I wrote the Dictionary of the British English Spelling System because (1) most children learning to read and spell need to be taught the most effective method of identifying and understanding unfamiliar written words and of writing down words they don’t yet know how to spell; (2) that method is synthetic phonics; (3) to teach synthetic phonics efficiently (as well as systematically) teachers need both a basic knowledge of phonetics and a secure knowledge of the correspondences between letters or letter-groups (graphemes) and distinctive speech sounds (phonemes), otherwise they will get the phonics wrong and mislead their pupils; (4) no existing book in the field had quite the right coverage. Continue reading
