Phonemes

Also called Speech sounds, The 44 sounds, 44 phonemes

The roughly 44 sounds of English, which its 26 letters do not match. Every phonics programme, and the Talk board's phonics keyboard, is built on them.

What it is

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that changes meaning. "Cat" and "bat" differ by one phoneme. English has around 44 of them, the count varying a little by accent: about 24 consonant sounds and about 20 vowel sounds, including the long vowels and the ones with a glide like "oi" and "ow".

The problem, and it's the central problem of English literacy, is that there are only 26 letters. So sounds get written with letter pairs and trios ("sh", "igh"), one letter stands for several sounds (the "a" in cat, cake and car), and one sound gets several spellings (the "ee" in tree, me, key, happy). The written forms are graphemes.

Who it can help

Anyone teaching or learning to read and spell, which is every child in a UK primary school, since systematic phonics is the national approach. Anyone supporting a child with dyslexia, where mapping sounds to letters is the specific difficulty. And, crucially, non-speaking people: a phoneme keyboard lets someone who cannot say a sound select it, build a word from it and have the device say it. That's the road to saying anything at all (literacy and AAC).

Phonemes aren't a useful frame for someone whose difficulty is understanding or word-finding; those are language problems, not sound problems.

How it works

Phonics programmes teach phonemes in a set order, usually starting with s, a, t, p, i, n, because those six make many small words quickly. The reading framework sets the expectation in England, and validated programmes all cover the full set of sounds and their common spellings by the end of Year 1, when the phonics screening check happens.

Two skills sit on top of knowing the sounds: blending them to read and segmenting a word into them to spell. Both depend on hearing the sounds as separate things, which is phonological awareness.

The Talk board has a phonics keyboard laid out by sound rather than by letter, using the full UK grapheme set. A person selects sounds, hears each one, and builds the word sound by sound; the board then speaks the whole word. It's a speaking tool first, but it's also phonics practice with instant feedback.

Getting started

Learn the pure sounds yourself. "Mmm" not "muh", "sss" not "suh". Adding an "uh" to every consonant is the commonest home mistake and it makes blending harder ("cuh-a-tuh" doesn't blend to "cat"). Any school will show you; most send home a sound mat.

Say the sounds of a word before you say the word: "c-a-t, cat" while pointing to the picture. Do it with names, with food, with anything. If the child is non-speaking, put the phonics keyboard in front of them and press the sounds as you say them, so they see the route.

Match the school's order. Ask which sounds are being taught this week and use exactly those at home; mixing programmes confuses children who are finding it hard.

Where to get help

The Department for Education's list of validated phonics programmes tells you what your school is probably using. The British Dyslexia Association supports families where phonics isn't sticking. For non-speaking learners, ACE Centre and Communication Matters cover literacy through AAC.