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An investigation of the effects of phonics teaching on children's progress in reading and spelling

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Reconsidering the Evidence That Systematic Phonics Is More Effective Than Alternative Methods of Reading Instruction

• Review Article
• Open access
• Published: 08 January 2020
• Volume 32 , pages 681–705, ( 2020 )

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• Jeffrey S. Bowers   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9558-5010 1  

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There is a widespread consensus in the research community that reading instruction in English should first focus on teaching letter (grapheme) to sound (phoneme) correspondences rather than adopt meaning-based reading approaches such as whole language instruction. That is, initial reading instruction should emphasize systematic phonics. In this systematic review, I show that this conclusion is not justified based on (a) an exhaustive review of 12 meta-analyses that have assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics and (b) summarizing the outcomes of teaching systematic phonics in all state schools in England since 2007. The failure to obtain evidence in support of systematic phonics should not be taken as an argument in support of whole language and related methods, but rather, it highlights the need to explore alternative approaches to reading instruction.

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There is a widespread consensus in the research community that early reading instruction in English should emphasize systematic phonics. That is, initial reading instruction should explicitly and systematically teach letter (grapheme) to sound (phoneme) correspondences. This contrasts with the main alternative method called whole language in which children are encouraged to focus on the meanings of words embedded in meaningful text, and where letter-sound correspondences are only taught incidentally when needed (Moats 2000 ). Within the psychological research community, the “Reading Wars” (Pearson 2004 ) that pitted whole language and phonics is largely settled—systematic phonics is claimed to be more effective. Indeed, it is widely claimed that systematic phonics is an essential part of initial reading instruction.

The evidence for this conclusion comes from various sources, including government panels that assessed the effectiveness of different approaches to reading instruction in the USA (National Reading Panel 2000 ), the UK (the Rose Review; Rose 2006 ), and Australia (Rowe 2005 ), 12 meta-analyses of experimental research, as well as nonexperimental studies that have tracked progress of students in England since the requirement to teach systematic phonics in state schools since 2007. The results are claimed to be clear-cut. For example, in his review for the English government, Sir Jim Rose writes

“Having considered a wide range of evidence, the review has concluded that the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming …” (Rose 2006 , p. 20).

Similarly, in a recent influential review of reading acquisition that calls for an end to the reading wars (in support of systematic phonics), Castles, Nation, and Rastle ( 2018 ) write

It will be clear from our review so far that there is strong scientific consensus on the effectiveness of systematic phonics instruction during the initial periods of reading instruction.

Countless quotes to this effect could be provided.

Importantly, this strong consensus has resulted in important policy changes in England and USA. Based on Rose ( 2006 ), systematic phonics became a legal requirement in state-funded primary schools in England since 2007, and to ensure compliance, all children (ages 5–6) complete a phonics screening check (PSC) since 2012 that measures how well they can sound out a set of regular words and meaningless pseudowords. Similarly, based on the recommendations of the National Reading Panel (NRP 2000 ), systematic phonics instruction was included in the Common Core State Standards Initiative in the USA (http:// www.corestandards.org/ ). The Thomas Fordham Foundation concluded that the NRP document is the third most influential policy work in US education history (Swanson and Barlage 2006 ).

Nevertheless, despite this strong consensus, I will show that there is little or no evidence that systematic phonics is better than the main alternative methods used in schools, including whole language and balanced literacy. This should not be taken as an argument in support of these alternative methods, but rather, it should be taken as evidence that the current methods used in schools are far from idea. Once this is understood, my hope is that researchers and politicians will be more motivated to consider alternative methods.

Structure of Paper

The remainder of the paper is organized in three main sections. First, I review the most common methods of reading instruction. There are some points of overlap between the alternative methods, but a commitment to systematic phonics entails some specific claims about what constitutes effective early reading instruction. Second, I explore the experimental evidence taken to support of systematic phonics by providing a detailed and exhaustive review of all meta-analyses that have assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics. The conclusion from this review is simple: There is little or no evidence that systematic phonics is better than the most common alternative methods used in schools. The problem is that (a) the findings are often mischaracterized by the authors of the reports, and these mischaracterizations are passed on and exaggerated by many others citing the work and (b) that the designs of the meta-analyses often do not even test the hypothesis that systematic phonics is more effective than whole language and other common methods. Third, I review the outcomes of a large naturalist experiment, namely, the impact of requiring systematic phonics in all English state schools since 2007. Again, the findings provide little or no evidence that systematic phonics has improved reading. Together, this should motivate researchers to consider alternative teaching methods.

What Is Systematic Phonics and What Are the Common Alternatives?

All forms of reading instruction are motivated by one or more of the following facts: (1) Written words have pronunciations; (2) written words have a meaning; (3) words are composed of parts, including letters and morphemes; (4) written words tend to occur in meaningful text; and (5) the ultimate goal of reading is to extract meaning from text. Different forms of instruction emphasize some of these points and downplay or ignore others, but there is nevertheless some overlap between different methods, and this complicates the task of comparing methods. For example, whole language instruction focuses on understanding words in the context of text, but it also includes some degree of phonics (e.g., Moats 2000 ; NPR, 2000), and this has implications for how the meta-analyses described below can be interpreted. A further complication is that it is widely claimed that systematic phonics should be embedded in a broader literacy curriculum. For instance, the NRP (2000) emphasizes that systematic phonics should be integrated with other forms of instruction, including phonemic awareness, fluency, and comprehension strategies, and again, this makes it more difficult to make claims regarding systematic phonics per se. Because of these complexities, it is important to review systematic phonics and its relation to alternative methods in some detail so that the claims regarding the importance of systematic phonics can be evaluated.

As noted above, systematic phonics explicitly teaches children grapheme-phoneme correspondences prior to emphasizing the meanings of written words in text (as in whole language or balanced literacy instruction) or the meaning of written words in isolation (as in morphological instruction). That is, systematic phonics is committed to the “phonology first” hypothesis (Bowers and Bowers 2018a ). It is called systematic because it teaches grapheme-phoneme correspondences in an organized sequence as opposed to incidentally or on a “when-needed” basis. Several versions of systematic phonics exist (most notably synthetic and analytic), but they all adopt the phonology first hypothesis.

The main alternative to phonics is whole language that primarily focuses on the meaning of words presented in text. Teachers are expected to provide a literacy-rich environment for their students and to combine speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Students are taught to use critical thinking strategies and to use context to guess words that they do not recognize. Importantly, whole language typically includes some phonics, but the phonics instruction is not systematically taught (e.g., children are taught to sound out words when they cannot guess the word from context). For example, the authors of the NRP (2000) report write

Whole language teachers typically provide some instruction in phonics, usually as part of invented spelling activities or through the use of graphophonemic prompts during reading (Routman, 1996 ). However, their approach is to teach it unsystematically and incidentally in context as the need arises. The whole language approach regards letter-sound correspondences, referred to as graphophonemics, as just one of three cueing systems (the others being semantic/meaning cues and syntactic/language cues) that are used to read and write text. Whole language teachers believe that phonics instruction should be integrated into meaningful reading, writing, listening, and speaking activities and taught incidentally when they perceive it is needed. As children attempt to use written language for communication, they will discover naturally that they need to know about letter-sound relationships and how letters function in reading and writing. When this need becomes evident, teachers are expected to respond by providing the instruction.

The fact that whole language (and related methods) includes nonsystematic phonics turns out to be critical to the evaluations of the meta-analyses that follow.

Another approach to reading instruction called balanced literacy is designed to combine whole language with its focus on reading for meaning with systematic phonics. However, it is often claimed that balanced literacy is effectively just another name for whole language given that the phonics in balanced literacy is not taught first, not given enough emphasis, nor is it taught systematically (e.g., Moats 2000 ).

Another teaching method is called whole word or sight word training in which children are taught to identify individual words (out of context) without breaking down the words into phonemes or other sublexical parts. For instance, in order to improve word naming, children might be given a list of written words and then one of the words is read aloud. The child’s task is to select the corresponding written word, with the goal of improving their ability to read the word later (McArthur et al. 2013 , 2015 ). Similarly, the look-say-cover-write method is commonly used in whole word instruction to teach children the spelling of words. In this method, a child looks at a word, reads it aloud, covers the word up, and then attempts to spell the word (for review, see Browder and Xin 1998 ). Although whole word and whole language methods are different in many ways (most notably in whether some or no phonics is included), the two methods are often treated equivalently in the meta-analyses described below, and this has important implications for how the meta-analyses can be interpreted.

Morphological instruction, like whole language or balanced instruction, emphasizes the importance of attaching meaning to words, but it also teaches children to break down words into their meaningful parts (prefixes, bases, and suffixes). For review of this method, see Carlisle ( 2000 ). Related to this, structured word inquiry (SWI) teaches children the interrelation between all the sublexical components of written words (phonology, morphology, and etymology) in order to make sense of word spellings with the aim of improving all aspects of literacy, including reading, spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension (Bowers and Kirby 2010 ). Like systematic phonics, this approach explicitly teaches children the mappings between graphemes and phonemes, but children are taught how these mappings are organized within morphemes from the start (Bowers and Bowers 2017 , 2018a , 2018b , 2018c ).

The overlap between methods and the claim that systematic phonics should be embedded with other methods makes the task of assessing the efficacy of systematic phonics per se more difficult. Nevertheless, proponents of systematic phonics are committed to two specific claims about what does and does not constitute good instruction, meaning that this approach can be evaluated.

First, it is claimed that systematic phonics should be taught before meaning-based approaches that focus on the meaning of written words in the context of sentences or focus on the meaningful sublexical structure of words (e.g., morphological instruction). For example, Castles, Rastle, and Nation ( 2018 ) write

…morphological instruction… may detract from vital time spent learning spelling-sound relationships. Instead, we would predict that the benefits of explicit morphological instruction are more likely to be observed somewhat later in reading development…

The claim that grapheme-phoneme correspondences should be taught prior to any morphological instruction is widespread (e.g., Adams 1994 ; Ehri and McCormick 1998 ; Henry 1989 ; Larkin and Snowling 2008 ; Taylor et al. 2017 ).

Second, it is claimed that grapheme-phoneme correspondences should be taught systematically (as the name suggests). That is, there should be a program of instruction in which all the relevant grapheme-phoneme mappings are taught explicitly in an ordered manner. This is not possible when teaching the grapheme-phoneme correspondences of words embedded in meaningful texts as typical with whole language (given that order of grapheme-phonemes in meaningful texts is too variable). The main justification for systematic phonics is empirical, namely, the widespread claim that studies support systematic phonics over alternative methods, as summarized in multiple meta-analyses detailed below.

To summarize, there are a number of different forms of reading instruction, some of which emphasize letter-sound mappings before other properties of words (e.g., systematic phonics), others that emphasize meaning from the start (e.g., whole language), and others that claim that the phonology and meaning of word spellings should be the focus of instruction from the beginning (structured word inquiry). There is no disagreement that reading instruction needs to ultimately incorporate both meaning and phonology, but the widespread consensus in the research community is that instruction needs to systematically teach children the grapheme-phoneme correspondences before meaning-based strategies are emphasized. Accordingly, almost all researchers today claim that systematic phonics is better than whole language, balanced literacy, and all forms of instruction that consider morphology from the beginning. The evidence for this claim is considered below and found wanting.

A Critical Examination of the Meta-Analyses Taken to Support Systematic Phonics

A total of 12 meta-analyses have assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics for individuals of different ages and abilities. In most cases (although not all), the meta-analyses are taken to support the conclusion that systematic phonics is an essential component of initial reading instruction and more effective than common alternatives such as whole language. As detailed below, this conclusion is not justified by any of the meta-analyses. The results have been mischaracterized by the authors themselves (summarizing the results in ways that mislead the reader), and in most cases, the design of the meta-analyses was not even designed to test the conclusions that were drawn by the authors.

National Reading Panel ( 2000 ) and Ehri et al. ( 2001 ) Meta-Analyses

The seminal report most often taken to support the efficacy of systematic phonics compared with alternative methods was a government document produced by the National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000), with the findings later published in peer review form (Ehri et al. 2001 ). The authors carried out the first meta-analysis evaluating the effects of systematic phonics compared with forms of instruction that include unsystematic or no phonics across a range of reading measures, including word naming, nonword naming, and text comprehension tasks. The meta-analysis included 66 treatment-control comparisons taken from 38 experiments, and the main findings can be seen in Table 1 . Based on these findings, Ehri et al. ( 2001 ) concluded in the abstract:

“Systematic phonics instruction helped children learn to read better than all forms of control group instruction, including whole language. In sum, systematic phonics instruction proved effective and should be implemented as part of literacy programs to teach beginning reading as well as to prevent and remediate reading difficulties.”

The NRP report has been cited over 24,000 times and continues to be used in support of systematic phonics, with over 1000 citations in 2019. In addition, the Ehri et al. ( 2001 ) article has been cited over 1000 times. However, a careful look at the results undermines these strong conclusions.

The most important limitation is that systematic phonics did not help children labeled “low achieving” poor readers ( d  = 0.15, not significant). These were children above first grade who were below average readers and whose cognitive level was below average or not assessed. By contrast, children labeled “reading disabled” who were below grade level in reading but at least average cognitively and were above first grade in most cases did benefit ( d  = 0.32). Note, by definition, half the population of children above grade 1 will have an IQ below average, and it is likely that more than 50% of struggling readers above grade 1 will fall into this category given the comorbidity of developmental disorders (Gooch et al. 2014 ). Of course, additional research may show that systematic phonics does benefit low achieving poor readers (the NRP only included eight comparison groups in this condition), but there is no evidence for this from the NRP meta-analysis.

Second, based on the finding that effect sizes were greater when phonics instruction began by first grade ( d  = 0.55) rather than after first grade ( d  = 0.27), the authors of the NRP wrote in the executive summary “Phonics instruction taught early proved much more effective than phonics instruction introduced after first grade” (pp. 2–93). But in the body of the text, it becomes clear that findings do not support this strong conclusion. One problem is that the majority of older students (78%) in the various studies included in the NRP analysis were either low achieving readers or students with reading disability, and as noted above, systematic phonics was less effective with both these populations (especially the former group). With regard to the normally developing older readers, the NRP meta-analysis only included seven comparison groups, and four of them used the Orton-Gillingham method that was developed for younger students. As noted by Ehri et al. ( 2001 ):

“The conclusion that phonics instruction is less effective when introduced beyond first grade may be premature… Other types of phonics programs might prove more effective for older readers without any reading problems.” (p. 428)

This is straightforwardly at odds with the above executive summary and explains why so many authors cite the NRP as providing evidence that early phonics instruction is important.

Third, although the authors of the NRP emphasized that the systematic phonics had long-term impact, the effect size declined from d  = 0.41 when children were tested immediately following the intervention to d  = 0.27 following a 4 to 12-month delay. However, the authors did not assess whether the long-term benefits extended to spelling, reading texts, or reading comprehension. Given that the short-term effects on spelling, reading texts, or reading comprehension was much reduced compared with the overall short-term effect (Table 1 ), there is no reason to assume these effects persisted.

Fourth, the evidence that that systematic phonics is more effective than whole language is weaker still. This claim is not based on the overall effect size of d  = 0.41, but rather, on a subanalysis that specifically compared systematic phonics to whole language. This analysis was based on 12 rather than 38 studies, and not one of these 12 studies used a randomized control trial (RCT) design. This analysis showed a reduced overall effect of d  = 0.31 (still significant), with the largest effect obtained for decoding (mean of the reported effect sizes was d  = 0.55) and smallest effect on comprehension (mean of the reported effect sizes was d  = 0.19), with only two studies assessing performance following a delay. And although the NRP is often taken to support the efficacy of synthetic systematic phonics (the version of phonics legally mandated in the UK), the NRP meta-analysis only included four studies relevant for this comparison (of 12 studies that compared systematic phonics with whole language, only four assessed synthetic phonics). The effect sizes in order of magnitude were d  = 0.91 and d  = 0.12 in two studies that assessed grade 1 and 2 students, respectively (Foorman et al. 1998 ); d  = 0.07 in a study that asses grade 1 students (Traweek & Berninger, 1997 ); and d  = − 0.47 in a study carried out on grade 2 students (Wilson & Norman, 1998 ).

In sum, rather than the strong conclusions emphasized the executive summary of the NRP ( 2000 ) and the abstract of Ehri et al. ( 2001 ), the appropriate conclusion from this meta-analysis should be something like this:

Systematic phonics provides a small short-term benefit to spelling, reading text, and comprehension, with no evidence that these effects persist following a delay of 4–12 months (the effects were not reported nor assessed). It is unclear whether there is an advantage of introducing phonics early, and there are no short- or long-term benefit for majority of struggling readers above grade 1 (children with below average intelligence). Systematic phonics did provide a moderate short-term benefit to regular word and pseudoword naming, with overall benefits significant but reduced by a third following 4–12 months.

And even these weak conclusions in support of systematic phonics are not justified given subsequent work by Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) and Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) who reanalyzed the studies (or a subset of studies) included in the NRP, as described next.

Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 )

Camilli et al. ( 2003 ) identified a number of flaws in the NRP meta-analysis, but here I emphasize one, namely, it was not designed to assess whether there is any benefit in teaching phonics systematically. Similar design choices were made by all subsequent meta-analyses taken to support systematic phonics, and this has led to unwarranted conclusions from these meta-analyses as I detail below.

As noted above, the headline figure from the NRP analysis is that systematic phonics showed an overall immediate effect size of d  = 0.41. What needs to be emphasized is that this figure is the product of comparing systematic phonics with a heterogeneous control condition that included (1) intervention studies that used unsystematic phonics and (2) intervention studies that used no phonics. As elementary point of logic, if you compare systematic phonics to a mixture of different methods, some of which use unsystematic phonics and other that use no phonics, then it is not possible to conclude that systematic phonics is more effective than unsystematic phonics. In order to assess whether the “systematic” in systematic phonics is important, it is necessary to compare systematic phonics to studies that included unsystematic phonics, something that the NRP ( 2000 ) did not do.

The reason why this is important is that unsystematic phonics is standard in common alternatives to systematic phonics. Indeed, in addition to the widespread use of unsystematic phonics in the USA prior to the NPR ( 2000 ) report (as shown above in a quote from NRP), Her Majesty’s Inspectorate ( 1990 ) reported that unsystematic phonics was also common in the UK prior to the legal requirement to teach systematic synthetic phonics in England in 2007, writing

“...phonic skills were taught almost universally and usually to beneficial effect” (p. 2) and that “Successful teachers of reading and the majority of schools used a mix of methods each reinforcing the other as the children’s reading developed” (p. 15).

Accordingly, the important question is whether systematic phonics is more effective than the unsystematic phonics that is used in alternative teaching methods.

In order to assess the importance of teaching phonics systematically, Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) coded the studies included in the NRP as having no phonics, unsystematic phonics, or systematic phonics. In addition, the authors also noted that some moderator variables were ignored by the NRP analysis that may have contributed to the outcomes. Accordingly, the authors also coded whether or not the intervention studies included language-based reading activities such as shared writing, shared reading, or guided reading, whether treatments were carried out in the regular class or involved tutoring outside the class, and whether basal readers were used (if known). Both the experimental and control groups were coded with regard to these moderator variables. It should also be noted that the Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) analyses were carried out on a slightly modified dataset given problems with some of the studies and conditions included in the NRP report. For example, the authors dropped one study (Vickery et al., 1987 ) that did not include a control condition (an exclusion condition according to the NRP) and included three studies that were incorrectly excluded (the studies did fulfill the NRP inclusion criterion), resulting in a total of 40 rather than 38 studies. The interested reader can find out more details regarding the slightly modified dataset in Camilli et al. ( 2003 ), but in any case, the different datasets produce the same outcome as discussed below.

The Camilli et al. ( 2003 ) analysis showed that effect size of systematic phonics compared with nonsystematic phonics was significant, but roughly half the size of the effect of systematic phonics reported in the NRP report ( d  = 0.24 vs. d =  0.41). Interesting, the analysis also found significant and numerically larger effects of systematic language activities ( d  = 0.29) and tutoring ( d  = 0.40). The subsequent analysis by Camilli et al. ( 2006 ) was carried out on the same dataset but used a new method of analysis (a multilevel modeling approach) and included three rather than two levels of language-based reading activities as a moderator variable (none vs., some, vs. high levels of language-based activities). This analysis revealed an even smaller effect of systematic phonics ( d  = 0.12) that was no longer significant. Camilli et al. ( 2006 ) took these findings to challenge the strong conclusion drawn by the authors of the NRP.

These analyses were subsequently supported by Stuebing et al. ( 2008 ) who reanalyzed the Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) dataset and showed that the different outcomes were not the consequence of the slightly different studies included in the Camilli and the NPR meta-analyses. However, Stuebing et al. ( 2008 ) drew a different conclusion, writing

The NRP question is analogous to asking about the value of receiving the intervention versus not receiving the intervention. The Camilli et al. ( 2003 ) report is analogous to asking what is the value of receiving a strong form of the intervention compared to a receiving weaker forms of the intervention and relative to factors that moderate the outcomes. From our view, both questions are reasonable for intervention studies.

But the two questions are not equally relevant to teaching policy. The relevant question is whether systematic phonics is better than preexisting practices. Given that unsystematic phonics was standard practice, and given the Camilli et al. ( 2006 ) analysis failed to show an advantage of systematic over unsystematic phonics, Camilli et al. analysis challenges the main conclusion that schools should introduce systematic phonics.

To avoid any conclusion, it is important to highlight that the Camilli et al. ( 2006 ) reanalysis of the NRP dataset does not suggest that grapheme-phoneme knowledge is unimportant. Indeed, their reanalysis suggests that systematic phonics is significantly better than a nonphonics control condition. Rather, their key finding is that systematic phonics was no better than nonsystematic phonics as commonly used in schools.

Torgerson et al. ( 2006 )

The Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) meta-analysis was primarily motivated by another key limitation of the NRP report not touched on thus far, namely, the fact that the NRP included studies that employed both randomized and nonrandomized designs. Given the methodological problems with nonrandomized studies, Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) carried out a new meta-analysis that was limited to randomized control trials (RCTs). But it is worth noting two additional limitations of the NRP report that motivated this analysis.

First, the authors were concerned that bias played a role in 13 RCT studies included in the original NRP report given that the NRP report only considered published studies (studies that obtained null effects may have been more difficult to publish). Indeed, the authors carried out a funnel plot analysis on these 13 studies and concluded that the results provided: “…prima facie evidence for publication bias, since it seems highly unlikely that no RCT has ever returned a null or negative result in this field.” Accordingly, Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) searched for unpublished studies that met their inclusion criteria. They found one additional study that reported an effect size of − 0.17 that they included in their analyses. Note that this bias would have inflated the small effects reported in the NRP ( 2000 ) and the Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) meta-analyses. Second, Torgerson et al. removed two studies that should have been excluded from the NRP analyses (Gittelman and Feingold 1983 , because it did not include a phonics instruction intervention group; Manzticopoulos et al., 1992 , because the children in the control condition did not receive a reading intervention, and the attrition rate of the studies was extreme, with 437 children randomized and only 168 children tested). This led to 12 studies that compared systematic phonics to a control condition that included unsystematic phonics or no phonics instruction control. The key positive result was with regard to word reading accuracy with an effect size estimated to between 0.27 and 0.38 (depending on assumptions built into the analyses). By contrast, no significant effects were obtained for comprehension ( d estimates ranging between 0.24 and 0.35), or spelling ( d  = 0.09).

There are, however, reasons to question the significant word reading accuracy results. This result was largely due to one outlier study (Umbach et al. 1989 ) that obtained a massive effect on word reading accuracy ( d  = 2.69). Footnote 1 In this study, the control group was taught by two regular teachers with help from two university supervised practicum students, whereas the experimental group was taught by four Masters’ degree students who were participating in a practicum at a nearby university. Accordingly, there is a clear confound in the design of the study. Torgerson et al. themselves reanalyzed the results when this study was excluded and found that the word reading accuracy result was reduced ( d estimates between 0.20 and 0.21) with the effect just reaching significance one analysis ( p  = 0.03) and nonsignificant on another ( p  = 0.09). For summary of findings, see Table 1 . And even these findings likely overestimate the efficacy of systematic phonics given the evidence that bias may have inflated the estimate of effect sizes in this study. As Torgerson et al. wrote

In addition, the strong possibility of publication bias affecting the results cannot be excluded. This is based on results of the funnel plot... It seems clear that a cautious approach is justified (p. 48).

The conclusions one can draw are further weakened by the quality of the studies included in the meta-analysis, with the authors writing

…none of the 14 trials reported method of random allocation or sample size justification, and only two reported blinded assessment of outcome… all were lacking in their reporting of some issues that are important for methodological rigor. Quality of reporting is a good but not perfect indicator of design quality. Therefore due to the limitations in the quality of reporting the overall quality of the trials was judged to be “variable” but limited.

Nevertheless, despite all the above issues, the authors concluded

Systematic phonics instruction within a broad literacy curriculum appears to have a greater effect on childrens progress in reading than whole language or whole word approaches. The effect size is moderate but still important.

This quote not only greatly exaggerates the strength of the findings (which helps explain why the meta-analysis has been cited over 250 times in support of systematic phonics), but it again reveals a misunderstanding regarding the conclusions one can draw from the design of the meta-analysis. The study continued to use the design of the NRP ( 2000 ) meta-analysis that compared systematic phonics to a control condition that combined (1) nonsystematic phonics and (2) no phonics. Accordingly, it is not possible to conclude that systematic phonics is more effective than whole word instruction that uses unsystematic phonics. That would require a direct comparison between conditions that was not carried out.

To summarize thus far, a careful review of the NPR ( 2000 ) findings show that that the benefits of systematic phonics for reading text, spelling, and comprehension are weak and short-lived, with reduced or no benefits for struggling readers beyond grade 1. The subsequent Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 ) and Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) reanalyses further weakens these conclusions. Indeed, Camilli et al. ( 2006 ) found no overall benefit of systematic phonics over nonsystematic phonics, and Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) did not find any benefit of systematic phonics in the subset of RCT studies included in the NRP for word reading accuracy, comprehension, or spelling (when one outlier study was excluded). The null effects in the Torgerson et al. ( 2006 ) meta-analysis were obtained despite evidence for publication bias and flawed design that combined unsystematic and no phonics studies into a control condition (with both of these factors serving to inflate the benefits of systematic phonics).

McArthur et al. ( 2012 )

This meta-analysis was designed to assess the efficacy of systematic phonics with children, adolescents, and adults with reading difficulties. The authors included studies that use randomization, quasi-randomization, or minimization (that minimizes differences between groups for one or more factors) to assign participants to either a systematic phonics intervention group or a control group that received no training or alternative training that did not involve any reading activity (e.g., math training). That is, the control group received no phonics at all. Based on these criteria, the authors identified 11 studies that assessed a range of reading outcomes, although some outcome measures were only assessed in a few studies. Critically, the authors found a significant effect of word reading accuracy ( d  = 0.47, p  = 0.03) and nonword reading accuracy ( d  = 0.76, p  < 0.01), whereas no significant effects were obtained in word reading fluency ( d  = − 0.51; expected direction), reading comprehension ( d  = 0.14), spelling ( d  = 0.36), and nonword reading fluency ( d  = 0.38, the unexpected direction). Based on the results, the authors concluded that systematic phonics improved performance, but they were also cautious in their conclusion, writing

…there is a widely held belief that phonics training is the best way to treat poor reading. Given this belief, we were surprised to find that of 6632 records, we found only 11 studies that examined the effect of a relatively pure phonics training programme in poor readers. While the outcomes of these studies generally support the belief in phonics, many more randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are needed before we can be confident about the strength and extent of the effects of phonics training per se in English-speaking poor word readers.

But there are reasons to question even these modest conclusions. One notable feature of the word reading accuracy results is that they were largely driven by two studies (Levy and Lysynchuk 1997 ; Levy et al. 1999 ) with effect sizes of d  = 1.12 and d  = 1.80, respectively. The remaining eight studies that assessed reading word accuracy reported a mean effect size of 0.16 (see Appendix 1.1, page 63). This is problematic given that the children in the Levy studies were trained on one set of words, and then, reading accuracy was assessed on another set of words that shared either onsets or rhymes with the trained items (e.g., a child might have been trained on the word beak and later be tested on the word peak ; the stimuli were not presented in either paper). Accordingly, the large benefits observed in the phonics conditions compared with a nontrained control group only shows that training generalized to highly similar words rather than word reading accuracy more generally (the claim of the meta-analysis). In addition, both Levy et al. studies taught systematic phonics using one-on-one tutoring. Although McArthur et al. reported that group size did not have an overall impact on performance, one-on-one training studies with a tutor showed an average effect size of d  = 0.93 (over three studies). Accordingly, the large effect size for word reading accuracy may be more the product of one-on-one training with a tutor rather than any benefits of phonics per se, consistent with the findings of Camilli et al. ( 2003 ). In the absence of the two studies by levy and colleagues, there is no evidence from the McArthur et al. ( 2012 ) meta-analysis that systematic phonics condition improved word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, reading comprehension, spelling, or nonword reading fluency, leaving only a benefit for nonword reading accuracy.

But even putting these concerns aside, the most important point to note is that this meta-analysis compared systematic phonics to no extra training at all, or to training on nonreading tasks. Accordingly, it is not appropriate to attribute any benefits to systematic phonics. Any form of extra instruction may have mediated the (extremely limited) gains. So once again, this analysis should not be used to make any claims that systematic phonics is better than standard alternative methods, such as whole language that do include unsystematic phonics.

Galuschka et al. ( 2014 )

Galuschka et al. carried out a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies that focused on children and adolescents with reading difficulties. The authors identified 22 trials with a total of 49 comparisons of experimental and control groups that tested a wide range of interventions, including five trials evaluating reading fluency trainings, three phonemic awareness instructions, three reading comprehension trainings, 29 phonics instructions, three auditory trainings, two medical treatments, and four interventions with colored overlays or lenses. Outcomes were divided into reading and spelling measures.

The authors noted that only phonics produced a significant effect, with an overall effect size of g ′ = 0.32, and concluded

This finding is consistent with those reported in previous meta-analyses... At the current state of knowledge, it is adequate to conclude that the systematic instruction of letter-sound correspondences and decoding strategies, and the application of these skills in reading and writing activities, is the most effective method for improving literacy skills of children and adolescents with reading disabilities

However, there are serious problems with this conclusion. Most notably, the overall effect sizes observed for phonics ( g ′ = 0.32) was similar to the outcomes with phonemic awareness instruction ( g ′ = 0.28), reading fluency training ( g ′ = 0.30), auditory training ( g ′ = 0.39), and color overlays ( g ′ = 0.32), with only reading comprehension training ( g ′ = 0.18) and medical treatment ( g ′ = 0.12) producing numerically reduced effects. The reason significant results were only obtained for phonics is that there were many more phonics interventions. In order to support their conclusion that phonics is more effective, the authors need to show an interaction between the phonics condition and the alternative methods. They did not report this analysis, and given the similar effect sizes across conditions (with small sample sizes), this analysis would not be significant. Of course, future research might support the author conclusion, but this meta-analysis does not support it.

To further compromise the authors’ conclusion, Galuschka et al. reported evidence that the published phonics studies were biased using a funnel plot analysis. Using a method called Duval and Tweedie’s trim and fill they measured the extent of publication bias and estimated an unbiased effect size for systematic phonics to be greatly reduced, although still significant, g ′ = 0.198. And yet again, the design of the meta-analysis did not assess whether systematic phonics was more effective than unsystematic phonics (let alone show that systematic phonics is more effective than the alternative methods they did investigate). Nevertheless, the meta-analysis is frequently cited as evidence in support of systematic phonics over whole language (e.g., Lim and Oei 2015 ; Treiman 2018 ; Van der Kleij et al. 2017 ).

Suggate ( 2010 , 2016 )

Suggate ( 2010 ) carried out a meta-analysis to investigate the relative advantages of systematic phonics, phonological awareness, and comprehension-based interventions with children at-risk of reading problems. The central question was whether different forms of interventions were more effective with different age groups of children who varied from preschool to grade 7.

The meta-analysis included peer-reviewed randomized and quasi-experimental studies, with control groups receiving either typical instruction or an alternative “in-house” school reading intervention. They identified 85 studies with 116 interventions: 13 were classified as phonological awareness, 36 as phonics, 37 as comprehension based, and 30 as mixed. Twelve studies were conducted with participants who did not speak English. A range of dependent measures were assessed, from prereading (e.g., letter knowledge, phonemic/sound awareness), reading, and comprehension measures.

Averaging over age, similar overall effects were for phonological awareness ( d  = 0.47), phonics ( d  = 0.50), meaning based ( d  = 0.58), and mixed ( d  = 0.43). The critical novel finding, however, was that there was a significant interaction between method of instruction and age of child, such that phonics was most useful in kindergarten for reading measures, but alternative interventions were more effective for older children. As Suggate ( 2010 ) writes

If reading skills per se are targeted, then there is a clear advantage for phonics interventions early and—taking into account sample sizes and available data—comprehension or mixed interventions later.

However, this is not a safe conclusion. First, the difference in effect size in phonics compared with alternative methods was approximately d  = 0.10 in kindergarten and 0.05 in grade 1 (as estimated from Figure 1 in Suggate 2010 ). This is not a strong basis for arguing the importance of early systematic phonics. It is also important to note that 10% of the studies included in the meta-analysis were carried out on non-English children. Although the overall difference between non-English ( d  = 0.61) and English ( d  = 0.48) studies was reported as nonsignificant, the difference approached significance ( p  = 0.06). Indeed, the phonics intervention that reported the very largest effect size ( d  = 1.37) was carried out in Hebrew speakers (Aram & Biron, 2004 ), and this study contributed to the estimate of the phonics effect size in prekindergarten. Accordingly, the small advantage of phonics (the main novel finding in this report) is inflatedwhen applied to English. And once again, the treatments were compared with a control condition that combined a range of teaching conditions, and accordingly, it is again unclear whether there was a difference between systematic vs. unsystematic phonics during early instruction.

But the most critical limitation is that Suggate’s ( 2010 ) conclusion regarding the benefits of early phonics instruction is contradicted in a subsequent Suggate ( 2016 ) meta-analysis. This meta-analysis included 71 experimental and quasi-experimental reading interventions that assessed the short- and long-term impacts of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and comprehension interventions on prereading, reading, reading comprehension, and spelling measures. The analysis revealed an overall short-term effect ( d  = 0.37) that decreased in a follow-up test ( d  = 0.22; with mean delay of 11.17 months) with phonics producing the most short-lived benefits. Specifically, the long-term effects were phonics, d  = 0.07; fluency, d  = 0.28; comprehension d  = 46; and phonemic awareness, d  = 0.36.

As with the other meta-analyses, there are additional issues that should be raised. For example, a funnel plot observed evidence for publication bias, especially in the long-term condition, and once again, the study does not compare systematic to unsystematic phonics. It is striking that long-term benefits of systematic phonics are so small despite these factors that should be expected to inflate effect sizes.

Other Meta-Analyses and a Systematic Review of Meta-Analyses

There are a number of additional relevant meta-analyses and reviews of meta-analyses that should be mentioned briefly as well.

Hammill and Swanson ( 2006 )

These authors took a different approach to Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 , 2008 ) in criticizing the NRP ( 2000 ) report. Rather than challenging the logic and analyses themselves, they noted that the effect sizes reported in the NRP were small and questioned their significance.

The NRP reported that systematic phonics instruction was effective across a variety of conditions, with 94% of the d ’s supporting the superiority of phonics instruction over other approaches. However, as noted by Hammill and Swanson, the standard convention in evaluating the magnitude of d sizes ( d  = 0.2 is small, d  = 0.5 medium, and d  = 0.9 large) reveals that 65% of the significant d ’s were small. In order to get a better intuitive understanding of the practical significance of the results, the authors converted all these d ’s values to r -type statistics. They noted that the overall effect of 0.44 corresponds to an r 2 value of 0.04. That is, 96% of the variance in reading achievement can be attributed to factors other than the systematic phonics instruction. Footnote 2 The r 2 value for the follow-up analysis (4–12 months later) was 0.02.

What Hammill and Swanson do not acknowledge, however, is that these small effect sizes translate into real benefits when considering an entire population of children. The real problem is not with the size of the effects; it is that many of the critical contrasts were not significant or not assessed, that the small effects that were significant were inflated for the reasons noted above, and perhaps most importantly, the main meta-analysis did not even test the critical hypothesis of whether systematic phonics is better than unsystematic phonics that is used in alternative methods such as whole language.

Han ( 2010 ) and Adesope, Lavin, Tompson, and Ungerleider (2011)

These authors reported meta-analyses that assessed the efficacy of phonics for non-native English speakers learning English. Han ( 2010 ) included five different intervention conditions and dependent measures and reported the overall effect sizes as 0.33 for phonics, 0.41 for phonemic awareness, 0.38 for fluency, 0.34 for vocabulary, and 0.32 for comprehension. In the case of Adesope et al. ( 2011 ), the authors found that systematic phonics instruction improved performance ( g  = + 0.40), but they also found that an intervention they called collaborative reading produced a larger effect ( g  = + 0.48) as did a condition called writing (structured and diary) that produced an effect of g  = + 0.54. Accordingly, ignoring all other potential issues discussed above, these studies do not provide any evidence that phonics is the most effective strategy for reading acquisition.

Sherman ( 2007 )

Sherman compared phonemic awareness and phonics instruction with students in grades 5 through 12 who read significantly below grade-level expectations. Neither method was found to provide a significant benefit.

Torgerson et al. ( 2018 )

Finally, Torgerson et al. carried out a systematic review of all meta-analyses that assessed the efficacy of systematic phonics (unlike the papers discussed above, this is not a meta-analysis itself). They identified 12 meta-analyses, all of which were considered above. The authors raised several concerns regarding design and publication bias of studies included in these meta-analyses and argued that more data (in the form of large randomized controlled studies) are needed before strong conclusions can be made. Nevertheless, the authors still conclude the evidence support systematic phonics, writing

Given the evidence from this tertiary review, what are the implications for teaching, policy and research? It would seem sensible for teaching to include systematic phonics instruction for younger readers – but the evidence is not clear enough to decide which phonics approach is best.

Despite their modest conclusions, the authors are still far too positive regarding the benefits of systematic phonics. In part, this is due to the way the authors summarize the findings they do report. But more importantly it is the consequence of ignoring many of key limitations of the meta-analyses discussed above.

With regard to their own summary of the meta-analyses, they stated that 10 the 12 meta-analyses showed that there were significant benefits of systematic phonics on at least one reading measure, with effect sizes ranging from small to moderate effects (Ehri et al. 2001 ; Camilli et al. 2003 ; Torgerson et al. 2006 ; Sherman 2007 ; Han 2010 ; Suggate 2010 ; Adesope et al. 2011 ; McArthur et al. 2012 ; Galuschka et al. 2014 ; Suggate 2016 ). Furthermore, they note that positive effects were found in the remaining nonsignificant meta-analyses (Camilli et al. 2006 ; Hammill and Swanson 2006 ). They take this to support the conclusion that teaching should include systematic phonics.

One problem with this description of the results is that it does not indicate which measures tended to be significant over the meta-analyses. In fact, as discussed above, most meta-analyses failed to obtain significant effects for the measure we should care about most. For example, only 1 of 12 studies reported significant effects in comprehension, and there is no evidence that this effect survived a delay (NRP 2000 ). And this characterization of the findings obscures the fact that the benefits did not always extend to the children who are below average in their cognitive capacities (NRP 2000 ).

This summary also does not highlight the fact that many of 12 meta-analyses observed larger effect sizes for non-phonics interventions. For example, from Table 3 of Torgerson et al. ( 2018 ), you find out that systematic phonics did not produce the largest effect in 5 of the 12 meta-analyses (Adesope et al. 2011 ; Camilli et al. 2003 ; Camilli et al. 2006 ; Han 2010 ; Suggate 2016 ). And this table does not include the Galuschka et al. ( 2014 ) meta-analysis that reported similar-sized effect sizes for phonics, phonemic awareness instruction, reading fluency training, and auditory training, with the largest numerical effect obtained with color overlays.

In addition, when claiming that 10 of the 12 meta-analyses reported significant benefits of systematic phonics, this included the Suggate ( 2010 ) meta-analysis that was challenged by a subsequent Suggate ( 2016 ) meta-analysis that failed to obtain long-term benefits of systematic phonics. Furthermore, the claim that 10 of the 12 meta-analyses reported a significant benefit for systematic phonics does not incorporate a key point highlighted by Torgerson et al. ( 2018 ) elsewhere in their review, namely, the evidence that publication and method bias have inflated these effect sizes in at least some of these meta-analyses.

The conclusion that systematic phonics is better than alternative methods is further compromised by additional factors not considered by Torgerson et al. ( 2018 ). As detailed above, there were multiple examples of methodological errors in the meta-analyses (e.g., excluding studies that should have been included given the inclusion criteria; Camilli et al. 2003 ; and including studies that should have been excluded given the exclusion criteria, Camilli et al. 2003 ; Torgerson et al. 2006 ), examples of including flawed studies that strongly biased the findings in support of systematic phonics (e.g., the Umbach et al. 1989 ; Levy and Lysynchuk 1997 , Levy et al. 1999 ), including non-English studies that biased the results in support of systematic phonics (Suggate 2010 ), amongst others. These errors consistently biased the estimates of systematic phonics upwards.

Most importantly, however, Torgerson et al. ( 2018 ) did not address the key point identified by Camilli et al. ( 2003 , 2006 , 2008 ) that compromises all meta-analyses used in support of systematic phonics, namely, systematic phonics was compared with a control condition that included both nonsystematic phonics and nonphonics conditions (or only included a nonphonics condition in the case of McArthur et al. 2012 ). Accordingly, these meta-analyses did not even test the hypothesis that systematic phonics is more effective than unsystematic phonics as used in whole language and other methods. For all these reasons, Torgerson et al.’s are unwarranted in their conclusion that systematic phonics is effective for young children.

Summary of Meta-Analyses

In sum, the above research provides little or no evidence that systematic phonics is better than standard alternative methods used in schools. The findings do not challenge the importance of learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences, but they do undermine the claim that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods that include unsystematic phonics (such as whole language) or that teach grapheme-phoneme correspondences along with meaning-based constraints on spellings (morphological instruction or structured word inquiry). There can be few areas in psychology in which the research community so consistently reaches a conclusion that is so at odds with available evidence.

The Systematic Phonics Experiment in England

One possible response to the many null results is to note that many of the studies included in these meta-analyses were flawed. On this view, the null results can be attributed to a limitation of the studies rather than any problems with systematic phonics per se. This is hard to reconcile with the fact that these meta-analyses have been cited thousands of times in support of systematic phonics. Nevertheless, the quality of the studies included in the meta-analyses has been repeatedly questioned (e.g., McArthur et al. 2012 ; Torgerson et al. 2006 , 2018 ), and accordingly, it is possible that systematic phonics is effective, but the meta-analyses are simply not picking his up. Another possible response is to note that systematic phonics needs to be taught in combination with many other skills, and the fact that phonics by itself does not improve reading outcomes is not surprising. Again, this is hard to reconcile with the claims that are drawn from the meta-analyses, but these concerns raise the question as to whether there are other sources of data that can be used to assess the benefits of systematic phonics when embedded in a broader literacy environment?

There is. In 2006, Sir Jim Rose wrote a UK government report concerned with the teaching of reading in primary schools in England where he concluded that “... the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming …” (Rose 2006 , p. 20). Although this conclusion is unwarranted (see above), the report led to the legal requirement to teach synthetic systematic phonics in English state schools since 2007. And since 2012, a PSC was introduced in order to encourage better teaching of systematic phonics and to assess how well children decode regular words and pseudowords. Over 650,000 children took the PSC in 2018 alone. This constitutes a massive naturalistic experiment that can be used to assess the efficacy of systematic phonics, and indeed, it is widely claimed that the experiment has been a success with systematic phonics improving literacy. But once again, a careful look into the findings shows that the data do not support this conclusion. I summarize the findings next.

Machin et al.’s ( 2018 ) Analysis of Standard Assessment Test Results in England Provides Little or No Evidence in Support of Systematic Phonics

The authors took advantage of the fact that systematic phonics instruction was phased in slowly in different local authorities in England, and accordingly, it was possible to compare how children who were part of the systematic phonics trial compared with children who received standard instruction on various standardized language measures. In 2005, the “ Early Reading Development Pilot ” (ERDp) that involved 18 local authorities and 172 schools began with each school receiving funding for a dedicated learning consultant who trained teachers in systematic phonics (typically for 1 year). Then in 2006, the “ Communication, Language and Literacy Development Programme ” (CLLD) that included a further 32 local authorities began, again with each school receiving 1-year funding for a dedicated learning consultant.

In order to assess the immediate efficacy of introducing systematic phonics, scores from the communication, language, and literacy components of foundation stage assessment were collected (when children completed year 1 at age 5). And in order to assess the long-term effects of this intervention, reading scores from SATs key stage 1 (when children were 7 years of age) and reading scores from stage 2 test (when children were 11) were collected. These are standardized tests given to all students in state schools, with teachers providing the assessment in the foundation stage and key stage 1, and the tests externally marked in key stage 2. Various statistical methods were used to control for the differences between the schools included in the trials and those not included, and moderator variables included the impact of language background (native English or not) and economic background (operationalized as children receiving or not receiving a free school lunch).

For the ERDp sample, the authors reported highly significant effect of systematic phonics on the foundation stage assessment immediately after the intervention (0.298), but the effect dissipated on key stage 1 tests (0.075), and was eliminated on the key stage 2 tests (− 0.018). Similarly, with the CLLD treatment, an initially robust effect (0.217) was reduced on the key stage 1 tests (0.017), and then was lost on the key stage 2 tests (0.019). So much like the Suggate ( 2016 ) meta-analyses, the overall systematic phonics intervention effect did not persist. However, Machin et al. ( 2018 ) highlighted that the effects did persist in the key stage 2 tests in the CLLD treatment condition for non-native speakers (0.068) and economically disadvantaged children as measured by their receipt of free school meals (0.062), with both effects significant at the p  < 0.05 levels. They took these small effects to show that phonics does provide long-term benefits for children who are in the most need for literacy interventions, writing

Without a doubt it is high enough to justify the fixed cost of a year’s intensive training support to teachers. Furthermore, it contributes to closing gaps based on disadvantage and (initial) language proficiency by family background.

However, there are both statistical and methodological problems with using these findings to support the efficacy of systematic phonics. With regard to the statistics, apart from the fact that there were no overall long-term effects in either sample, it is important to note that the ERDp sample of children did not show significant advantage for non-native speakers (.045) or for economically disadvantaged children (.050) on the key stage 2 tests. Indeed, for the ERDp sample, there was a tendency for more economically advantaged native English children (not in receipt of free school meals) to read more poorly in the phonics condition in the key stage 2 test (− 0.061), p  < 0.1. As the authors write: “It is difficult to know what to make of this estimate” (p. 22). Note, the long-term negative outcome economically advantaged native English children in the ERDp sample was of a similar magnitude to the long-term benefits enjoyed non-native speakers (.068) and economically disadvantaged children (.062) in the CLLD treatment condition, and accordingly, is difficult to brush this finding aside.

More importantly, this study did not include the appropriate control condition. The advantages in foundation and key stage 1 were the product of intensive training support in systematic phonics to teachers in year 1, but it is possible that similar outcomes would result if intensive training support was given to teachers in whole language instruction, or any other method. As was the case with most of the above meta-analyses, the conclusion the authors made was not even tested.

The Recent Success of English Children on PIRLS Provides Little or No Evidence for Systematic Phonics

A great deal of attention in the mainstream and social media has been given to the recent success of English children in the “Progress in International Reading Literacy Study” (PIRLS) carried out in 2016. PIRLS assesses reading comprehension in fourth graders across a wide range of countries every 5 years: 35 countries participated in 2001, 38 in 2006, 48 in 2011, and 50 in 2016. Many supporters of systematic phonics have noted how far up the league table England has moved since 2006 given that systematic phonics was mandated in English state schools in 2007, and phonics check was introduced in 2012. Specifically, England was in 15th position in 2006 (with a score of 539), joint 11th position in 2011 (score 552), and joint 8th in 2016 (score 559).

In response to the most recent results, Mr. Gibbs, the Minister of State at the Department for Education, said

The details of these findings are particularly interesting. I hope they ring in the ears of opponents of phonics whose alternative proposals would do so much to damage reading instruction in this country and around the world.

A Department for Education report for the UK (December, 2016) reported

The present PIRLS findings provide additional support for the efficacy of phonics approaches, and in particular, the utility of the phonics check for flagging pupils’ potential for lower reading performance in their future schooling.

Sir Jim Rose, author of the Rose ( 2006 ) report, used “the spectacular success of England shown in the latest PIRLS data” as further evidence in support of systematic synthetic phonics (Rose 2017 ).

However, once again, these conclusions are unjustified. One important fact ignored in the above story is that English children did well in 2001, ranking third (scoring 553). Of the six countries that completed all the PIRLS tests from the beginning (England, New Zealand, Russian Federation, Singapore, Sweden, and USA), England has gone from second to third position. If the introduction of systematic phonics is used to explain the improved performance from 2006 to 2016, how is the excellent performance in 2001 explained? In addition, the results of the 2016 PIRLS were based on combing the performance of state and private schools (private schools were not required to implement systematic phonics or use the phonics check). When only state schools are considered, performance dropped to 11th (rather than joint 8th), same as the 2011 PIRLS rating (Solity 2018 ). Note that one of the common criticisms of systematic phonics is that the focus on phonology makes instruction less engaging. The PIRLS 2016 also ranked English children’s enjoyment of reading at 34th, the lowest of any English-speaking country (Solity 2018 ).

It is also interesting to note that Northern Ireland participated in the last two PIRLS, and they did better than England, ranking fifth and sixth in 2011 and 2016, respectively. This is relevant as the reading guidance for key stage 1 published by the “Northern Ireland Education & Library Boards” does not include the words “systematic phonics,” nor do children complete a phonics screening check that was introduced in the UK to improve the administration of phonics in English schools. Of course, reading instruction in Northern Ireland does teach children letter-sound correspondences, but this is carried out along with a range of methods that encourage children to encode the meaning of words and passages. For instance, according to the reading guidance for key stage 1, when children encounter an unknown word, various strategies for naming the word are encouraged, including phonics, using knowledge of context (semantics), and using knowledge of grammar (syntax). This is similar to National Literacy Strategy in place in England from 1998 to 2006 that recommended phonics as one of four “searchlights” for learning to read, along with knowledge of context, grammatical knowledge, word recognition and graphic knowledge. If the introduction of systematic phonics is used to explain the strong performance of England in 2016, how is the even better performance of Northern Ireland explained?

A final point worth emphasizing is that the PIRLS test assesses reading comprehension, and as noted above, only 1 of the 12 meta-analyses reported a benefit for comprehension (NRP 2000 ), and only at a short delay (ignoring the problems of this meta-analysis that question robustness of the short-term effect as well). Attributing any PIRLS gains to phonics is hard to reconcile with existing experimental research.

The Improving Performance on the Phonics Screening Check in England Provides Little or No Evidence that Systematic Phonics Improves Literacy

Since 2012, the UK government has required all children in state schools in England to complete a PSC in year 1 in order “to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard” (Department for Education, 2012; p. 4). The phonics screening check is composed of one- and two-syllable real words (e.g., day, grit, shin) and 20 pseudowords that can only be read on the basis of learned grapheme-phoneme correspondences (e.g., fape, blan, geck). Children near the end of year 1 are asked to read the words and pseudowords aloud, with each item marked correct or incorrect. A child who correctly names aloud 32 items (80% of all items) is said the “meet the standard,” whereas a child who misses the standard is to be given further support to improve their phonics knowledge (and complete the phonics check again in year 2).

Strikingly, the performance on the task has improved from 58% students meeting the standard in 2012 to 82% in 2018. This is taken to show that the PSC has improved the teaching of systematic phonics, and this in turn has improved decoding skills. The critical question is whether this has translated into better reading.

The obvious way to test whether the improved decoding skills translate to better reading is to compare the PSC results to the SATs carried out at key stages 1 and 2 during the years 2012–2017. These are the same tests analyzed by Machin et al. ( 2018 ) above (although they analyzed data from before 2012). And in fact, there have been some claims that improved performance on the phonics screening check is associated with improved performance on the SATS. For instance, Buckingham ( 2016 ) writes

There has also been an improvement in Key Stage 1 (Year 2) reading and writing results since the introduction of the Phonics Screening Check. The proportion of students achieving at or above the target reading level hovered around 85% from 2005 to 2011 but steadily increased to 90% in 2015. There was an even greater improvement in writing in the same period—a seven percentage point increase. (p. 16)

The results of the phonics check and the key stage 1 SAT scores are displayed in Fig. 1 .

Results on key stage 1 SAT tests in reading, writing, maths, and science from 2006 to 2018 as well as the results of the phonics screening check from 2012 to 2018. SAT scores to the left of vertical dashed line were achieved without having completed the phonics screening check in year 1, and SAT scores to the right of the vertical dashed lined were achieved after having completed the phonics check in year 1. Accordingly, the improved SAT results on reading and writing between 2011 and 2012 cannot be attributed to the improved administration of phonics

But this characterization of the findings is inconsistent with a report from the Department for Education (Walker, Sainsbury, Worth, Bamforth, & Betts, 2015 ). The authors analyzed the reading and writing scores for the KS1 for the 2 years preceding and following the introduction of the screening check and concluded:

The evidence offered by these analyses is therefore inconclusive in identifying any impact of the [phonics screening check] on literacy performance at KS1 or on progress in literacy between ages five and seven.

Why the different conclusions? One key point to note is that although the SAT scores did start slowly increasing in 2012 (consistent with Buckingham 2016 ), it is not possible to attribute these gains to the phonics screening check because these children completed year 1 in 2011, and accordingly, were never given the PSC. As noted by Walker et al. ( 2015 ):

These analyses of national data therefore indicate small improvements in attainment at KS1, which were a feature before the introduction of the check and continued at a similar pace following the introduction of the check.

In addition, as can be seen from Fig. 1 , there is little evidence that SAT scores for reading and writing improved more than SAT scores for maths or science between 2013 and 2015 or between 2016 and 2018. Footnote 3

Results on key stage 2 SAT tests in reading, writing, maths, and science from 2007 to 2018 as well as the results of the phonics screening check from 2012 to 2018. SAT scores to the left of vertical dashed line were achieved without having completed the phonics screening check in year 1, and SAT scores to the right of the vertical dashed lined were achieved after having completed the phonics check in year 1. The finding that SAT reading results did not improve between 2016 and 2018 indicates that the improved administration of phonics in year 1 (starting in 2012) did not have a long-term impact on the SAT scores

Another important question that can be asked is whether the introduction of the phonics check was associated with improved reading skills at key stage 2 when children were in year 6 (age 11). That is, did the improved teaching of phonics in year 1 (in response to the PSC) have any long-lasting effect on reading outcomes? The results from 2017 provide the first relevant data given that children who completed these key stage 2 SATs were the first to complete the phonics check in 2012 in year 1. As can be seen in Fig. 2 , the reading results when slightly down between 2016 and 2017 (while writing results went slightly up), and despite the large gains in the phonics check between 2012 and 2013 (an increase of 11%), there was no corresponding benefit in the reading and writing performance between the 2017–2018 (e.g., the reading results improved 1% whereas the math results improved 2%). These findings show that the decoding skills of children (as measured by the PSC) did not support short- or long-lasting reading improvement as measured by the key stage 1 and 2 SAT results. Note that the fact that the PSC scores have improved so dramatically demonstrates that systematic phonics instruction has improved in recent years in England. The fact that there is such a stark disconnects between PSC and SAT scores undermines the common claim that systematic phonics has improved literacy in England.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) Results Provide Little or No Evidence that Systematic Phonics Improves Literacy

PISA assesses the scholastic performance of 15-year old students on mathematics, science, and reading. It has been carried out every 3 years since 2000, and critically, the 2018 version is the first to assess the reading outcomes of children in England who were taught systematic phonics in year 1 as legally required post 2007. There is little or no evidence that this cohort of children has benefitted from this new policy as summarized in the PISA 2018 executive summary “The mean scores in reading and science in England have not changed significantly over successive PISA cycles, but in mathematics, England’s overall mean score showed a statistically significant increase compared with PISA 2015.” It is also worth comparing the English results to other countries that use a range of teaching methods, with none requiring systematic phonics: Canada, Singapore, and Northern Ireland did better, whereas the USA, Australia, and New Zealand did equally well. So again, this challenges the claim that systematic phonics has improved reading outcomes in England.

In summary, despite the widespread claim that children are reading better in England since the mandatory inclusion of systematic phonics in state schools in 2007 and the introduction of the PSC in 2012, there is little or no evidence to support this conclusion. Indeed, the only noticeable change in performance is on the PSC itself, with no discernable effects on reading more generally. This is despite the fact that children in England have received early systematic phonics in the context of a broader literacy environment as recommended by the NRP ( 2000 ).

Despite the widespread support for systematic phonics within the research literature, there is little or no evidence that this approach is more effective than many of the most common alternative methods used in school, including whole language. This does not mean that learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences is unimportant, but it does mean that there is little or no empirical evidence that systematic phonics leads to better reading outcomes. The “reading wars” that pitted systematic phonics against whole language is best characterized as a draw. The conclusion should not be that we should be satisfied with either systematic phonics or whole language, but rather teachers and researchers should consider alternative methods of reading instruction. For example, one possibility is that reading instruction in English should focus more on the role that meaning plays in organizing spellings (via morphology) and that English spelling system makes sense once the interrelation between phonology, morphology, and etymology are considered (Bowers and Bowers 2017 , 2018c ). Of course, other possibilities need to be considered as well, but the first step in motivating more research into alternative forms of instruction is to realize that there is a problem with the current approach.

For some reason, the NRP report estimated the word reading accuracy effect size to be 1.3 whereas Torgerson et al. reported it to be 2.69. Umbach and Darch did not report standardized effect sizes themselves, but reported that the word identification scores from the Woodcock Reading Master subtest were 30.43 and 10.36 in the experimental and control conditions, respectively.

Note, the overall effect size reported in the NRP is estimated as .44 or .41, depending on the specific tests that are included in the analyses.

Note, the tests changed in 2016, and this accounts for the large dip in performance.

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Bowers, J.S. Reconsidering the Evidence That Systematic Phonics Is More Effective Than Alternative Methods of Reading Instruction. Educ Psychol Rev 32 , 681–705 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09515-y

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A commentary on Bowers (2020) and the role of phonics instruction in reading

Jack m. fletcher.

Department of Psychology, University of Houston

Robert Savage

Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute for Education, University College- London

Sharon Vaughn

Department of Special Education, University of Texas-Austin

Bowers (2020) reviewed 12 meta-analytic syntheses addressing the effects of phonics instruction, concluding that the evidence is weak to nonexistent in supporting the superiority of systematic phonics to alternative reading methods. We identify five issues that limit Bowers’ conclusions: 1. Definition issues; 2. What is the right question? 3. The assumption of “phonics first”; and 4. Simplification of issues around systematic versus explicit phonics. We then go on to consider 5. Empirical issues in the data from meta-analyses, where Bowers misconstrues the positive effects of explicit phonics instruction. We conclude that there is consistent evidence in support of explicitly teaching phonics as part of a comprehensive approach to reading instruction that should be differentiated to individual learner needs. The appropriate question to ask of a 21st science of teaching is not the superiority of phonics versus alternative reading methods, including whole language and balanced literacy, but how best to combine different components of evidence-based reading instruction into an integrated and customized approach that addresses the learning needs of each child.

Introduction

This paper is a commentary on the analysis provided by Bowers (2020) of the effects of systematic phonics instruction. Bowers concludes that the evidence supporting the superiority of systematic phonics to what he describes as alternative reading methods is weak to nonexistent. He argues that any presumed scientific consensus on how to teach reading is premature and based on unsettled science devoted to rhetoric on the superiority of systematic phonics. He concludes:

Despite the widespread support for systematic phonics within the research literature, there is little or no evidence that this approach is more effective than many of the most common alternative methods used in school, including whole language. This does not mean that learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences is unimportant, but it does mean that there is little or no empirical evidence that systematic phonics leads to better reading outcomes.

In this paper, we suggest that in drawing this conclusion, Bowers (2020) is not asking the correct question, makes a number of unwarranted definitional assumptions, and partly because of these problems, misconstrues the available evidence. The title of Bowers paper and his narrative above implies that he will compare phonics approaches with all other available methods. However, Bowers does not present data on all other methods, but instead revisits and attempts to re-analyze existing reviews that have in the main, but not exclusively, contrasted phonics with wider language arts interventions. Most broadly, we thus argue that the question of systematic versus incidental or no phonics instruction is outdated. Furthermore, this question does not build on the knowledge and evidence of the other methods Bowers briefly mentions. These views do not help legislators, educational leaders, researchers, or teachers make the decisions needed to implement effective reading practices.

While we seek to surface some of the problems we identify with Bowers’ analysis, wherever we can, we identify points of agreement. We argue, for example, that Bowers is correct that the value of systematic phonics over morphological training or meaning-based training in isolation is often exaggerated. However, as the difficulties both Bowers and Camilli et al. (2006) observed in coding experimental studies to isolate the effects of phonics instruction, most reading interventions are rarely restricted to a monolithic view of systematic phonics. We conclude that the correct question to ask with the evidence that we now have is: How do we best combine different components of evidence-based reading instruction into an integrated, comprehensive approach that can be customized according to the needs of each learner? This question recognizes the 21 st century science of teaching reading that will involve explicit phonics, other forms of sublexical instruction, and all aspects of language and knowledge.

We first provide an overview of Bowers (2020) , and then identify five issues that limit his conclusions. Three of these are conceptual issues related to definition, the question of interest, and the assumption of “phonics first.” We also discuss two challenges involving simplification of issues concerning systematic versus explicit phonics instruction and empirical issues related to interpreting the meta-analyses. We provide data that supports our contention that contemporary instructional research has moved beyond the comparisons made by Bowers.

Overview and Background

Bowers (2020) constructed the paper in three sections. First, he reviewed different methods of reading instruction, defining systematic phonics as an approach that

explicitly teaches children grapheme-phoneme correspondences prior to emphasizing the meanings of written words in text (as in whole language or baelanced literacy instruction) or the meaning of written words in isolation (as in morphological instruction). That is, systematic phonics is committed to the “phonology first” hypothesis. It is called systematic because it teaches grapheme-phoneme correspondences in an organized sequence as opposed to incidentally or on a “when-needed” basis. Several versions of systematic phonics exist (most notably synthetic and analytic), but they all adopt the “phonology first” hypothesis.

Second, Bowers provided an extended review of 12 meta-analyses of “experimental” reading research addressing the role of systematic phonics instruction. Third, he interpreted the results of what he described as a large, naturalistic experiment emanating from a mandate in England in the United Kingdom (UK) to teach systematic phonics. We do not address findings arising from US or UK government policy. While important, policy issues raise distinct questions that deserve separate treatment. Instead, we focus on the scientific research and the meta-analyses that potentially inform evidence-based practice in teaching of reading worldwide.

Definition Issues

We interpret Bowers (2020) statement about phonics approaches to reading instruction as being driven by phonology first and meaning second – whereas, whole language and balanced literacy approaches are meaning first – as being an inaccurate portrayal of reading instruction research in the last several decades. Most approaches to reading instruction that include explicit phonics are also focused on meaning and understanding the words and texts used. The misunderstanding of “meaning first” in whole language/balanced literacy instruction is the over emphasis on teaching students to guess rather than using what is known about the alphabetic principle to read the word(s). The assumption that explicit phonics is based on phonics first and meaning second and whole language/balanced literacy is meaning first and phonics second does not accurately reflect our interpretation of intervention research nor of educational practice. Bowers also seems to mix his concerns about phonics first versus meaning first with a different issue, which is whether phonics instruction should precede instruction in morphology, which is suffused with meaning ( Bowers & Bowers 2017 ).

Whole language and its current iteration, balanced literacy, mean different things to different people and are difficult to define. These approaches often stem from the misunderstanding that skilled adult readers do not explicitly use sublexical strategies to identify words. Therefore, beginning readers should not break words apart. Instead, they should focus on the whole word and its meaning. Instead of “teaching” children to read, the teacher facilitates reading development by providing rich and authentic reading experiences through immersion in age-appropriate literature. Phonics instruction, if provided at all, should be minimal and incidental depending on children’s needs as they encounter text ( Fountas & Pinnel 2012–2013 ). Although some balanced literacy programs are shifting, they do not clearly embrace explicit phonics instruction ( Student Achievement Partners 2020 )

Although Bowers defines whole language as an inclusive approach that incorporates some phonics among other approaches, whole language is a broad label for a range of pedagogical philosophies, often associated with an understanding of learning to read that does not routinely require application of the alphabetic principle. It is not hard to find influential advocates who eschew the teaching of phonics altogether (e.g., Smith 2004 ). If one really were set on coding the phonics delivered within whole language interventions (and we are not), it might justifiably span from none at all to unsystematic, incidental, and infrequently used. The extent to which teachers followed the extreme version of whole language advocated for example by Smith behind their classroom doors is ultimately unknowable.

Bowers’ starting point is to question the findings of Chapter 2 Part II of the 2000 US National Reading Panel report (NRP; NICHD 2000 ) that addresses the role of phonics instruction. As part of multiple meta-analytic and narrative summaries of different domains of reading instruction, the NRP report found through meta-analysis that systematic phonics is an effective component of early reading instruction compared to some/no phonics instruction. The comparisons in the NRP report were studies that examined the relative effects of approaches to reading that emphasized systematic phonics compared to conditions in which incidental or no explicit phonics was utilized. As Bowers acknowledges, the conclusions reached by the NRP were much broader than those involving the single chapter on phonics. The NRP recognized that learning to read required multiple competencies in phonics, phonological-awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, and considering the role of teacher professional development and the role of technology in six equally detailed chapters.

What is the Right Question?

Like many contemporary accounts of the best methods for reading instruction, we interpret many of Bowers’ (2020) arguments as establishing, perhaps unintentionally, a dichotomy of reading methods (i.e. phonics versus whole language). Bowers states in his main conclusion that, “The “reading wars” that pitted systematic phonics against whole language is best characterized as a draw.” Although Bowers also uses broader terms such as “alternative reading methods,” simple comparisons of phonics versus meaning versus morphology for teaching reading to determine which one is best is an outmoded comparison ( Snow & Juel 2005 ). Most empirically minded reading researchers, seemingly including Bowers, would argue that none of these approaches is adequate in isolation. In fact, as Bowers (2020) and Camilli et al. (2006) demonstrated, it is hard to find pure comparisons of approaches that could be called “phonics-only,” “morphological-only,” and “meaning –only.” Even in these comparisons, the interventions are more complex than simply teaching phonics or meaning. We believe current reading intervention research generally embraces this complexity, recognizing the value of both explicit phonics instruction integrated with fluency, language, and comprehension practices that reflect the necessary complexity of reading instruction at both the sublexical and lexical level.

Beyond this broad position, Bowers first correctly claims that in some systematic phonics programs, all of the relevant grapheme-phoneme mappings are first taught explicitly in a prescribed, ordered manner. He then claims, “ This is not possible when teaching the grapheme-phoneme correspondences of words embedded in meaningful texts as typical with whole language (given that order of grapheme-phonemes in meaningful texts is too variable). ” However, there is no shared position among all advocates of systematic phonics requiring that practices such as using authentic “real” books be eschewed. Indeed, it is quite possible to find many examples of studies carried out in England, Canada, New Zealand, and Hong Kong that show that highly systematic prescribed phonics instruction is more effective when integrated with real books compared to more de-contextualized phonics ( Chen & Savage, 2014 ; Hatcher, Hulme, & Ellis, 1994 ; Shapiro & Solity, 2008 ; Tse & Nicholson, 2014 ; Yeung & Savage, 2020 ).

There are very good scientific reasons for asserting that the whole language/balanced literacy argument that learning to read is a “natural” process is misguided. This misguided idea promotes the misunderstanding that all teachers and parents need to do is provide youngsters with supporting materials and environments and reading will develop. Unlike language, reading is not an evolutionary process that is simply activated by immersion in literature or exposure to words ( Liberman 1996 ; Seidenberg 2017 ). Thus, learning to read is not a developmental process that occurs for all individuals as long as the environment is conducive. Rather, reading development is an acquired skill that for most students requires carefully organized instruction and for some students, very explicit and customized instruction.

As noted above, contrasting systematic phonics with reading approaches that teach phonics incidentally or not at all cannot be adequately addressed through empirical syntheses and inadequately addresses the range of learners and their instructional needs. We expect that Bowers would agree that few studies provide adequate information so that they can be coded well enough to characterize all the components of reading instruction to determine the contrasting conditions. One issue that reading researchers struggle with is incorporating sufficient detail within the ever-restricted academic journal word count restrictions. As McArthur et al. (2019) noted, this lack of detail impedes meta-analysis generally and needs to be improved. It is particularly hazardous to try to code papers post hoc into new categories based on such limited information ( Camilli et al. 2006 ). Furthermore, many intervention studies utilize phonics as one of several components in the intervention. The phonics component varies and may vary in systematicity, but the approaches that show the strongest effects are explicit and intentional ( Stuebing et al. 2008 ). The reading program may include instruction at the sublexical level that includes work on morphology, syllables, and larger units of words. However, phonics instruction typically includes word work that teaches common rules regarding phoneme-grapheme correspondence. There are additional moderators to consider that affect outcomes, such as group size, other language and literacy activities, and the amount of time in general education and supplemental intervention ( Camilli et al. 2006 ).

To illustrate some of these complexities, we summarize findings from a study that examined the relative effects of three treatment conditions with various emphases of systematic phonics with and without an emphasis on deeper analysis of words, including morphology and meaning, beyond teaching phoneme-grapheme rules for decoding ( Morris et al. 2012 ). We selected this study because the conditions approximate the effect of systematic phonics versus a no phonics control and shows the advantages of more comprehensive approaches to sublexical and meaning-based instruction.

Utilizing a randomized controlled trial (RCT), 279 children in Grades 2–3 with significant word reading problems were randomly assigned to one of three small group treatment conditions or a comparison condition in which the researchers provided no reading instruction (see Morris et al. 2012 , Figure 1, p. 103 for a flow diagram of the assignments in the study). Morris et al. used a program called Phonological Analysis and Blending/Direct Instruction (PHAB) that teaches grapheme-phoneme relations using Direct Instruction methods ( Engelmann & Bruner 1988 ). PHAB was compared with Phonological and Strategy Instruction (PHAST; Lovett et al. 2000 ), which includes PHAB and strategy-based sublexical instruction. Children are taught five strategies for word recognition: phonological letter- sound decoding through PHAB (Sounding Out); word identification by analogy (Rhyming), how to separate affixes in multisyllabic words (Peeling Off), how to seek familiar parts of unfamiliar words (I Spy), and how to attempt variable vowel pronunciations (Vowel Alert). A third treatment condition was the Retrieval, Automaticity, Vocabulary, Engagement with language, and Orthography program (RAVE-O; Wolf et al. 2000 ). The RAVE-O program included systematic decoding instruction through PHAB, but also targeted four linguistic systems essential to reading proficiency: orthography, semantics, syntax, and morphology. Both PHAST and RAVE-O are based on empirical research and theory showing that the more a child knows about the structures of words, including meaning, the faster the child can decode and understand the word ( Lovett et al. 2000 ; Seidenberg, 2017 ; Wolf & Katzir-Cohen 2001 ). The study also included a comparison group that received no reading instruction from the researchers, instead receiving 70 hours of math instruction and “classroom survival skills” (CSS).

Altogether, there were four groups in the study: PHAST (+ PHAB), RAVE-O (+ PHAB), PHAB+ CSS, and Math + CSS. The relevant comparisons for this paper involve PHAB + CSS with + Math + CSS to estimate the effects of systematic phonics instruction and PHAST (+PHAB) with PHAB + CSS to estimate the effects of the more complex approaches to word reading. We did not include comparisons of PHAST and RAVE-O or PHAST and RAVE-O because PHAST and RAVE-O showed similar outcomes after 70 hours of instruction.

Table 1 shows effect sizes (Hedge’s g ) for outcomes involving word attack, word identification, word reading fluency, spelling, a cloze-based passage comprehension measure, and measures of reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. These effect sizes were computed from Table 3 in Morris et al. (2012) , which provided raw scores for each of these measures at baseline, 35 and 70 hours of intervention, and a one-year follow-up. We focused on outcomes at the end of treatment (i.e., 70 hours) as the most reasonable estimate of effectiveness.

Effect Sizes And Confidence Intervals for Comparisons of Interventions for Poor Readers that Taught Systematic Phonics and Classroom Survival Skills (PHAB + CSS) Versus no Reading Instruction and Classroom Survival Skills (MATH + CSS)

Note. WRMT-R = Woodcock Reading Mastery test- Revised; TOWRE = Test of Word Reading Efficiency; GORT-3 = Gray Oral Reading Test (3 rd Ed.)

Possible Points of Agreement and Disagreement with Tenets of Bowers (2020) Argument

For the PHAB+CSS compared with Math+ CSS comparison, Table 1 shows effect sizes that are consistently positive, with the largest for word attack skills ( g =0.32), word identification ( g = 0.22), spelling (g = .25), and text reading fluency ( g = 0.24) and comprehension (g = 0.25). These effect sizes meet conventional levels for practical significance, but the confidence intervals include 0 and would not meet conventional standards for statistical significance. Although these are not robust differences in a single study for a single component of reading instruction, the study is underpowered to detect significant effect sizes in this range, especially in older poor readers. Bowers would interpret these findings as consistent with his argument that there is no advantage of systematic phonics. However, the effect sizes are consistent with the meta-analytic evidence of a positive effect size for systematic phonics and large enough to be practically significant, cautioning against acceptance of the null hypothesis. These effect sizes should not be construed as effect sizes for Direct Instruction, which is a more complex reading program with good evidence of efficacy in general education and as a remedial intervention ( Stockard & Wood 2017 ).

When comparing PHAST (+PHAB) and PHAB+CSS, Table 2 shows much larger effect size advantages for PHAST (+ PHAB) across multiple outcomes involving decoding, fluency, and comprehension, with confidence intervals that do not include 0. The effect for text-based comprehension are negligible, although the effect size for a cloze-based comprehension measure was larger. Note that comparisons of PHAST (+ PHAB) to MATH+CSS would be even larger.

Effect Sizes and Confidence Intervals for Comparisons of Interventions for Poor Readers that Taught Multiple Reading Strategies and Systematic Phonics (PHAST+PHAB) Versus Systematic Phonics and Classroom Survival Skills (PHAB+ CSS)

These results show the benefits of more in-depth instruction in word work for poor readers compared to systematic phonics instruction. However, both PHAST (+PHAB) and RAVEO (+ PHAB) programs spent half the lesson time on systematic phonics (PHAB), controlling the amount of phoneme-grapheme training in the three groups. Despite major differences in PHAST and RAVE-O, the latter providing much more explicit instruction in morphology and vocabulary, outcomes were generally similar for the two programs, with both clearly superior to PHAB+CSS. In evaluating the conditions, would Bowers characterize all three interventions as examples of systematic phonics? How would he deal with the fact that the extended activities occur simultaneously and are interactive, in contrast with the phonics-first idea? Is it plausible to conclude that poor readers selected for inadequate word reading do not benefit from explicit instruction in phonics? This study is an example of the complexity of coding the next generation intervention approaches that recognize the importance of more complex approaches to sublexical instruction that incorporate meaning based instruction with explicit phonics instruction.

The Assumption of “Phonics First”

Morris et al. (2012) blended systematic phonics instruction with other approaches to accessing the sublexical structure of the word and its meaning. These activities are combined in many reading programs. For example, Savage et al. (2018) taught at-risk readers both ‘direct mapping’ of grapheme-phoneme rules to authentic texts and a meaning-based “set for variability” strategy for inconsistent rules. However, Bowers argues that proponents of systematic phonics assert that phonics instruction should (and indeed, must) occur before any focus on larger units of words (e.g., morphology) or on meaning. Bowers argues:

There is no disagreement that reading instruction needs to ultimately incorporate both meaning and phonology, but the widespread consensus in the research community is that instruction needs to systematically teach children the grapheme-phoneme correspondences before meaning-based strategies are emphasized. Accordingly, almost all researchers today claim that systematic phonics is better than whole language, balanced literacy, and all forms of instruction that consider morphology from the beginning.

We agree that grapheme-phoneme correspondence as a mechanism for learning about the form of a word is valuable and that knowing word meaning while learning to read words is valuable. We also recognize that the units in which phonics approaches are used vary. For example, many instructional practices use the “rime” as the building block for phonics applying consonants, blends, and digraphs to extend decoding and generalize phonics rules, e.g., /at/extended through /c/ to cat or /b/ to bat or /ch/ to chat. Co-teaching mechanisms for better capitalizing on word meaning and at the same time teaching students to acquire word reading practices are valuable. However, we do not agree that the phonics first approach Bowers alludes to represents the widespread view of reading scholars – even those who recognize the impact of phonics instruction. If Bowers is questioning the idea that phonics instruction is limited without attention to other forms of sublexical instruction and word meaning, including morphology, we agree. If he is questioning the idea that all phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules must be learned before exposure to spellings and meanings of words, we agree. If he is arguing that initial reading instruction can proceed based solely on morphology, we disagree. Spellings can only be learned initially through phonological recoding because the child needs to link written word forms with spoken language ( Seidenberg, 2017 ). Shortly after initial instruction, explicit teaching of morphology can be part of a comprehensive reading program and does not need to emphasize phonics before morphological training or exposure to word meanings ( Morris et al., 2012 ). After all, youngsters come to school with an abundance of knowledge of word meanings that serve as valuable capital for teaching words and understanding text.

The role of morphology may be somewhat different and involves how and when exposure to increasingly large units of words should occur. Both the PHAST (+ PHAB) and RAVE-O (+PHAB) programs included morphological (and other strategy) instruction simultaneously with systematic phonics, varying the emphases as the child proceeded through instruction. This issue may also have to do with the transparency of the language, its orthographic representation in the written word, and the size of the sublexical unit. In more transparent languages, access to larger sublexical units may occur more quickly in beginning reading because there are fewer exceptions to letter-sound correspondence rules compared to a less transparent language, such as English. Even in English, and even if phonics is emphasized, children are taught and exposed to vocabulary; they engage with grammatical forms including inflectional morphology routinely; they learn new things about the world, improving their background knowledge as they increase their word knowledge. This symbiotic relation between word knowledge building and world knowledge building is an essential feature of schooling and a necessary foundation for enriching text comprehension. If children are exposed to “real books,” they will necessarily engage with both morphology and phonology. Inspection of the children’s printed word database ( Masterson et al. 2008 ) shows that some 32% of words in texts written for children in kindergarten are bi-syllables (including common morphemic inflections: “–ing,” “-ed,” and “-s”), 5% are trisyllables, and 0.7% have four or five syllables.

There should be a focus on both language development and strategies for understanding what is heard and read in any evidenced and truly “balanced” model of reading, such as in the Simple View of Reading (e.g., Gough & Tunmer 1986 ) and its expression in reading instruction ( Savage 2020 ). Similarly, children learn to read print by accessing sublexical parts of words, linking what words sound and look like. This is true in a beginning reader and in an illiterate adult ( Seidenberg, 2017 ). From a theoretical view, the Simple View is a theory of reading comprehension that shows that children must learn about the form and meaning of the word. These occur in parallel, although children vary in their capacity for learning decoding and language comprehension and the developmental process of dealing with print emphasizes word learning more in early grades and comprehension in later grades. The Simple View is consistent with Perfetti’s (2007) lexical quality hypothesis, where acquiring and integrating information about both word form and meaning are necessary for on-line reading comprehension. In computational models of reading (See Seidenberg, Borkenhagen, & Kearns 2020 ), the well-known triangle model specifies pathways involving orthography, phonology, and semantics to compute word meanings. These pathways are trained using computational modeling and statistical learning theory. The models show that in order to deal with a written input (spelling of words in an alphabetic language), the models initially use an orthographic to phonologic to semantic pathway. With training, the direct pathway from orthography to semantics becomes more prominent, but the orthographic to phonology pathway continues to contribute. Models that train the orthography to semantics pathway take much longer than models that involve phonology. At some point, as the brain begins to pick up on the statistical regularities of the spellings, learning becomes more implicit than explicit, consistent with Share’s (1995) self-teaching hypothesis. According to Share, orthographic representations are acquired by self-teaching through phonological recoding of new letter strings that becomes increasingly implicit. In all these theoretical perspectives, orthography and phonology serve to access meaning and are interactive.

Empirical evidence on the relative role of morphological, phonetic, and other teaching strategies comes from a recent systematic review ( Galuschka et al. 2020 ). The authors directly investigated what we know about the “phonics first” question in spelling interventions for children with dyslexia, where similar arguments have been made. Galuschka et al. report an exploratory analysis of the limited number of available studies. This analysis suggested no significant advantage for early phonics over other programs, where RCTs exist. Interestingly, non-significant trends towards declining effectiveness of phonics and rising effectiveness of morphological training were evident with both age and severity of disability. Galuschka et al. concluded that we need more studies to resolve this question definitively. It is important to recognize that Galuschka et al. also reported robust main effects of spelling approaches based on phonics on both reading ( g = .62) and spelling ( g = .68), with morphological and orthographic approaches having moderate effects on spelling, but much smaller effects on reading. This work both further confirms but also contextualizes the role of phonics instruction in struggling readers.

Bowers is correct if he equates “phonology first” with a requirement to learn the entire corpus of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules before dealing with morphology or meaning, but wrong in denying that phonics is an effective way of facilitating the implicit learning that must occur for the child to become an efficient reader ( Seidenberg et al. 2020 ). It is also not obvious how children would learn spelling-sound correspondence rules initially through “morphology first,” which is likely why Bowers indicates in different places that learning phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules is important. We encourage Bowers to design and conduct the studies needed to address his hypotheses but not to advance his hypotheses as facts until his findings support this view. Phonological awareness is likely necessary in early reading, but not sufficient, alongside morphological and orthographic awareness, but the phonological component made explicit by phonics is likely to be essential for children with poor initial phonological awareness to adequately progress in reading ( Berninger et al. 2010 ).

Systematic versus Explicit Phonics

Although the term systematic phonics is widely used, it is instructive to think about what systematic really means and whether the NRP question of systematic phonics versus less systematic phonics is outmoded. In general, systematic refers to an organized structure – in this case, the organized structure for teaching the grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules. It is presumed that these rules are prescribed and often taught in an accepted sequence. However, the necessary sequence is not well established through research but rather derived from practices that provide ready access to reading words. Consonants such as /m/ and /s/ are taught early as they make sounds that sound like their letter names, are readily learned by young readers, and provide ready access to word reading- as do short vowels such as /a/ and /e/. These approaches are epitomized by the different methods under the umbrella of structured literacy ( Moats, 2019 ).

We agree with Bowers’ recognition of the limited evidence in support of a specific scope and sequence in which the child has to learn grapheme-phoneme rules as a prerequisite for decoding. As Morris et al. (2012) demonstrated, there are many ways to teach decoding, and the level of systematicity is related to the needs of the learner. Some students inferentially learn the pattern and rules through exposure to common word types; other students need more explicit instruction that is facilitated by an organized set of lessons. However, this organized sequence of lessons does not require that particular sound units be taught in any particular order as long as they are taught in ways that readily allow children to access print, words, and text.

We also agree with Bowers (2020) that phonics instruction can be effectively accomplished with approaches that would not meet the definition of systematic phonics that he provided, but not with the idea that any approach to phonics instruction will be effective. There is research that shows little difference in reading outcomes for methods based on a rigid scope and sequence versus methods in which the phonics instruction is explicit and mandatory, but embedded in reading and writing ( Mathes et al. 2005 ; Torgesen et al. 2001 ), at least for many learners. Effective methods share explicit instruction in phonics, other sublexical approaches, and language-rich activities, that through differentiated instruction responds to students’ needs ( Stuebing et al. 2008 ). Effective approaches to phonics instruction provide word work that is explicitly lead, intentional, and demonstrated by the teacher using a lesson that can be scripted or embedded, but which is explicit. It provides opportunities for students to respond, teacher feedback, and examples that both extend the principle as well as challenge it. It differs from what is undertaken for word work in many balanced literacy programs because of the amount of time spent on word work and the intentional nature. Instruction is likely to vary across individual children. The seven randomized trials by Carol Connor and colleagues (summarized in Connor & Morrison 2016 ) clearly demonstrate the value of differentiating the relative emphasis of code-based and meaning-based instruction for the individual child using materials in place in the school as opposed to a specific curriculum. In these studies, the amount of time devoted to each broad component was leveraged in the general education classroom such that less capable decoders spend more time on teacher directed code-related activity and more capable decoders spend more time on student directed meaning-related activity). As Stuebing et al. (2008 , p. 132) stated,

…the explicitness of instruction may be more important than systematic, scripted lessons in accounting for the effect of systematic phonics. Creating a scope and sequence, using decodable text, and engaging in other ways of systematizing instruction make instruction explicit, but explicitness can be achieved in other ways. Where a teacher operates on the instructional continuum may depend on factors like preparation, experience, the base rate of struggling readers, the school context, and related factors. However, teachers need to be intentionally clear about how the alphabet relates conventionally to sound segments in speech. The supporting materials that are used may vary depending on teacher and student knowledge and skills.

Rather than minimizing the effects of phonics instruction, we should be thinking more about how individual learners are responding to the methods that are used and be prepared to change instructional approaches based on their response to instruction ( Connor & Morrison, 2016 ).

Empirical issues in the Data from the Meta-Analyses

At the heart of Bowers’ analysis is his critique of the evidence from 12 meta-analyses of reading interventions. We argue that the Bowers analysis of these meta-analyses does not accurately represent the findings. We treat each of the 12 analyses in the order Bowers considers them describing his substantive analysis and with reasoned responses to each of his points.

The National Reading Panel (NRP; NICHD, 2000 ) and Ehri et al. (2001) meta-analyses.

The NRP phonics chapter considered RCT, matched control trials of typical and atypical development, and interventions for word reading, fluency and comprehension outcomes. Ehri et al. (2001) published the chapter as a peer-reviewed paper. We will refer to both as NRP hereafter. Bowers makes four points in his criticism:

In making sense of this critique, the first thing to note is that a non-zero effect size was still evident even in students with demonstrated multiple risk factors and who struggle with any learning. The effect size of d = .15 is for a minority of children with lower IQ scores and low reading from grades 2 to 6, not for the effect of phonics instruction overall or even for older poor readers as a whole. One also has to contextualize this effect to make sense of it. This effect size may be large for these children in relative terms if they made modest or no progress before then and sets the bar for contrasts with alternative pedagogies for this distinct multi-need group. A key issue in evaluating any intervention against a counterfactual is: What might the expected progress be for this sample? Even without such considerations, an effect size of d = .15 places about 6% more of the intervention group clearly above the control group mean at post-test. Thus, even a small effect size of .15 can still be very practically important if played out at national scale, as Bowers himself acknowledges elsewhere in his article. The authors of the NRP noted (Part II, p. 117) that among a range of plausible explanations, many of the studies contributing to this effect involved regular whole class teaching. This delivery method may simply have not been sufficient to meet the literacy needs of this multiply at-risk group ( Connor & Morrison, 2016 ). Finally, it is also important to recognize that later reviews (including meta-analysis of responsiveness to intervention studies) show that IQ is not a strong predictor of the responsiveness of poor readers to reading intervention, including experimental studies that explicitly controlled for IQ (e.g., Morris et al. 2012 ) and in a meta-analysis ( Stuebing et al. 2009 ). As is expected in all professions (e.g., medicine), we cannot minimize visible, consistent effects of any size in education, particularly for those students with multiple learning needs.

• The NRP analysis showed that the effects of explicit phonics are larger in grade 1 than after grade 1, where programs focused on phonics are often targeted for older struggling readers. We start by noting that the NRP report executive summary does, as Bowers observes, exaggerate the more cautious interpretations found in the chapter on phonics. The authors also acknowledged that the NRP report could not say anything strongly about the effect of grade per se on intervention because there were insufficient number of articles across each of the appropriate grade levels. Here Bowers uses the NRP acknowledgement of not being able to differentiate by grade level as a criticism of the NRP findings, when failing to interpret grade level effects because of a limited number of studies is the only empirically defensible approach. Phonics is an approach to teaching beginning readers and children who struggle to access sublexical components of words by learning the alphabetic principle, i.e., the relation of the shared phonemic structure of oral and written language. Once a child has mastered the alphabetic principle, what rationale is there to offer ever more phonics to capable readers in the later grades: Age and ability will always be confounded except in very rare cases.
• Bowers points to a reduced effect size of d = .27 on word reading in the studies available of the effects of phonics between 4 months and a year after the interventions closed. He also notes that the authors of the NRP did not assess whether the long-term benefits extended to spelling, reading texts, or reading comprehension. In contextualizing these comments, meta-analyses always reflect the available independent and dependent variables in the underlying studies. Perhaps the most important point is that the long-term effect sizes are positive and practically significant on the primary outcome – which is not a common finding in studies that conduct follow-up assessments. Rather than criticize the long-term effects, most researchers would find this long-term effect noteworthy. We would thus agree with Bowers only in the specific sense that more research is needed on a range of longer-term outcome measures potentially affected by phonics instruction.
• Bowers’ fourth point is a cluster of criticisms we consider together. Bowers concludes, “ the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than whole language is weaker still.” In his analysis Bowers appears to be looking at the subset of 12 studies from the NRP that compared systematic phonics to so-called whole language approaches when he reports a d = 0.31 effect size. Again, we note the positive effect is still evident. Bowers also correctly notes that there is very modest evidence for synthetic phonics versus alternative methods. However, we would also note that his comment here appears less to be aimed at the authors of the NRP (who explicitly acknowledge the fragility of the evidence base available on this specific point), but at the actions of some consumers of it in some UK policy circles.

Camilli et al. (2006) ; Hammill and Swanson (2006) .

Bowers re-describes the views from Camilli et al. (2006) about the contrasts within the NRP and the possible role of other features of pedagogy such as wider language and tutoring in driving reported effects. It is not clear to us that Bowers adds any new substantive points to the discussion. Bowers uses Camilli et al. (2006) and Hammill and Swanson (2006) to rebut the NRP conclusions about phonics (though it is here in the context of the Hammill and Swanson (2006) study that he correctly notes that small effect sizes can be practically important if played out across whole populations). Bowers cites Stuebing et al. (2008) as a replication of Camilli et al. (2006) , but does not report that Stuebing et al. raised questions about the Camilli et al. (2006) analysis of their recoded NRP database and that the purpose of the paper was to empirically defend and contextualize the NRP report – not to agree with Camilli et al. Stuebing et al. concluded that the effect size for systematic and unsystematic phonics ( d = .123) could not be compared to the NRP d = .41 for systematic phonics versus unsystematic/no phonics instruction because of Camilli’s use of moderator variables. As Bowers noted, Stuebing interpreted comparisons of no phonics, unsystematic phonics, and systematic phonics as a dosage effect, supporting this conclusion in their Table 2 where the effects of systematic phonics ( d =.49) is larger than the effect of some phonics ( d =.31) when the moderators coded by Camilli et al. are excluded from the comparisons.

Stuebing et al. (2008) showed that the Camilli et al. (2006) dataset of NRP findings actually yielded effect sizes similar to the NRP depending on the question that was asked of the data. In the re-analysis, the effect size for reading interventions that included systematic phonics interventions versus programs that include unsystematic or no phonics was d = .39, close to the NRP report ( d = .41). Although Camilli et al. (2008) raised questions about the re-analyses, any interpretation depends on how the NRP studies are recoded and whether moderators are used. Stuebing et al. (2008 , p. 131) concluded,

The comparisons by Camilli et al. (2006) ask questions that are different from the primary question asked by the NRP, but the results of the two sets of analyses can be reconstructed to yield comparable effect sizes for the effects of systematic phonics versus either unsystematic phonics or no phonics controls when the same study parameters are estimated.

Importantly, Stuebing et al. concurred with Camilli et al. (2006) on the value-added effects of additional literacy-related activities as well as tutoring. The largest effect sizes in Camilli et al. (2006) recoding of the NRP database occurred when systematic phonics is combined with additional language and literacy activities and delivered through tutoring ( d = 1.35, see Table 2 of Stuebing et al. 2008 ). Again, none of this shows that phonics does not in and of itself make a distinct and important contribution to early literacy. Nor does it suggest that students only need phonics instruction. To reiterate, Stuebing et al. showed in their Table 2 (line 14) that if one only considers the relatively pure cases of interventions involving what the NRP defined as systematic phonics and compares these against conditions where Camilli et al. had coded the absence of both tutoring and wider language activities (85 contrasts in 17 studies), the effect size is d =.49.

In response to Hammill and Swanson (2006) , Stuebing et al. (2008) also emphasized the contextual nature of effect sizes, showing that even smaller effect sizes were practically significant and could improve reading outcomes for many children depending on the base rate of reading failure, a point on which Bowers seems to agree. Yet throughout his paper, Bowers presents conventions for the interpretation of effect sizes, sometimes drawing attention to their statistical significance as crucial and sometimes not, but never to the confidence intervals that surrounds effect sizes. Bowers does not consistently acknowledge that these conventions are arbitrary and must be contextualized. The real issue is their replicability, their practical significance given an estimated counterfactual, and their precise role in reading instruction. We do not understand the motivation for discounting the consistently positive effects in favor of “systematic” phonics approaches. Arguing about whether the effects are small, medium, or large is not the relevant issue when making educational decisions about whether some level of explicit phonics instruction is beneficial to learning to read. Encouraging educators to discount positive effects of explicit phonics instruction is simply not helpful, but is potentially harmful to many children struggling to access appropriate reading instruction ( Seidenberg et al., 2020 ).

Reflecting their wider finding of the combinatorial effect of phonics with language and tutoring, Stuebing et al. (2008 , p. 133) thus concluded,

Although it seems difficult to move beyond the historic dichotomy of reading instructional approaches, it is time to embrace comprehensive approaches to reading instruction and work toward determining how to integrate different components of reading instruction into classroom practice so that the diversity of students and their individual needs can be addressed.

As the NRP ( NICHD 2000 , p. 2–97) stated, “Phonics instruction is never a total reading program,” and it “should be integrated with other reading instruction.” The monolithic view of phonics versus meaning-based instruction current when the NRP report was published is not a contemporary platform for discussing reading instruction.

Torgerson et al (2006) .

Torgerson et al. considered only RCTs on phonics and explicitly considered a range of other indictors of methodological quality in the phonics literature. Bowers’ primary concern is his issue with the contrasts of systematic versus a combined unsystematic or no phonics control, which we have discussed. Beyond this, he simply draws attention only to the limitations in the research base identified by the authors themselves (possible effects of outlier study removal, publication bias, lack of detail on randomization processes for example). After assessing the evidence contextualized against rigorous inclusion criteria including randomization, Torgerson et al. (2006 , p. 42) argue, “ none of the findings of the current review were based on strong evidence because there simply were not enough trials (regardless of quality or size)” before drawing extremely cautious conclusions. The precise wording of the primary conclusion was that there was “ No warrant for NOT using phonics ” (p. 43). The authors also observed that the effect sizes from the selected RCTs were generally small and that the evidence quality for all phonics related questions was “moderate” (e.g., for the overall effects of phonics on typical and atypical learner’s word reading) or “weak” (e.g., the effects of analytic or synthetic phonics on outcomes). It is not clear what Bowers adds in the absence of these nuances.

McArthur et al. (2012) .

These authors sought to explore the effects of phonics on outcomes for struggling readers. In particular, they sought RCTs and matched control studies that allowed an analysis of the unique effects of phonics independent of content often taught with phonics such as sight words. Bowers criticizes this review based on his observation that the overall effects reported may have been driven by the impact of two atypical interventions ( Levy & Lysynchuk 1997 ; Levy et al. 1999 ). There are several points to be noted. First, Bowers reports from the 2012 McArthur et al. review rather than the most recent McArthur et al. (2019) updated review that adds further studies to the analysis from the most recent 6 years of studies. The two papers by Levy and colleagues are included among the 14 studies. The rubric of the McArthur et al. (2012) review makes it clear that reading was assessed through “various outcomes.” The outcomes used in the Levy studies included measures of both novel word and pseudoword reading, so they do provide measures of generalizable phonic skills. Indeed, they assess exactly the mechanism of transfer expected from an analytic phonics approach. The Levy and colleagues studies are certainly not alone amongst the studies in this review in using bespoke researcher-developed outcome measures of grapheme-phoneme knowledge, so these two studies should not be excluded based on outcome measure used.

All good meta-analyses statistically test for the homogeneity of effects within the included studies. McArthur et al. (2012) show that there was statistically significant heterogeneity in the reported studies. However, McArthur et al. also noted that this heterogeneity could equally have been due to another study with an untypically low score on primary outcomes. The study could possibly have been, but was not, excluded. We note that the purpose of meta-analysis as an empirical synthesis is potentially undermined if studies are included or excluded post hoc. As a further insurance against effects of heterogeneity, random effects and fixed effects models were both run within the meta-analysis and both gave very similar results, suggesting the findings are robust.

Finally, given the weight Bowers (2020) attaches to the influence of studies by Levy and colleagues, it is important to understand that the overall effect sizes for outcomes involving word and pseudoword reading accuracy were not the largest effects reported. McArthur et al. (2012) concluded the evidence base on these two specific outcomes across all studies was weak. Because the outcomes used by Levy and colleagues were specific to word and pseudoword accuracy, these two studies did not feature at all in the five other outcome analyses reported by McArthur et al. (2012) : exception word reading, where the largest effect size of the entire study was .84 standard deviation (SD) for phonics treatment over controls; regular and exception word reading fluency (the second and third largest effect sizes), spelling; and reading comprehension. The strongest of the modest claims made by McArthur et al. (2012) are thus of the “moderate-quality” evidence of impact of phonics on exception word reading accuracy and word and pseudoword reading fluency. The Levy studies cannot explain these effects.

Bowers (2020) goes on to state that his most important point here is that the McArthur meta-analysis compared systematic phonics to no extra training at all, or to training on nonreading tasks, such that it is not appropriate to attribute any benefits to systematic phonics. He argues that any form of extra instruction may have “mediated” the gains observed. In making sense of this analysis, it might first be noted that Bowers appears to have moved from his purported original question about systematics versus less systematic or no phonics instruction to a more general critique of all aspects of phonics interventions. We should also note that the stated purpose of the McArthur et al. (2012) review was not to compare phonics against other interventions but to establish the role of phonics as it stands alone, and independent of other possible intervention teaching. Levy and colleagues featured tutoring in both treatment and control conditions and thus allow an analysis of the unique effect of phonics. Of course, the interventions did not occur in a vacuum in that all of the children were in school receiving business as usual teaching. In general, business as usual comparisons are not as intensive or structured as the interventions in most research studies and is heterogeneous across schools and classrooms, making it hard to code, but controlled in a randomized trial.

Finally, just doing something in an RCT rarely works in and of itself. Lortie-Forgues and Inglis (2019) recently reviewed 144 principled, well-executed, large-scale RCT trials funded by the Education Endowment Foundation in England and the National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance in the United States. An average effect size of 0.06 SD was found across all trials. The trials involved a much broader performance range of children, not the lowest performing tail of the distribution addressed by McArthur et al. (2012) . The smallest effect reported in McArthur on reading comprehension is 0.28 SD, and all six other effects reported are above 0.45 of an SD. The critical issue here is that effect sizes such as 0.28 SD for comprehension are not common in well-conducted interventions and they are meaningful.

Galuschka (2014) .

Galuschka et al. explored the widest base of evidence of RCT interventions of any kind that impact reading in poor readers. Bowers (2020) contention with this study is that the reported effect size for phonics interventions ( g = 0.32) was no bigger than for other intervention components such as reading fluency training ( g = 0.30), auditory training ( g = 0.39), and colour overlays ( g = 0.32). Bowers summarizes, “ The reason significant results were only obtained for phonics is that there were many more phonics interventions. ” This is a genuinely startling conclusion. The combined evidence from a meta-analysis of 29 RCTs on phonics reported by Galuschka et al. is of a qualitatively different kind to the evidence from other trials (e.g., two on medical treatments, three on colored overlays, auditory training, and comprehension). Bowers conflates the gross size of an effect with the security (likely replicability) of the findings they represent. This security of the findings for phonics across multiple trials is the reason why it is the only treatment that is statistically significant for reading outcomes. Bowers also notes that the estimated effect size for phonics adjusting for possible publication bias ( g = 0.198) was smaller than the overall estimate. Again, this effect is both positive in favour of phonics intervention (as coded) and remains statistically significant and practically important. Finally, Bowers repeats his earlier views, criticizing Galuschka et al. for not exploring direct contrasts of interventions as rivals and of not exploring contrasts of systematic versus unsystematic phonics. This critique is made despite the difficulties of such comparisons given the limited number of trials of other approaches beyond phonics that Bowers has already noted. Further, neither of these goals was the purpose of the Galuschka et al. review.

In the spirit of the Stuebing et al. (2008) analysis discussed above and based on well-established theory (e.g., the Simple View of Reading; Gough & Tunmer 1986 ), it seems likely that phonics interventions will both have a discernible unique effect and interact with fluency and comprehension interventions to support reading comprehension. Again, it is troubling to consider why Bowers discounts the consistently positive effects in favour of explicit phonics-type approaches. When treatments in any domain (medicine, counselling, and education) are associated with consistently significant effects, it is wise for professionals in those fields to consider ways to integrate these treatments into their protocols. We are not suggesting that asking empirical questions and further investigating these treatments is unwarranted. However, empirical investigations and naysaying are two completely different pathways. The question that Bowers would be required to answer is whether the bulk of the evidence on the impact of systematic or explicit phonics instruction (not first or solely) is associated with greater impact on student’s learning to read. According to the evidence the answer is yes.

Suggate (2010 , 2016 ).

Bowers (2020) considers two reviews by Suggate. The 2010 study explored the effects of student grade severity of impairment and intervention modality on outcomes for at-risk and disabled readers. Suggate (2010) provides evidence of an interaction between modality of intervention and student grade of students, concluding that there is (a) an appreciable effect of phonics in the early elementary years only and (b) that a comprehension focus yields large effects in later elementary years. Bowers contests even this finding about the potential limits of phonics by arguing that the effect size difference between phonics and other approaches is modest in size in kindergarten and grade 1. Bowers focuses on a minority of studies (10%) as being carried out in non-English language contexts as problematic, emphasizes “near-significant” contrasts of English ( d = .48) and non-English language learning context outcomes ( d = .61), and identifies a single study amongst these with potential outlier effects.

Contextualising this analysis again, it is important to look at the effects of phonics across languages to avoid pervasive Anglocentrism in our theorizing ( Share, 2008 ). The differences across languages ( Suggate, 2010 ) are not great in magnitude. Indeed, an “outlier,” if accepted as such, further reduces this difference (note there were 85 studies in this meta-analysis). Bowers draws attention to the modest differences between preliminary effect sizes for overall contrasts of comprehension and phonics in Suggate’s Table 1 . Bowers does not mention that the absolute effect of phonics or comprehension interventions was mediated by an interaction – the final model in Suggate’s Table 2 and Figure 1, with no significant main effect of phonics. While emphasizing the early role of phonics, Suggate (2010 , p. 1596) is careful to conclude that: “ This does not suggest that other interventions, such as language interventions or dialogic book reading, are superseded in importance by phonics interventions in kindergarten or earlier.” There is no obvious reason to set up the “alternative methods” as rivals.

Suggate (2016) examined longer-term outcomes of the impact of 71 phonics and other reading interventions. Overall, the analysis revealed an overall short-term effect ( d = 0.37) that decreased in a follow-up test around a year later ( d = 0.22) with phonics producing the weakest overall effects (phonics, d = 0.07; fluency, d = 0.28; comprehension d = 46; and phonemic awareness, d = 0.36). Suggate also noted design features and treatment dosage affect outcomes.

A number of important points need to be born in mind here. First, the absolute number of contrasts, and participants available in each case varied widely. For phonics, compare the n = 4045 and k = 22 contrasts with fluency, which has an n = 736 and k = 2 contrasts. The “weighted d ” reported by Suggate (2016) and re-reported by Bowers adjusted for these large differences in sample size and thus reduces the observed effect sizes asymmetrically. The unadjusted observed effect for phonics at the just under one-year follow-up from Suggate’s Table 3 is d = 0.30 on word reading ( k = 20 studies, n = 3895 students) and d = 0.25 over all measures ( k = 22 studies, n = 4045 students). Ultimately, we simply have much more data on phonics interventions and word reading outcomes at delayed post-test in the studies within the meta-analysis than we have on pretty much anything else in reading intervention research: It is a highly replicated pattern.

Finally, Suggate (2016) excluded both designs with nested analyses and very long-term follow up studies from his review, the latter on the somewhat surprising grounds that they were unrepresentative. However, such studies are highly informative. Suggate specifically excluded Blachman et al. (2014) as an outlier because it was a 10-year follow up of their RCT intervention trial ( Blachman et al. 2004 ) for struggling 2 nd and 3 rd grade readers. The children had received a 1:1 tutoring intervention for 50 minutes daily each day for 8 months, focusing on unscripted, organized lesson plans for phonics, phoneme blending, fluency, oral reading practice, and spelling. In comparison with a business as usual condition, the intervention yielded large effect sizes at immediate and 1-year post-test on measures of reading accuracy, speed and comprehension. Fully10 years later, Blachman et al. (2014) located 33 treatment and 25 comparison participants from the original sample of 37 treatment and 32 comparison children. Blachman et al. found that of 12 measures of reading the intervention children significantly outperformed the controls on two: Word identification ( d = .53) and a basic skills cluster scores made up of the word identification and a word attack measure ( d = .62). Across seven reading and spelling measures, the mean effect size was d = .24, which is positive and practically significant. We know of no other paper reporting long-term effects of an RCT in English (although see Kjeldsen et al. (2014) , a kindergarten intervention to Grade 9 in Swedish learners).

It is not strictly necessary to prove such long-term effects to show that phonics is useful. A medical metaphor has sometimes been used here (e.g. Coyne et al. 2004 ). Do we construe phonics (or indeed, any intervention) as akin to “insulin” or “inoculation” models? We would not say insulin ‘does not work’ for diabetic patients. For some children though, phonics might be akin to inoculation or at least sustained ‘symptom’ improvement. While we have limited evidence of long-term effects beyond fairly good evidence at the one-year post-test, there is no need to accept that somehow phonics is not efficacious.

Other meta-analyses and a systematic review of meta-analyses.

Bowers (2020) clusters five other studies, so we will consider these as he does, as a group, excluding. Hammill and Swanson (2006) , which we discussed above. Bowers reports the overall effect sizes from two theses ( Han 2010 ; Sherman 2007 ), and a published paper ( Adesope et al. 2011 ). Sherman reports an effect size of d = 0.53 for word reading in older struggling readers. Han and Adesope et al. both looked at phonics among non-English speakers. In both cases these analyses showed positive effects of phonics ( d = 0.41 and d = 0.40 respectively), but Bowers notes that there were other interventions such as structured writing interventions with slightly larger overall effects ( d = 0.48). We are not sure what the point is here, unless it is to suggest that other practices such as structured writing are also associated with improved outcomes. We fully agree that there is no evidence to suggest “phonics-only” is optimal. We recognize that other practices such as “structure writing” might well be integrated within a reading approach to yield significant reading and writing outcomes. We do not think the issue is which one approach should be used but rather how do we integrate and leverage evidence-based practices (e.g., phonics, fluency) to meet the range of learning needs in the classroom.

In Adesope et al. (2011) the “phonics” interventions included guided reading so are not a pure comparison. As in his consideration of some previous reviews, Bowers (2020) does not report that there are many more studies in the case of phonics ( k = 14 studies, n = 1647 students) versus all other interventions ( k = 2 – 5, largest n = 648). Unlike Bowers, Adesope et al. (2011 , p. 648) do not place these different interventions in opposition to each other, concluding quite reasonably that “The evidence presented in this meta-analysis suggests that cooperative reading, systematic phonics instruction, and diary and structured writing interventions have the potential to enhance the teaching of English literacy to ESL immigrant students.” Finally, Adesope et al. also wisely conclude that contextual factors such as school contexts as well as minority language learner characteristics may influence the effectiveness of any of these strategies. Again, Bowers ignores this entire important authorial nuance.

The final section of Bowers (2020) is devoted to a critique of Torgerson et al. (2018) , a tertiary review that concludes cautiously that phonics has received support, but that more work is still needed to be certain about its effects. Here Bowers repeats his arguments about the absolute size of non-phonic effects, the inclusion of non-English studies, and the purported effects of studies such as those of Levy et al. (1999) on outcomes that we have already considered.

Interpretation of Empirical Research

Measured in conventional terms, there is consistent evidence of positive effects for explicit phonics-based intervention on reading outcomes. These positive effects are persuasive because of the large sample size across studies and the range of investigators, settings, and participants. Bowers (2020) perceives that this effect has been exaggerated and we agree there are examples of this being the case. We are also aware of professionals who deny that phonics has a role in improving learning to read ( Smith 2004 ). While we appreciate many of the significant points that Bowers makes, we are aware of the potential dangers of denying the impact of phonics as well as the dangers of overemphasizing its effect. We do not agree that the impact of systematic or explicit phonics instruction is modest and unimportant. This advantage is consistently reported, spanning the 14 meta-analyses reviewed above executed across many countries worldwide over at least eight decades (e.g., Scammacca et al. 2016 ). Effects are reliably still present up to, on average, one year after the interventions have ended ( Suggate, 2016 ). We even have some evidence of the very long-term impacts of reading programs that include phonics on word reading up to 10 years after interventions in children with word-level reading disabilities ( Blachman et al. 2014 ). The effect of phonics is evident for typical and atypical readers and across alphabetic languages in the 14 meta-analyses; for second language learners ( Vaughn et al. 2006 ) and for immigrant children ( Adesope et al. 2011 ), and across RCT trials and other controlled studies. There is evidence that instruction that includes explicit phonics affects fluency and comprehension, even in the most struggling readers, but the latter are more inconsistent ( Morris et al., 2012 ). At a certain level, however, we must ask how comprehension proceeds in struggling readers if they cannot access the print. Table 1 shows a modest effect of PHAB on reading comprehension, which is even larger for comparisons involving RAVE-O. In Torgesen et al. (2001) , one of the interventions was an intense 80-hour sublexical tutoring program with children severely impaired in word reading. It was associated with major gains in decoding and text-based comprehension, but little gains in fluency because these upper elementary children had little access to print before the intervention because of their severe decoding problems.

While sometimes presented otherwise by Bowers (2020) , the reality of the research base is a serious effort from international scientists who, mindful of the strengths and limitations of the outcomes evident in their own data, cautiously explain and contextualize their findings. At best, they know that effect sizes are estimates of effects. Despite the 14 meta-analytic studies supporting explicit phonics, like many of the other researchers involved in this work, we recognize that the relative effects of phonics require conditioned application including such terms such as “may” and “probably” to any causal claims about the role of phonics. On the other hand, when Bowers suggests in the concluding paragraph of his review that the effects of systematic phonics instruction versus alternative reading methods including whole language are a “draw,” we think this conclusion is tantamount to acceptance of the null hypothesis and is not helpful to educators or their students. Not only is this statement not supported by the evidence from which Bowers claims to derive his judgements, it unnecessarily arouses controversy in a field that needs to focus on the best practices available.

Areas of Agreement

Throughout the paper we have highlighted areas of agreement with Bowers (2002). We agree that design and content aspects of many studies is inconsistent and hard to code in meta-analysis. This is an issue across intervention studies and not specific to phonics interventions. We agree that publication bias may be evident: Torgerson et al. (2018) show that of 12 meta-analyses of phonics, six explore publication bias and three report evidence consistent with there being some bias (see also Galuschka et al. 2020 ). While we agree that there remain some significant weaknesses in the empirical data, we note some of these issues span the social and natural sciences broadly – not specifically to this topic. These issues also apply to candidate “alternative treatments.” Furthermore, the bar is set high here for any credible intervention: RCTs, with clear contrast with alternatives, clear (replicable) contrasts of content, clear impacts on comprehension, no publication bias (we assume to this end, widespread trial registration and CONSORT-quality reporting of all trials), then later, clear evidence from meta-analysis of all such RCTs, possibly even 10 year follow ups! We eagerly await such platinum standard data more generally in reading intervention: There is much work to be done! Finally, we also suspect we would share common cause with Bowers against overly strong uses of evidence by some advocates of phonics and some policy makers, and wherever this leads to denuded and impoverished curricula. We prefer a focus on “explicit” instruction and agree with Bowers that word work does not necessarily require a particular scope and sequence or that any particular method for delivering phonics is strongly supported, although we think effective phonics instruction is facilitated by an organized lesson plan that is intentional and not incidental.

What Are the Right Questions?

What we do not have is a sufficiently strong science of teaching children to read ( Seidenberg 2017 ). Although it would be nice to be able to break down the teaching of reading into a very precise package outlining the role of each component and the best way to teach it, unpacking these components is difficult to do and would potentially yield small effects, as in the PHAB condition in Morris et al. (2012) . In the teaching world, there are many factors affecting children and learning to read. What is clear is that the questions posed by Bowers (2020) , as well as extreme proponents of phonics, is an artificial one that does not support progress in the science of teaching children to read. In the US and UK, legislation is passed mandating certain approaches to reading instruction, and even worse, prescribing specific commercial programs for children identified with dyslexia ( Petscher et al. 2019 ). However, we would do well to ask the right questions about how to teach effectively the range of learners in our classrooms to read. This requires embracing the complexity and multiple competency view of reading. Even in the area of phonics, there are many ways to help children access sublexical components of words and one approach does not work with all children, even those identified with dyslexia. We also recognize that while phonics instruction is associated with improved reading outcomes, the amount of phonics instruction required, the level of explicitness, and how phonics instruction is integrated into other important elements of reading instruction requires further investigation.

We agree with Bowers (2020) that alternative approaches to teaching reading need to be studied and suggest that the current research base will be enhanced by comprehensive approaches that integrate- not balance- different components of reading instruction with ample consideration of the range of learners and their instructional needs. For many children, these components need to be taught explicitly. In particular, children who have trouble accessing words because of problems with phonological processing need explicit code-based instruction. They also need to practice to build automaticity. Children learning to read English will need to learn how to navigate both the morphemic and phonemic aspect of the spelling system of English. Comprehension instruction recognizing the critical roles of word meaning and world knowledge also requires a more explicit approach because many children do not develop vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension strategies through passive reading.

Focusing on the integration of these activities in a comprehensive approach to reading instruction would be beneficial. Reading instruction should not occur in the absence of opportunities to read and write and oral language development. These opportunities are usually present in reading instruction, making it hard to isolate the effects of systematic phonics instruction. However, these successful integrated approaches rely on facilitating students’ access to word reading and meaning through effective instructional practices that demonstrate the ways in which phonemes map to print in regular and irregular ways providing many opportunities to read words so that the structure of language is acquired both explicitly and implicitly. How to integrate comprehensive programs and use them to differentiate and customize instruction for individual children is a much better question. Programs should package components with known efficacy and evaluate intervention outcomes when the package permits differentiation (e.g., Connor & Morrison, 2016 ).

The dichotomy of systematic phonics versus less systematic/no phonics instruction is artificial because these activities exist on a continuum, representing an outmoded question that is hard to address from the available studies ( Stuebing et al. 2008 ). The issue is how to consider the reading development of the learner and to integrate these components into a comprehensive reading program that permits differentiation for the individual learner. As Seidenberg (2017) pointed out, many children come to school primed to learn to read. However, because of environmental factors as well as biological factors that make it harder for the brain to mediate reading, many children struggle to learn to decode and therefore are less able to access print. Much of what Bowers (2020) calls exaggeration is a reaction to the need of these children for explicit phonics instruction. Many children do not get the word work they need, partly because it is not intentional, explicit, and well organized.

In the spirit of seeking clarity and maximal consensus, we map out seven major claims made by Bowers underpinning his original review and the roughly equal number of points of agreement and disagreement in Table 3 along with relevant evidence. Table 3 acts only as a summary overview of the multiple issues discussed here to aid a reader in mapping the broad arguments, and should only be interpreted in light of the nuances we elaborate in the main text throughout this article. We finish with three claims in points 8–10 that are not explicitly made by Bowers (2020) but which might potentially serve as unifying statements and underpin the most productive future work on reading interventions to meet the needs of all learners.

The 21st century challenge is to meet the distinct needs of students who are “primed” for reading as well as those requiring much more explicit access to the alphabetic principle, while also engaging all children with the complexity of their language and their literature. To this end, a suitably nuanced and evidenced science of teaching reading is a work in progress. This ambitious enterprise may involve healthy friendly professional disagreement, but it will also need a mindset among all research leaders that acknowledges this complexity over old binary modes of the 20th century, the importance of this goal to the wide community, and also the importance of communicating it accurately and effectively to all of the users of our science. To stimulate this type of discussion was the goal of this paper.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Professor Genevieve McArthur for discussion of ideas in this paper and Dr. Yusra Ahmed for assistance with the computation of effect sizes.

Funding: Grant P50 HD052117, Texas Center for Learning Disabilities, from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, supported Fletcher and Vaughn. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development or the National Institutes of Health.

Conflicts of Interest: None

Declarations

Ethics approval, consent to participate, availability of data, code availability: Not applicable

Publisher's Disclaimer: This Author Accepted Manuscript is a PDF file of a an unedited peer-reviewed manuscript that has been accepted for publication but has not been copyedited or corrected. The official version of record that is published in the journal is kept up to date and so may therefore differ from this version.

Contributor Information

Jack M. Fletcher, Department of Psychology, University of Houston.

Robert Savage, Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute for Education, University College- London.

Sharon Vaughn, Department of Special Education, University of Texas-Austin.

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Original research article, the effectiveness of phonological-based instruction in english as a foreign language students at primary school level: a research synthesis.

• 1 Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
• 2 Division of Educational Psychology and Methodology, The State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY, USA

Phonological-based instruction, namely phonological awareness instruction (PA) and phonics instruction, has shown to be effective on early literacy skills among young children in western countries. Children who learn English as a foreign language (EFL) learn to read English differently from children in English-dominant societies. Effectiveness of the instruction in the EFL context is much less investigated. The present study systematically reviewed 15 experimental and quasi-experimental studies published in between 2000 and 2016, on the topic of the effectiveness of phonological-based instruction in the EFL context. Study characteristics and instructional features were described, and effect sizes were calculated. Phonological-based instruction was consistently found to be effective among primary school EFL students on reading underlying skills, including phonemic awareness and non-word reading. The median value of the effect size was moderate. In contrast, the effectiveness on word recognition (lexical access and pronunciation) and reading comprehension were inconsistent across studies. The median value of the effect size on word reading was small. This pattern suggests a limitation of the phonological-based instruction, which is the difficulty of transferring the phonological underlying outcomes to real reading. We found that most studies, although meeting the minimum standards of evidence for effectiveness, suffer from methodological flaws; thus, they are potentially biased. Therefore, the positive effects reported in this study should be interpreted with caution. The implication for practice of this study is that including phonological-based instruction in the current English curriculum may be beneficial for young EFL students, thus they can better learn to phonologically decode English words. But not enough evidence has been found to support the instructional effectiveness on real word recognition and reading comprehension. Future research on this topic with rigorous design is needed so that strong causal inference can be made. The findings of this study provide novel insights into foreign language education of English for young learners.

Introduction

English has an alphabetic writing system, which means the print represents speech largely at phonemic level. Therefore, phonological decoding is greatly involved in learning to read in English. Phonological-based instruction, which focuses on explicit teaching of phonological analysis of words and letter-sound correspondences, is shown to be effective in improving literacy outcomes at early stage ( Bus and Van Ijzendoorn, 1999 ; Ehri et al., 2001a , b ). Whether this approach is effective with children who learn English as a foreign language (EFL) has not been substantially investigated yet.

Learning to read in English is challenging for EFL students. Exposure to oral and written English is limited in most EFL contexts ( Gunderson, 2014 ). Thus, the development of English oral language and literacy skills of EFL students is constrained. English literacy instruction for this group of students is important but far from being evidence-based. This paper presents a systematic review of experimental and quasi-experimental studies on phonological-based instruction in EFL context.

Conceptualization of Reading and the Underlying Phonological Predictors

Reading is to make meaning out of print. According the simple view of reading, two cognitive components are involved in the reading processes, comprehension and word decoding ( Hoover and Gough, 1990 ). Comprehension in reading is underpinned by listening comprehension and develops with oral language proficiency. Decoding is to access a word’s meaning from its print form. To become a successful reader, one has to decode effortlessly so that most of the cognitive resources can be dedicated to comprehension. The set of words one can recognize effortlessly from memory without further breaking it down to smaller unit is called sight vocabulary ( Ehri, 1987 ).

To build sight vocabulary, orthographic mapping of large quantity of words needs to be attained ( Ehri, 2014 ). Orthographic mapping is letter-sound formation that bonds the pronunciation and spelling of a word. Orthographic mapping is acquired by phonological decoding, which refers to in-depth analysis of the relation between the pronunciation and spelling of the word. The unit of analysis could be syllables, phonemes, rimes, or morphemes (see Ehri, 2014 for a review).

The idea that phonological decoding is necessary for sight reading is also advocated in lexical quality hypothesis ( Perfetti and Hart, 2002 ). According to the hypothesis, a word retrieved reliably and efficiently by sight is the one represented with good quality, meaning that the word is represented with redundancy and specificity in terms of semantics, phonology, and orthography. Phoneme–grapheme mapping of a word is redundant if the pronunciation and print form of the word are separately specified in the representation. The redundant cues of phoneme–grapheme correspondence can confirm the connection among a word’s spelling, pronunciation, and meaning by avoiding the confusion with words similarly spelled or pronounced. For example, one who memorizes the word “president” by rote and does not decode it phonologically may have difficulties in distinguishing it from words that are visually similar such as “present,” “precedent,” and “precious.”

The ability of phonological decoding has massive power in kicking start the self-teaching mechanism for learning new vocabulary through independent reading ( Share, 1995 ). Phonological decoding is enabled by two underlying abilities. One is phonological awareness, which refers to the ability of detecting and manipulating linguistic sounds in speech such as segmenting, deleting, and blending ( Hoien et al., 1995 ). The other is the knowledge of letter-sound correspondence. The two skills are the most robust predictors of subsequent reading performance after oral proficiency has been controlled ( Ehri, 1998 ).

On the other hand, some researchers argue that early acquisition of sight vocabulary depends on rudimentary phonological awareness and large exposure to print, rather than refined phonemic awareness and proficient knowledge of letter-sound correspondence ( Stuart et al., 2000 ; Fletcher-Flinn and Thompson, 2004 ; Thompson et al., 2015 ). Systematic instruction on alphabetic principles should be based on students’ knowledge of sight words and certain level oral language proficiency ( Thompson et al., 1996 ).

Word Reading for EFL Students

One important distinction between EFL and English-native-speaking students in terms of word reading is that the strength of association between the formal (spelling and pronunciation specification) and semantic information of words ( Jiang, 2000 ). According to the stage theory of lexical acquisition ( Jiang, 2000 ), formal information is weakly linked to semantic information at the initial stage of lexical acquisition due to the constrained input students receive in EFL context. When sounding out a high-frequency word, access to meaning is usually assumed for an English-native-speaking student. However, the lexical access is less likely guaranteed for an EFL student. For EFL students, learning to crack the code of print-and-pronunciation correspondence does not guarantee the access to lexical-semantic information. The words students know the meaning of are likely to be less than what they can pronounce. Therefore, decoding (pronunciation–print association) and lexical access (print–meaning association) are treated as separate outcomes of word reading in the present study.

English as a foreign language learning environment is marked by constrained input of both written and oral English. The constrained environment leads to delayed development of word decoding for EFL students compared to English-native-speaking students. For example, the logographic stage of word reading is short-lived for native speakers, who develop beyond the initial stage soon after formal schooling starts ( Frith, 1985 ; Ehri, 1987 , 2005 ). This stage may last longer for EFL students. Yin et al. (2007) conducted a study in Beijing and found that 50% of Grade 2 and 34% of Grade 4 EFL students in their sample were designated as recognizing words at pre-alphabetic stage, which means that they recognized print words using visual features instead of phonological decoding.

Although at the beginning EFL students rely less on phonological decoding to identify words than their English-speaking counterparts, there is evidence suggesting that phonological decoding facilitates vocabulary acquisition of EFL students. Hu (2008) found that Chinese-speaking EFL students better associated a novel word’s auditory form with its semantic referent when the word was presented in print form. The print effect was larger for the EFL students with better phonological awareness. This suggests that phonological processing enabled phonological decoding to form bonds between pronunciation and print, thus enhancing sight vocabulary learning. Therefore, explicit instruction on English alphabetic principles and phonological awareness may be beneficial for EFL students; it may boost their development of word decoding skills and further facilitate sight vocabulary acquisition.

Definition of Phonological-Based Instruction

Phonological-based instruction focuses on aurally analyzing words at the phonemic level and mapping linguistic units to print so that students can eventually learn to read. Phonological-based instruction includes two types of instructional programs, phonics instruction and phonemic awareness instruction (PA).

Phonics instruction focuses on explicit and direct teaching of alphabetic principles and grapheme–phoneme corresponding rules, and of applying the knowledge to word- and text-level reading. PA focuses on teaching phonological skills, such as rhyming, identifying, segmenting, and blending phoneme sounds. There is overlap between phonemic awareness instruction and phonics instruction ( Ehri et al., 2001b ). Both of them may include the component of grapheme–phoneme correspondence of 26 English letters. Phonics instruction goes beyond teaching letter-sound knowledge to more complex spelling rules such as digraphs and diphthongs. Phoneme awareness instruction focuses on training students to manipulate speech sounds without the presence of written letters, and word level reading and spelling are important outcomes of phonics instruction. Phoneme awareness instruction can serve as a precursor to systematic phonics instruction ( Ehri et al., 2001a ).

Substantial amount of evidence has suggested that phonemic awareness and knowledge of alphabetic principles are important to learning to read in alphabetical languages at the beginning learning stage (see Bus and Van Ijzendoorn, 1999 for a review). Instruction targeting at phonological skills and letter knowledge is effective in young learners on word level reading, regardless of whether English is their first language ( National Reading Panel (U.S.), & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.), 2000 ; Angiulli et al., 2004 ; Lipka and Siegel, 2010 ). Findings from quantitative meta-analysis studies showed that phonological-based instruction has moderate to large effects on English literacy skills ( Ehri et al., 2001a , b ).

Phonological-Based Instruction in the EFL Context

Phonological-based instruction in EFL classes is attracting more and more attention of researchers, school administrators, and teachers. EFL students do not have English-language environments to develop literacy skills spontaneously. Thus, the foundational skills, such as phonemic awareness and alphabetic principles, need to be explicitly taught so that students are prepared to learn to read in English ( Shen, 2003 ). Government-endorsed English curriculums in many EFL countries include phonics or PA as an instructional component, such as Malaysia ( Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ) and Taiwan ( Lai et al., 2009 ). Phonological-based instruction, phonics instruction in particular, has become a trend in English classes. Qualitative studies have found that English teachers in EFL countries have the belief that the spelling rules (phonics) are essential in teaching English to young children ( Kuo, 2011 ). For example, English teachers in Hong Kong reported that they found phonics instruction effective on their students’ spelling and reading performances in early grades ( Lau and Rao, 2013 ).

Meanwhile, some concerns have been raised about adopting phonological-based instruction in EFL classrooms in early grades. The primary goal of English education at early stage is oral language development. Some people are concerned that phonics instruction focuses too much on identifying letters and words and introducing it too early could cause negligence of conversational skills. For example, some English teachers took phonics instruction as an easy way out, because they were not confident in conversing in English themselves ( Zhou and Mcgride-Chang, 2009 ).

Research Reviews with English-Language Learners (ELL) in English-Dominant Societies

Several literature reviews have been conducted on the topic of effectiveness of phonological-based instruction with the ELL, who learn English as their second language in English-dominant societies ( Thorius and Sullivan, 2013 ; Stephens, 2014 ; Richards-Tutor et al., 2015 ). National reading panel reported that ELL students generally respond to phonological-based instruction as well as English-native-speaking students ( August et al., 2009 ). A synthetic review was conducted on studies with ELL students who were struggling readers ( Richards-Tutor et al., 2015 ). The findings showed that the interventions, which included phonological-based instruction as one of the instructional components, had moderate to large effects on word reading. Stephens (2014) reviewed intervention studies with Spanish-speaking children, who were struggling with English reading, and found that comprehensive programs with phonics and phonemic awareness instruction included had large effects on reading comprehension. However, the sole effect of the phonological components was not investigated in these studies. Furthermore, Thorius and Sullivan (2013) synthesized studies with ELL students in the Response to Intervention setting and found that most of the studies were conducted at Tier 2 level, where the instruction is targeted at struggling readers and is delivered relatively intensively and in small group. In contrast, studies investigating the instructional effects in general educational setting are scarce.

The findings discussed above cannot be directly generalized to the EFL context, because EFL students are in a completely different situation compared to ELL learners in English-speaking countries. EFL students are from neither language minority groups nor struggling readers who fell behind English-native-speaking counterparts. EFL students learn English as a school subject in their native countries. They have extensive print exposure of their first language and many of them have started to receive formal literacy instruction in their first language before they learn to read in English.

We reviewed studies published from 2000 to 2016 on the topic of effectiveness of phonological-based instruction in the EFL context.

This systematic review was aimed to answer the following questions:

How the instruction is conducted in the EFL context, particularly what instructional components were covered and what adapting strategies were adopted?

Whether the instruction is effective on the following outcomes in the ascending order of level of cognitive processing, phonological awareness and letter knowledge, phonological decoding (non-word reading), word reading (lexical access and pronunciation), and reading comprehension?

Specifically, we conducted the following analyses:

the examination of the characteristics of the studies and selecting less biased studies for further analysis,

summarizing features of the treatment and comparison instruction,

the calculation of effect size of the instruction in each study on the outcomes.

Materials and Methods

Search procedures.

Four commonly used databases, PsycINFO, ERIC, web of science, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global were searched for studies of interest published in English from 2000 to 2016, including a large number of peer-reviewed articles and unpublished dissertations in this field. Various combinations of key words of three sets were used in the initial literature search. The first set is related to instructional components or outcomes, such as phonics, phonemic awareness, literacy skills, phonological awareness, and rhyming. The second set is related to setting, such as EFL, ELL, and foreign countries. The third set is related to study design, such as intervention, instruction, and training. A manual search was also conducted with the key journals (TESOL quartile, Language learning, Reading and writing, Journal of educational psychology, Second language research, Learning and individual differences, Reading in a foreign language ) to find relevant studies. We also checked reference lists in the key articles to find additional studies. The initial search resulted in 116 studies. The first author of this article screened the titles and abstracts and selected 20 studies that met the following criteria.

Criteria for Inclusion

First, studies must be focused on evaluating the effects of phonological-based instruction. The instruction can be related to either phonological awareness or phonics which might include the component of phonological awareness. Studies that examined instruction of other types such as the International Phonetic Alphabet were excluded. In addition, instruction in the control condition should not include a phonological component. Studies that compared effectiveness of two phonological skill-based programs were discarded. Second, studies were included if they were conducted in the context where English is learned as a foreign language. Studies with ELL students in native English countries were removed. Third, the participants of the studies must be at the primary grade level ranging from kindergarten to Grade 6. Studies with secondary school students and adults were excluded.

Study Quality

Twenty studies were included for in-depth review of quality after excluding studies that did not meet the above criteria. A study was included for further analysis only if it met the minimum quality standards adapted from the evidence standards published by What Works Clearinghouse (2014) .

• Studies must adopt RCT or quasi-experimental design.

• Group equality on outcomes at pretest should be reported. The inequality should be addressed in data analysis using the ANCOVA technique. Studies not reporting pretest scores on any of the outcomes were excluded.

• A study was excluded if only one teacher was involved in each condition, unless evidence was provided that the confounding effect was minimum or controlled. For example, the instruction in both treatment and control conditions was monitored to ensure that teachers in both conditions followed the lesson plan and no obvious alteration was introduced. For this reason, studies of Chu et al. (2007) , Jamaludin et al. (2015) , Li and Chen (2016) , Lin and Cheng (2008) , Yang (2009) , and Bing et al. (2013) were included, although only one teacher was involved in each condition. However, the findings only serve as weak evidence for effectiveness, because the confounding factor was not eliminated and the results were potentially biased.

• Outcomes were clearly specified. Studies in which generic outcomes were reported, such as English-language proficiency or English literacy without detailed break-down of skills, were excluded.

The two authors of this article independently assessed the quality of each study and selected studies that met the above criteria. Then they compared notes and reached agreement. This yielded 15 studies that qualified for the current study. These studies were further coded on study characteristics, instructional context and features in both treatment and comparison conditions, and their reported statistics were extracted to calculate effect sizes.

Coding scheme for this study is shown in Table 1 . The creation of the coding scheme was iterative. During the first reading, each study was described in general dimensions adopted in previous studies ( Ehri et al., 2001a ; Gersten et al., 2009 ; Li, 2010 ). Then, we created categories for the dimensions so that all the studies were covered. The two authors independently coded the studies and compared notes. Then, the dimensions and categories that were ambiguously defined and led to different interpretations were removed or corrected. The third round of the coding yielded the following scheme.

Table 1. Coding scheme .

Study Characteristics

The characteristic dimensions include authors and year of publishing, region and native language, study design, study type, sample size, the number of classes involved, the number of schools involved, students’ grade and ability level, schools’ social economic status (SES), and English-learning context, including language medium of daily instruction and the number of English lessons a week.

Treatment Instruction

The treatment instruction was described by the following features, delivering personnel, group size, intensity, instructional content, and adapting strategies. The coding scheme of instructional content was adapted from a summary of instructional components commonly seen in phonological-based programs of different approaches ( Fry, 2010 ). The following instructional components were identified:

letter knowledge: teaching letter-name and letter-sound correspondence, lower case, and upper case,

digraphs: teaching rules of two letters representing one sound,

phonemic awareness: deletion, detection, segmentation of phonemes, and blending phonemes into words,

decodable text: practicing decoding words in text which is only composed of simple, decodable words,

rhyme detection: detecting, discriminating, and generating rhyming words,

sight words: reading high-frequency words aloud accurately and fast, using flash cards,

analogy phonics: word family, spelling patterns,

guided reading: a teacher demonstrates word decoding when students encounter a difficult word during text reading.

We also summarized each study on the adapting strategies adopted in the treatment condition to tailor the instruction to young EFL students. Purposes of the strategies include enabling active learning, creating comprehensive input, facilitating transfer from knowledge of first language, developing oral language, and facilitating memorization. Two researchers independently coded the above mentioned aspects for each study. We compared notes and solved all the differences. Hundred percent agreement has been reached.

Comparison Instruction

The comparison condition was described if the following instructional components were identified.

Whole Word Recognition

Students were taught to recognize a word as a whole without breaking it into smaller parts of letter groups. A word is acquired through repeated encounters. Specifically, the whole word approach was coded in the following aspects: (a) whether explicit instruction on letter knowledge was included, (b) whether writing exercise was involved, (c) how the repetition was delivered, through authentic reading, multiple demonstrations and examples provided by the teachers, or through out-of-context drills.

Text Reading

Students read text under teachers’ guidance.

Oral Language Development

Instruction focused on oral language skills without explicit teaching of reading skills; activities included singing, chanting, conversing, and listening comprehension.

Miscellaneous

Students received a comprehensive English program covering various linguistic components.

We coded skills and knowledge measured in the assessment. Skills and knowledge that underlie word reading included rhyme awareness, phonemic awareness, letter knowledge, and phonological decoding (non-word reading); tasks of word level reading included measures of print-pronunciation association and print-meaning association. Reading comprehension, which requires higher level of processing, was also included as an outcome.

Effect Size

We used the Hedge’s g as the measure of effect size ( Hedges, 1981 ). Hedge’s provides a correction factor that modifies the effect of sampling bias. Small sample size can cause overestimation of effects using Cohen’s d ( Hedges, 1981 ). Hedge’s g was calculated from means and SDs of the treatment and control groups at the immediate posttests. We adjusted effect sizes using pretest scores with the formula by Wortman and Bryant (1985) . For studies in which means and SDs of outcomes were not reported, we contacted the authors and obtained their raw data. The first author extracted the data for calculation and the second author checked for accuracy. To evaluate the strength of effect size, Cohen’s ( Cohen, 1998 ) criteria was adopted. An effect size of 0.2 is interpreted as small, 0.5 is interpreted as moderate, and 0.8 and above is interpreted as large. The criteria were also adopted by Ehri et al. (2001a , b ) to judge the effect of phonological-based instruction in English native context.

The comprehensive literature search yielded 17 comparisons out of the 15 studies. Two studies included two comparisons. Only the ones with larger effect size were included. Five studies are unpublished dissertations and the other 10 studies were published in peer-reviewed journals. We described characteristics of each study and the treatment instruction, followed by the report of the effectiveness on each outcome (see details related to each study in the Supplementary Material).

Research Context

Countries and regions where the reviewed studies were conducted include Nigeria ( Shepherd, 2013 ; Eshiet, 2014 ), India ( Dixon et al., 2011 ), Malaysia ( Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ), Japan ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ), PR China ( Ashmore et al., 2003 ; Bing et al., 2013 ), Hong Kong ( Yeung, 2012 ; Yeung et al., 2013 ), and Taiwan ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Lin and Cheng, 2008 ; Lai et al., 2009 ; Yang, 2009 ; Li and Chen, 2016 ).

According to Kachru (1990) , the use of English in the aforementioned areas can be summarized into two categories: the outer circle and the extending circle. The outer circle refers to settings where English is not the native language but has been widely used in chief institutions of the country and plays an important role in a multilingual setting ( Crystal, 2003 ). These countries and regions include India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Hong Kong, and over 50 other territories. The expanding circle involves nations where the importance of English is recognized as an international language, though they do not have a history of colonization by English-native countries nor have they given English any special role in government. In countries belonging to the extending circle, English is taught as a foreign language and considered to be of high priority and great importance for academic success. Countries of this category include Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, etc.

However, the English learning situation of young learners in the two circles did not differ much in regards to the studies involved in the analysis. English was taught as a school subject, and the daily instruction was mediated by the native language in most of the studies, except for the study by Dixon (2010) , where English was the medium of instruction. The number of English lessons students took each week ranged from two to eight, with a median of three. Each lesson lasted from 30 to 40 min. This is very limited exposure compared to their counterparts in English-dominant context.

Eleven studies reported the SES of schools or students. Five studies were conducted in schools in rural areas and of low SES ( Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Eshiet, 2014 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ). Two studies were performed in schools of mixed levels of SES ( Yeung, 2012 ; Yeung and Chan, 2013 ). Four studies were conducted in schools of middle or high SES ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ; Ashmore et al., 2003 ; Bing et al., 2013 ; Li and Chen, 2016 ).

Study Design

Among the 15 studies, three studies adopted the design of randomized controlled trial. The randomization was conducted at student level in two studies ( Lai et al., 2009 ; Yeung et al., 2013 ). Class served as the unit of randomization and was taken into account in data analysis in one study ( Dixon et al., 2011 ). Two studies did not provide information in regards to group assignment ( Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ). The rest 10 studies adopted quasi-experimental design, as the group assignment was not random. Intact classes were assigned to different groups in eight studies. In Chu et al. (2007) study, students from different groups were matched on one of the outcome variables. In Yeung’s ( Yeung, 2012 ) study, the students were assigned by convenience.

None of the studies adopted the blinding procedures in delivering the instruction. The teachers in the treatment group knew that they were in the treatment group, and five of them reported positive attitudes toward the experimental method ( Ashmore et al., 2003 ; Yang, 2009 ; Yeung, 2012 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Eshiet, 2014 ). This potentially introduced bias, as the teachers’ positive attitudes could contribute to the effectiveness ( Torgerson and Torgerson, 2013 ). In nine studies ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ; Ashmore et al., 2003 ; Chu et al., 2007 ; Lin and Cheng, 2008 ; Yang, 2009 ; Yeung, 2012 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ; Li and Chen, 2016 ), teachers in the treatment and control groups were from the same school. It is possible that the comparison group was contaminated, because the teachers in the treatment group could communicate the method to the teachers in the control group. The contamination was minimized but cannot be eliminated, although the fidelity check ensured that the instructional activities in the treatment conditions did not occur in the comparison conditions.

In summary, although 15 studies met the minimum standards of quality, only 3 studies qualified for making causal inference ( Lai et al., 2009 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ; Yeung et al., 2013 ). Causal inference in respect to instructional effectiveness means that the improvement in the outcomes can be solely attributed to the instruction. The three studies eliminated the unobserved confounding effects by the procedure of group randomization. In addition, the confounding factor of teacher was also eliminated and the control groups were not contaminated in the three studies. Ten studies adopted quasi-experimental design which potentially brought in unobserved confounding factors that may have contributed to the outcome. The primary confounding factor, teacher, was identified in six studies.

Sample Characteristics

The sample size of the studies ranges from 40 to 1,030. Eight studies were conducted with kindergarten or Grade 1 students whose experience of learning English language was less than 1 year ( Ashmore et al., 2003 ; Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ; Yeung, 2012 ; Bing et al., 2013 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Yeung et al., 2013 ; Eshiet, 2014 ). Three studies involved Grade 3 students ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Lai et al., 2009 ; Yang, 2009 ), and three studies involved Grade 5 students ( Lin and Cheng, 2008 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ; Li and Chen, 2016 ). One study was conducted with students of mixed grades from Grade 1 to 6 ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ). Two studies were conducted with students identified as English struggling readers ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ). Students’ experience of learning English out of school was taken into account in four studies. One study recruited participants who had no out-of-school experience ( Bing et al., 2013 ), and the rest three studies showed equal distribution across two groups on this variable ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ; Yang, 2009 ; Li and Chen, 2016 ). None of the studies reported the proficiency level of oral and written abilities in students’ native languages.

Comparison Conditions

Ten studies compared phonological-based approach with an alternative approach of explicit reading instruction. Comparison conditions in six studies ( Lin and Cheng, 2008 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ; Yeung, 2012 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Yeung et al., 2013 ; Eshiet, 2014 ) adopted the whole word approach to teach students to read, which is an approach that a word is taught to students through repetitive encounters without phonological decoding. Letter names were taught along with or prior to the whole word recognition in eight conditions. In four conditions, a word was repeatedly shown to students in various demonstrations and forms provided by the teachers, e.g., in different sentences and pictures ( Yang, 2009 ; Yeung, 2012 ; Yeung et al., 2013 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ). Word repetition was conducted via out-of-context drills in the same format in two studies. The students were shown a word in flashcards repeatedly and asked to repeat its pronunciation and meaning in their first language after the teacher ( Ashmore et al., 2003 ; Lin and Cheng, 2008 ). Two studies adopted mnemonics as a strategy to facilitate students’ rote memorization of the association among a word’s pronunciation, print form, and meaning ( Lin and Cheng, 2008 ; Shepherd, 2013 ). Writing and copying exercises were featured in the whole word approach in one study ( Yeung et al., 2013 ). Three studies described the comparison conditions as the whole word approach, but did not give implementation details ( Lai et al., 2009 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ; Eshiet, 2014 ).

Besides the whole word approach, reading instruction in one comparison condition focused on text reading. The teacher explained the meaning of the text sentence by sentence and asked questions to check for comprehension ( Yang, 2009 ).

Phonological-based instruction was compared with the status quo of English education in three studies ( Ashmore et al., 2003 ; Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ; Li and Chen, 2016 ). The students received regular English curriculum, which included various instructional components of both reading and oral language development. All the curricula were without systematic and explicit teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics. Incidental teaching of English alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness was mentioned in two control conditions ( Lai et al., 2009 ; Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ).

Comparison conditions in two studies focused on oral/aural language development without introducing print ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ; Chu et al., 2007 ). Activities included watching videos, listening to stories, conversing, singing, and chanting.

Delivering Personnel

Instruction in the treatment conditions was delivered by school teachers in 13 studies. It was delivered by the researcher in Bing et al. (2013) study and by a computer program in Lai et al. (2009) study.

Instructional Intensity and Setting

All studies except for two were conducted in classroom setting. The class size in the 12 studies ranges from 12 to 50 with a median of 25. Lai et al. (2009) developed a computer program to deliver the PA instruction at individual level. Chu et al. (2007) conducted a study with struggling readers and the instruction was delivered in groups of eight. The instruction reviewed was delivered regularly. Each instructional session lasts from 20 min to 1 h. The instruction was provided for different length of time, from 1 week to one academic year. The accumulation of the instruction ranges from 120 min to 128 h with a median of 560 min.

Instructional Components

Among the 15 studies, 6 studies provided phonological-based instruction that featured phonological awareness training targeting rhyme and phonemic awareness without introducing alphabetic knowledge ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ; Ashmore et al., 2003 ; Lai et al., 2009 ; Yeung, 2012 ; Bing et al., 2013 ; Yeung et al., 2013 ). The other nine studies adopted phonics programs which varied in instructional components covered.

Six out of the eight phonics programs focused on synthetic phonics which is typically organized by grapheme–phoneme-correspondence (GPC) rules in the sequence of English alphabet followed by the units of diagraphs and consonant blends. Students practiced unitizing specific set of GPC rules to read and spell words. Johnson and Tweedie (2010) and Li and Chen (2016) adopted simplified version of synthetic phonics which only included letter-sound knowledge and phonemic awareness without extending to complicated spelling patterns. Synthetic phonics was taught in one study to enhance vocabulary acquisition ( Lin and Cheng, 2008 ). Specifically, letter-sound correspondences related to the target words were taught to the students. Thus, they utilized the knowledge to sound out the novel words.

It is worth noting that the treatment conditions in four studies ( Dixon et al., 2011 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Eshiet, 2014 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ) adopted Jolly Phonics, a commercially available teaching program developed in UK ( Lloyd, 2001 ). It is a synthetic phonics program consisting of 42 units including 26 letter-and-sound corresponding and 16 digraph rules. Multiple components were featured in the program including phonemic awareness activities, word decoding, dictation, and decodable text practice. This program used stories, songs, and body gestures to create mnemonics for students to remember letter-sound correspondences and engage students in learning.

Three treatment conditions adopted analytic phonics. Letter-sound correspondences were taught using the words in textbooks, and word decoding was taught during oral text reading ( Chu et al., 2007 ). Teaching materials in Yang (2009) study were stories featuring rhyming pairs. Reading activities included rhyme detection, word family, and spelling patterns. Flash card activities were implemented for students to practice recognizing sight words in all the three conditions.

Adapting Strategies

It is found that various strategies were employed to adapt phonological-based instruction to the characteristics of EFL students. Adapting strategies include introducing the meaning of words before phonologically analyzing them ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Lin and Cheng, 2008 ; Yang, 2009 ; Yeung and Chan, 2013 ), using stories, songs, and games to engage students ( Yang, 2009 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Yeung and Chan, 2013 ; Eshiet, 2014 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ), using computer programs to provide intensive and individualized training on phonemic awareness ( Lai et al., 2009 ), using the total physical response method to create comprehensible input ( Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ), using body movements to demonstrate sound segmentation and blending ( Yeung et al., 2013 ), and using mnemonics for students to remember letter-sound correspondences and word spellings ( Lin and Cheng, 2008 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Eshiet, 2014 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ).

Effectiveness of Phonological-Based Instruction

The range and the median of effect sizes on each outcome were reported. Meta-analysis synthesizing multiple studies for a presentative mean effect size was not conducted, because the studies reviewed varied in both the features of the instructions and the characteristics of the studies. Moreover, the analysis of the study design showed that most of the studies were potentially biased, thus the synthesized effect size could be misleading.

The presentation of the instructional outcomes follows the ascending order of level of cognitive processing of reading. Rhyme detection, phonemic awareness, letter naming, letter-sound knowledge, and non-word reading are skills and knowledge that underpin the reading process; real word recognition, including pronunciation and lexical access are real-time activities of word reading; text comprehension requires higher level processing beyond word recognition.

Rhyme Awareness

Four comparisons were made on rhyme detection. Tests of two comparisons ( Yeung, 2012 ; Yeung and Chan, 2013 ) showed significant effects, while the other two did not ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ; Bing et al., 2013 ). The effect size ranges from −0.09 to 0.81. The two significant effects are with size of 0.81 and 0.37, respectively.

Phonemic Awareness

Nine comparisons were made on phonemic awareness tapped by tasks, including phonemic segmentation, deletion, blending, detection, and identification. Statistical tests of seven comparisons ( Ashmore et al., 2003 ; Chu et al., 2007 ; Lai et al., 2009 ; Yang, 2009 ; Bing et al., 2013 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Yeung and Chan, 2013 ) showed significant effects and two ( Yeung, 2012 ; Eshiet, 2014 ) showed insignificant effects. The effect size ranges from −0.05 to 1.69 with a median of 0.62. The median size of the significant effects is 0.62 which is considered to be moderate.

Letter Knowledge

Five comparisons were made on letter recognition. Two of them showed significant effects ( Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ). The effect size ranges from 0.01 to 0.44 with a median of 0.30. The two significant effects are with size of 0.29 and 0.27, respectively. One comparison was made on letter-sound correspondence ( Dixon, 2010 ). The result showed extremely large effect, because the students in the control group showed knowledge of letter-sound correspondence in neither pre- nor posttests.

Non-word Reading

Six comparisons ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Yeung et al., 2013 ) were made on non-word reading and all showed significant results favoring phonological-based instruction. The effect size ranges from 0.32 to 1.20 with a median of 0.55 which is considered to be moderate.

Word Reading

Twelve comparisons were conducted on English real word reading. Word decoding, the association between print and pronunciation, was measured in 10 comparisons by the same task which was to read aloud a list of words untimed. Lexical access, the association between print and meaning, was measured in two studies. One measure was word–picture matching ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ) and the other was native-language translation ( Lin and Cheng, 2008 ).

The words chosen for the word-reading task in five studies were supposed to be familiar to the students ( Chu et al., 2007 ; Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ; Yeung, 2012 ; Yeung et al., 2013 ; Li and Chen, 2016 ). They were compiled from the English text books and were simple words without complex morphological or orthographical structures. Two studies chose words that were novel to the students, and the words were taught in the treatment instruction ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ; Lin and Cheng, 2008 ). Two studies chose standardized measures developed for assessing reading ability of English native speakers ( Ashmore et al., 2003 ; Eshiet, 2014 ). The items were in the ascending order of difficulty in Eshiet (2014) study; the items were of simple structure and can be decoded using simple corresponding rules in Ashmore et al. (2003) study.

Results of the comparisons on word pronunciation were not consistent. Effects of six out of nine comparisons ( Lai et al., 2009 ; Johnson and Tweedie, 2010 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Yeung and Chan, 2013 ) were significant. The effect size ranges from −0.05 to 0.65 with a median of 0.32. The median effect size of the significant effects is 0.33, which is small according to Cohen’s ( Cohen, 1998 ) criteria. The comparisons on lexical access of words showed no significant effects.

Text Comprehension

Four studies investigated the instructional effect on reading comprehension, two studies on passage comprehension ( Shepherd, 2013 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ) and two studies on sentence comprehension ( Allen-Tamai, 2000 ; Yang, 2009 ). Three studies found significant effects favoring phonics instruction with effect size of 2.35, 1.05, and 0.50, respectively ( Yang, 2009 ; Shepherd, 2013 ; Jamaludin et al., 2015 ).

In this review, we examined studies investigating effectiveness of phonological-based instruction with EFL students at primary school level. After screening literature based on our criteria, 15 studies were included in this review. We described the study characteristics and the instructional features in the treatment and comparison conditions, and calculated effect size on a variety of English literacy skills for each study.

Although the studies reviewed met the minimum standards of evidence, most of them had flawed design and the findings rendered weak evidence for effectiveness ( What Works Clearinghouse, 2014 ). The flawed design could lead to biased results. First, the positive effects on the outcomes might not be solely attributed to the instruction in 12 studies due to the lack of group randomization. Second, the effects might be inflated in 12 studies, because the clustering of participants was not taken into account. Third, other factors that affect comparisons identified in this study include variation of control conditions and outcome measures. The comparison in which the control condition contains a reading component may yield a smaller effect on literacy skills than the comparison where the control condition focuses on oral/aural language without exposure to print. Instructional outcomes measured by the items which were simple and aligned to the instruction may yield larger instructional effects than the ones measured by the standardized items which were difficult and were not directly addressed in the instruction. Last, some other sources of bias cannot be assessed because of the absence of required descriptive information, e.g., students’ proficiency level in English or in their native language.

Despite the limitation and variation of study designs, we identified some patterns consistent across the studies, which are discussed below together with suggestions and implications for future research and educational practice.

English Learning Context

As expected, the EFL students in the review studies had limited exposure to English language. The primary input of English EFL students received was from English classes at school. The duration of English exposure was less than 5 h a week as indicated in the reviewed studies, which was much more restricted compared to students from English-speaking areas. Moreover, English reading materials students were exposed to were very limited. New words were usually learned through explanation from their teachers and drill practices, rather than through authentic reading. In countries where English is one of the official languages, the students in the reviewed studies did not have sufficient exposure to the oral and written language; their situation of learning English was similar to students in a completely foreign context.

Treatment Instructions

The treatment instructions reviewed were mostly in the realm of synthetic phonics, which focuses on the explicit instruction of alphabetic principles and applying the knowledge to sounding out novel words. Phonemic awareness was also commonly included as a component in synthetic phonics programs, or as an intact program which could serve as the precursor to synthetic phonics. Activities such as sight word recognition and word family analysis, which were often featured in analytic phonics, were rarely implemented in the studies reviewed. Therefore, the effectiveness of phonological-based instruction demonstrated in this review is more reflective of the effectiveness of synthetic phonics instruction than that of other approaches.

Which approach is the most effective one? While this issue is debated extensively in English-speaking countries ( Wyse and Styles, 2007 ), it is less addressed in the EFL context. Analytic phonics approach focuses on phonetically analyzing words which are already familiar to students. Thus, a basic level of sight vocabulary is required in this method. In contrast, prior knowledge of literacy is not required in synthetic phonics because students are taught to sound out novel words. For this reason, synthetic phonics approach may be more feasible in the EFL context, especially for students in lower grades who have little or no prior experience with English. However, results of some studies reviewed here do not support the hypothesis. For example, Yang (2009) analyzed the effect of analytic phonics featuring activities of sight words and analogy phonics, and the results showed large effects in phonemic awareness and sentence comprehension. Wu (2005) conducted a study with Grade 3 students in Taiwan comparing analytic and synthetic phonics and found that the two approaches were equally effective when systematically delivered. Therefore, there is not enough evidence to draw any conclusion at this point.

Adapting strategies were adopted in the majority of the reviewed studies. Some strategies were aimed at engaging students and promoting active learning, such as playing games, while others were used to facilitate memorization like mnemonics and telling stories. All these strategies are helpful for young children, regardless if their first language is English or not. Meanwhile, introducing skills and knowledge of students’ native language was not seen as an adapting strategy in the reviewed studies. When starting to learn English, EFL students are usually well developed in speaking their native language and have been receiving the native literacy instruction formally and intensively. Studies found that knowledge in their first language can be transferred to English learning; the instruction facilitating the transfer is effective on English literacy outcomes ( Cummins, 2005 ). For example, Nishanimut et al. (2013) tested the instructional method of comparing the writing system of Kanada (students’ first language) with English alphabetic in synthetic phonics instruction and found large effects favoring this method.

Instructional Effectiveness

The reviewed studies consistently showed positive instructional effects on reading underlying skills including phonemic awareness and phonological decoding. Since some of the studies were methodologically flawed, the findings only weakly suggest the effectiveness of phonological-based instruction with primary school EFL students, in comparison to oral language teaching and whole word reading approach.

The phonological reading skills tap the process of aurally breaking a word into smaller units and applying the sound-print-conversion rules to sound it out, which was directly addressed in the phonological-based instruction as shown by the analysis of the treatment instructions. The positive instructional effects imply that explicitly teaching of decoding skills in English may be independent from English oral language experience and proficiency. A certain level of oral language proficiency and sight vocabulary may not be the prerequisite for learning English alphabetic principles and phonological awareness. Further studies are needed to test this hypothesis.

The two studies that measured lexical access in word recognition both showed insignificant results. The words chosen for assessment were directly taught in the instruction. This suggests that the instruction focused on skills of phonological decoding was not effective on lexical retrieval of words via the print form. This contradicts the findings with native English-speaking children, which found that phonological decoding enhanced sight word vocabulary and students with good phonological skills learned sight words faster and more accurately ( Ehri, 2014 ).

The outcomes of word recognition were measured by the task of pronouncing word items that were of high frequency and simple to decode in 10 studies. Seven out of the 10 studies showed significantly positive effects. The insignificant effects found in two of the three studies were attributed to lack of oral support and shortened length. The significant effects were dominantly small. In contrast, studies with English-native-speaking children found that phonological-based instruction had moderate to large effect on word recognition ( Ehri et al., 2001a , b ).

Although the quantitative difference of instructional effect was shown on word reading between English native children and EFL children, studies with the two populations revealed a similar pattern that the instruction is more effective on phonological decoding than on word recognition ( Ehri et al., 2001a , b ). The pattern was repeated in all the reviewed studies which reported results on both outcomes.

This pattern suggests the limitation of the instruction regardless of context, which is the difficulty of transferring the phonological skills and letter knowledge to real word reading. Word recognition requires more than phonological processing. Explicit instruction on phonemic awareness and letter-sound conversion rules is not enough. Explicit instruction on applying the skills and knowledge to decode a novel word is also needed ( Fielding-Barnsley, 1997 ).

Moreover, the effectiveness of phonological-based instruction may be constrained by the limited exposure to oral and written English in the EFL context. Semantic and syntactic information of words are not the focus of phonological-based instruction and are often gained from large exposure to print and oral language. Semantic and syntactic information of a word is also essential for word recognition. According to the lexical quality hypothesis, successful retrieval of words during reading and spelling depends on high-quality representation of the word ( Perfetti and Hart, 2002 ). A high-quality word is represented with specified spelling (orthographic information), meaning (semantic information), as well as pronunciation at phonemic level. Lack of information in any of the three aspects will result in low-quality representation, thus leading to unsuccessful retrieval. Students are more proficient in reading words familiar to them despite the complicated orthographic and phonological structure ( Ehri, 1987 ).

Another factor that might contribute to the difficulty of transferring the phonological skills to word recognition is that phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge might not be the most dominant skill underlying English word recognition for EFL students. Vocabulary and oral language proficiency are also significant predicators of word level reading for young EFL students, as important as phonological awareness ( Yeung and Chan, 2013 ). In addition, the dominant method of literacy instruction students receive also influences the underpinning skills and knowledge of word recognition. Phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge are more important to word reading in the context where synthetic phonics is the major literacy teaching approach ( McGeown and Medford, 2014 ). If the whole word approach is the dominant teaching method of reading in English and in students’ native language, visual memory capacity might be more important than phonological decoding for word recognition ( Bialystok et al., 2005 ; Wang et al., 2005 ).

Implications for Practice

Since most of the studies reviewed could be potentially biased, the positive effects reported should be interpreted with great caution. Thus, the implications provided here are only suggestive. Phonological-based instruction may be effective in improving phonological decoding abilities among EFL learners at primary school level. Therefore, allocating resources to this type of instruction may be beneficial.

However, transferring the instructional outcomes to improvement of word recognition is a challenge. Theories suggest that instruction on semantic and grammatical information and large language/print input is essential for improving the ability of word recognition. Synthetic and analytic phonics both provide methods that incorporate meaning in the instruction of decoding skills, such as using decodable text and word family analysis.

It should be noted that none of the studies took phonics/phonological awareness training as the only English program. The instruction in the studies reviewed is meant to be supplementary to daily English classes, and it is most effective when delivered regularly and discretely. The primary goal of early foreign language education should be language comprehension and communication ( Canale and Swain, 1980 ; Krashen, 1985 ). Learning English phonological skills and alphabetic knowledge cannot replace whole language teaching.

Future Research

The number of studies investigating the effectiveness of phonological-based instruction among EFL students is drastically small compared to studies with ELLs in English-dominant societies and those with English native speakers. Studies on this topic with rigorous research design are highly needed. Quasi-experimental design is found to be the dominant method. Studies that employed the design of randomized controlled trial are scarce. In educational research, class and student both can be the unit of randomization. The match between the unit of randomization and the unit of analysis is important, because the mismatch could inflate the effect of the instruction considerably ( Gersten et al., 2009 ). Future studies on this topic which assign classes of students should account for variance at both class and student level.

Evaluating instructional effectiveness of phonological-based instruction in the EFL context is complex. Besides factors that are generally considered to have influence on instructional effectiveness regardless of cultural context such as school SES and nature of comparison, factors that specific to the EFL context should also be considered and thoroughly reported in future studies. For example, literacy experience and reading abilities in students’ native language are important for learning a foreign language, but were reported in none of the reviewed studies. Future studies that directly investigate the moderating effects of the above mentioned factors are also needed.

Moreover, the assessment of English word reading of EFL students should be multi-facet rather than relying solely on word pronunciation. Not only can print-pronunciation association not guarantee lexical access but the task also produces unreliable results because scoring pronunciation is influenced by many factors such as scorers’ background ( Fletcher-Flinn et al., 2014 ). In the future, both lexical access and pronunciation of words should be measured, so that the findings can be more reliable and valid.

Limitations

Despite the importance of the findings in this review, we do think that this study has the following limitations. First, many of the selected studies are not of the best quality. Thus causal inference in regards to the instructional effectiveness cannot be drawn. Second, the number of studies reviewed here is relatively small. One reason is that we only included studies published in English. More studies on this topic may be published in other languages to make it more accessible to the native language speakers. Last, some factors important to instructional effectiveness are not included in this review. For example, the training and proficiency of teachers were not analyzed, which could influence the fidelity of instructions. In addition, the performance of students was assessed only at immediate posttest tests. The instructional effectiveness at delayed posttests was not examined.

Results of this systematic review showed a consistent pattern that phonological-based instruction has positive effects on phonological decoding and phonemic awareness. However, the effectiveness found should be interpreted with great caution, because the casual inference in respect to the instructional effectiveness can be drawn in only three studies ( Lai et al., 2009 ; Dixon et al., 2011 ; Yeung et al., 2013 ). The rest of the studies are potentially biased for the reasons including failure to exclude confound factors, mismatch between unit of assignment and unit of analysis, contamination and variation of the comparison conditions, inconsistency of outcome measures, and absence of required descriptive information. Furthermore, none of the three studies which qualified for making causal inference assessed reading with full validity; the semantic access of word recognition was not measured, although they showed positive effects on word pronunciation. Therefore, this study provides limited evidence for effectiveness of the phonological-based instruction on reading in English among young EFL children.

Author Contributions

SH and SW shared the responsibilities of searching studies, developing the coding scheme and coding the studies. SH wrote the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Research funded by China Scholarship Council (201306040147).

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feduc.2017.00015/full#supplementary-material .

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Keywords: foreign language learning, phonological awareness, phonics, effectiveness, systematic review, reading

Citation: Huo S and Wang S (2017) The Effectiveness of Phonological-Based Instruction in English As a Foreign Language Students at Primary School Level: A Research Synthesis. Front. Educ. 2:15. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2017.00015

Received: 22 November 2016; Accepted: 19 April 2017; Published: 16 May 2017

Reviewed by:

Copyright: © 2017 Huo and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Shuting Huo, huoshuting@gmail.com

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Home > Graduate Studies > Dissertations, Theses, and Projects > 481

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

Effects of play-based learning on phonemic awareness and phonics skills.

Kristen Heidecker Follow

Date of Award

Summer 6-23-2021

Document Type

Project (696 or 796 registration)

Degree Name

Master of Science in Curriculum & Instruction

Graduate Studies

Committee Chair

Aaron Peterson

play-based, phonics, phonemic awareness, early literacy

The purpose of this research was to determine the effectiveness of play-based learning on phonemic awareness and phonics skills in kindergarten. This study aimed to determine whether or not play-based learning materials such as letter tiles, cards, timers, and literacy-based games were an effective way for kindergarten students to acquire skills such as segmenting, letter sounds, and sight word recognition. A pre-assessment was given using FastBridge to determine which skills the students were working towards mastering. Play-based learning materials were then offered to small groups of students during our regular literacy time, and data was collected using FastBridge after two weeks of implementation. After analyzing the data, it was determined that play-based learning was in fact an effective way for the kindergarten students to acquire phonemic awareness and phonics skills.

Recommended Citation

Heidecker, Kristen, "Effects of Play-Based Learning on Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Skills" (2021). Dissertations, Theses, and Projects . 481. https://red.mnstate.edu/thesis/481

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