In our ‘what is…’ series we’re taking things back to basics! From phonics to decoding, blending and more, we’re going to break things down and give you our expert advice on each area, to help answer any questions you may have around teaching reading.
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Fluent readers may find it difficult to understand why beginner readers find some words difficult to decode. These are often called ‘tricky words’ – but what’s so tricky about them?The English phonic code is a complex one. (To see just how complex it is, you could take a look at the Phonic Code Tables here.) For this reason, we teach it in a step-by-step way, starting from the simple parts and gradually introducing the more-complex ones. Along the way, we teach children the 44 sounds in the English language and the corresponding spellings in our written script.
We start with the simple sounds of the alphabet and teach beginner readers to blend and segment words with a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word structure, such as ‘dog’. Later, we introduce more-complex spellings and word structures.
Once beginner readers start to read texts, even the simplest kind, they will encounter common words with complex spellings they have not yet learned. For example, in the word ‘was’, the ‘a’ sounds /o/ and the ‘s’ sounds /z/. Beginner readers may find it difficult to decode using the limited phonic knowledge they have learnt, so this is a ‘tricky word’. As the reader learns the phonic code and develops good decoding skills, more and more words are no longer ‘tricky’.
(Tricky words are sometimes called ‘key words’ or ‘phonically irregular high-frequency words’. They are now also called ‘common exception words’. They used to be called ‘sight words’, but this term is no longer used in synthetic phonics.)
How should we teach tricky words?
Most tricky words are part of the phonic code. Take the word ‘was’, for example. The spelling ‘a’ for the sound /o/ is common to many other words (e.g. ‘what’, ‘want’, ‘swan’, ‘swap’ etc.). The sound /z/for the letter ‘s’ is also common (e.g. ‘is’, ‘his’, ‘has’ etc.).
A few common words, such as ‘one’ and ‘friend’, have unusual spellings that do not fit comfortably within the phonic code. It is now recommended that all words, including those with unusual spellings, should be taught by matching the sounds with their corresponding spellings.
For any tricky word, teachers should ask readers to sound the parts of the word that they know (e.g. ‘w’ in the word ‘was’). They should then point to the spelling or spellings the pupil has not yet learnt (e.g. ‘a’ and ‘s’) and say the sounds they represent. The reader can then blend all the sounds into the word. This way, the habit of sounding out words is maintained. Readers learn to read a growing range of words while developing their understanding of the phonic code.
What about learning to read tricky words by sight?
It is important not to resort to learning these words by sight (by shape), as educators have recommended in the past, because this encourages children to guess when tackling new words. Guessing conflicts with the strategy of sounding out words, which is the most successful and reliable way to decode new words.
Reading a word using visual memory can work only when the reader already knows the word and can remember it accurately. This strategy does not help the reader to figure out what a new word might be.
When does a tricky word stop being a tricky?
Once readers have enough knowledge of the phonic code to read that word, and once they can read it automatically, the word is no longer tricky.
Phonic Books publishes decodable books that introduce tricky words gradually. You can see the range of books here.