Start in the Middle to Get to the Finish: Phonics Tricks for Strugglers

While some students–children and adults–slide seamlessly into word-sounding and independent reading mere months after they are taught the phonic code of English, others struggle endlessly. Many of these strugglers are older children and adults who “never quite learned” how to sound out words and thus have developed counterproductive guessing strategies.

Some are students with undiagnosed dyslexia. A good many are English language learners who are speakers and readers of languages with different writing systems, such as Arabic, Farsi, or Chinese. The title “Start in the Middle to Get to the Finish: Phonics Tricks For Strugglers” was inspired by my student Saeed, a twenty-something young Saudi Arabian man who started classes with NO English at all and who, by dint his persistence, learned SOME English–fairly competent speaking, even, but unable to read well. I was tasked with tutoring him after he had been at the language center off and on for two years, continuing to struggle mightily with reading.

I noticed that whenever he came to a word he hadn’t already “learned,” i.e., memorized, he would pronounce the first few consonants and then guess the rest, wildly and usually incorrectly. For example “strategy” might morph into “streetlight,” “Brad” into “bard,” “grill” into “girl.” Often, the pronunciation that he hit upon was one that disregarded the vowel sound, e.g., “tan” for “town.”

As he continued to struggle I discovered that it made all the difference when I directed him to pronounce the vowel sound FIRST and then tackle the word. One day, as he was getting the hang of it, he exclaimed joyfully, “Teacher! When I start in the middle, I can read the word!!”