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Systematic Phonics Instruction Helps Students Learn to Read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's Meta-Analysis 

Summary View | Full Abstract

Phonics instruction is a way of teaching reading that focuses on letter-sound relationships. During phonics instruction children are taught letter-sound correspondences and how to use them to spell and read words. The National Reading Panel (NRP), a national panel of experts in the field of reading who came together at the request of Congress in 1997, performed a meta-analysis on phonics instruction as well as many other areas of reading. The results of the NRP are included and expanded upon in this meta-analysis.

The purpose of this review was to determine whether systematic phonics instruction helps children learn to read more effectively than unsystematic phonics instruction or instruction teaching little or no phonics. To that end, research questions were:

1. Is phonics instruction more effective in some circumstances than others? For example, is phonics instruction more effective when taught one-on-one with a tutor than it is when taught in small groups or to a whole class? Is it more effective in beginning grades as opposed to later grades?
2. Does phonics instruction help both children who are progressing normally in reading and children who have disabilities or who are at risk in their reading?
3. Does phonics instruction improve children’s reading comprehension as well as their word reading and spelling skills?

Findings of the meta-analysis supported the conclusion that systematic phonics instruction helps children learn to read more effectively than non-systematic phonics instruction or programs without a phonics component.

This meta-analysis provides evidence that systematic phonics instruction is a more effective method of teaching children to read than non-systematic or no phonics instruction. And given the more significant impact of phonics instruction upon children’s reading in the early grades (kindergarten and 1^st grade), this meta-analysis also provides evidence that teaching phonics early can be effective in preventing reading difficulties in at-risk students. Phonics instruction was not as effective for helping older students who had already become poor readers.

Fortunately, there are many successful and effective programs and delivery systems for teaching phonics systematically. When various programs to teach systematic phonics were compared in this meta-analysis, all were found to be effective. The same was true regarding different grouping practices (one-on-one, small group, whole class instruction); all were effective.

The authors suggest that there may be certain ingredients that compose effective phonics instruction. These ingredients need to be researched further, but examples include (a) covering particular content, such as major letter-sound correspondences and other English regularities; (b) using decodable texts (books that are written carefully to focus mainly on the letter-sound relations that children have been taught); and (c) increasing motivational characteristics of phonics programs.

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