Whether it’s a young child first learning to speak, read and write; a hesitant reader or poor speller of any age; or a non-native English speaker looking to become comfortable with the language, phonics should be revived as a popular teaching method.

The inexpensive, multilevel resource, English Phonics Stories: MASTERY LEVEL, part of the Training for Life Publications Group, is designed to facilitate the painless internalization of phonetics and phonics, dramatically accelerating vocabulary and automaticity in reading and spelling, regardless of the approach a student has learned for reading (phonics, whole language, word memorization, learning several ways to spell a particular sound, or learning all the sounds each phonogram or digraph makes, etc.).

Phonics works by developing learners' phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes—in order to teach the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns that represent them. phonics instruction can confuse learners. To spell, as our logo above suggests, students still have to memorize most of the words of the language, one at a time, since any one of several legitimate spelling patterns could be used to spell the same sounds. This was the impetus to find a better way, a one-step method, the English Phonics Stories method.

Some tips to get the most out of this teaching method:

Do as little as necessary and feel free to bounce around. Use the resource differently for students you expect to have mastered the pattern, and use as little class time as you can.

1. Read pattern story aloud to all students, regardless of level.

2. Have student(s) remember the story together as a class, individually or in small groups. prompt them by asking how a certain word was used or read a partial sentence and have students remember the pattern word.

3. Show student the word list. Beginning students can read common words you have highlighted, but remember this: All the words share a common sound and spelling. If they can read one word on the list, they can probably read almost all the words on the list, even if they don't know the meaning or don't need some of them for their level of reading or writing. This is only one of the several ways reading automaticity/fluency and spelling mastery are painlessly achieved with these advanced stories.

4. Pick one of these next steps:

- Have students read the story or word lists to each other, preferably every day as a warm-up.

- For beginners: Use a copy of the workbook page to dictate just the pattern words as they follow along while you read the story.

- Assign the wordbook page and/or some of the fabulous optional reinforcement activities cards in the introduction to access multiple intelligences, different learning styles, and encourage fun interaction with the pattern words.

5. Assess their learning by dictation, spelling test using the workbook page without the bold words at the bottom, or by having student write their own story, song, or poem using some of the pattern words.

6. Revisit the story later as review. Make flashcards of useful words from the stories and have students write a new story.

At English Phonics Stories, we are committed to English language learning for people of all ages and abilities. To find out more about our products and publications, give us a call today.