For this webinar, we were joined by author and teacher Karen Elliott, who shared some of her tips and ideas for teaching young learners phonics in a fun and engaging way. Karen began by promising to answer some of the questions teachers often ask her about teaching phonics, particularly…
- What is phonics?
- Why teach phonics in EFL?
- Do I have to be a native speaker?
- How do I teach it?
- What about tricky words?
Explaining that phonics covered the relationship between the spoken and written language, Karen suggested that it offered an excellent way to help students to recognise sound-spelling patterns, and to learn tricky words. She stressed too that phonics shouldn’t just be taught by native speaker teachers – that NNESTs would also find it useful.
Phonics should be taught as a process, Karen said; she proposed teaching it in six phases, beginning with the sounds of the language, and building up eventually to some of the less frequent tricky words.
Throughout her webinar, Karen shared examples of activities for teachers to use to make phonics fun for young learners, including games such as ‘word bingo’, and ‘full circle’. You can find out how to use these in your classroom by watching the recording below. You can also read Karen’s latest blogpost on phonics here.