to break down and visualize how to associate letters in a word in his own mind as he prepares to write it.
- SLOW SENTENCE READER
Since the child is taught to be more attentive in studying a word rather than the whole sentence itself; this gives him a hard time considering the rapidity of his reading as long as he pronounces the words correctly as possible.
