Knowledge of letter sounds in children from England

Abstract

Learning the sounds of letters is important for learning to decode printed words and is a key component of phonics instruction. Some letter sounds are easier for children than others, and studies of these differences can shed light on the factors that influence children’s learning. The present study examined knowledge of the sounds of lowercase letters among children in England, where a government-mandated curriculum specifies the order in which letter sounds should be taught and where letters’ sounds are taught before the names. The participants were 355 children from Nursery (mean age 4 years, 4 months), Reception (mean age 5 years, 4 months), and Year 1 (6 years, 4 months) classes. When order of teaching was statistically controlled, children did better than expected on the initial letter of their first name and worse on visually confusable letters. Unlike the North American children in previous studies, they did not perform better on letters that had their sounds at the beginning of their names than on other types of letters. The sonority and the age of acquisition of the letter’s sound were also not influential. Implications for letter teaching, particularly for children at risk of literacy problems, are discussed.