About 5 years ago, after our 13 year old daughter learned to read with the help of a tutor who used synthetic phonics, I decided to create a website that could help provide materials for those who teach. One of my goals was to find out how many spelling patterns there actually are in English. Some programs taught 70 patterns, others claimed there were 180 or even more. Having a background in linguistics and computers I started working on a database of words to find out. The result of my work was an exhaustive (and exhausting) inventory of all the grapheme-phoneme correspondences contained in over 44,000 words in my corpus. You can view the results here: alphabetic code chart 1 . These charts are self-verifying in that you can see the actual words which contain these patterns by clicking on each keyword. There are several charts in this series each devoted to a group of words of the same syllable length. These charts are like the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements in that they present the scope of the task of becoming literate in English. Every successful reader in English has mastered this system, whether consciously or unconsciously. (There is also a help file which explains all the features of these charts here: Charts help file.)

But these charts only present the big picture, the goal of total literacy. How do you get there? I've created a pedagogical tool that takes advantage of my database to create a systematic teaching sequence for teaching someone to read. This tool ensures that the student is always given reading material for practise which matches the current lesson (spelling pattern) and any previous lessons or spelling patterns. The address for this page is: SynPhony Activity page 1. To begin using this page start by selecting the checkboxes "s" "a" and "t" on the left side. This page is not suited for children to use on their own, but for parents, teachers or tutors. Each spelling pattern must be taught by a teacher. The page ensures that words which match the reading ability of the student are automatically available for reading practise, spelling exercises, dictation or whatever. The help file for this page is here: Activity page help. Be sure to read it as this page gives you tremendous power over the English language for teaching someone to read.

It's late now. I'll post other messages explaining some of the other resources I have on the site another day. I welcome any feedback or suggestions. Encouragement is always lapped up as well.

Norbert Rennert