Teaching phonics to children learning English as a foreign language

Phonics is built for children who already speak English. Children learning it as a new language can benefit too, if you change a few things: words before letters, sounds before names, and meaning at every step. Here is how, with a free word finder for your class.

Why talk has to come first

Phonics teaches children to turn letters into sounds and blend them into a word. For a child who speaks English, that spoken word is already in their head, so the moment they blend "c-a-t" they recognise it. A child learning English as a foreign language may blend the sounds perfectly and still not know what they have read.

Researchers describe early literacy as two strands that grow side by side: the code (letters, sounds, blending) and oral language (vocabulary, sentences, stories). Cambridge's 2020 paper on phonics for young EFL learners says improving oral language should be a central goal in the preschool years, and that phonics is useful when it is systematic and part of rich, meaning-focused teaching. The EEF's Teaching and Learning Toolkit rates phonics at about five months' additional progress on average, with extensive evidence behind it.

When should EFL children start phonics?

There is no single right age. It depends on how much English children hear and how your school system handles reading. A sensible guide:

Our free Level 0 curriculum for ages 4 to 6 follows this pattern: a listening-only first term, first letter sounds in the second, reading short words in the third.

Sounds, not names, and not A to Z

• Say the sound. The letter a is "a" as in ant, not "ay". The letter n is "nnn", not "en". Sounds blend into words; names do not. Letter names can come later, for example with the alphabet song.
• Keep sounds short and pure. Say "mmm", not "muh". The DfE's reading framework advises pronouncing sounds as purely and clearly as possible, because extra "uh" sounds make blending harder.
• Use a principled order. Many programmes start with s, a, t, p, i, n because those six letters quickly make lots of short words (sat, pin, tap, nap). Cambridge's paper also warns that teaching only the first letter of each word, A to Z, covers at most 23 of the 44 sounds of English.
• One spelling at a time. Teach one common way to write a sound first ("ai" in rain). Other spellings ("ay" in play) come much later.
• Reading and spelling together. Blending (reading) and segmenting (spelling) are the same skill run both ways, so practise both in every session.

Home language: help, not a problem

Children bring skills from their first language. Cambridge's review notes that phonological awareness (hearing rhyme, syllables and sounds) seems to transfer between languages, even between very different writing systems. A child who can clap syllables in Arabic or Thai can learn to clap them in English.

Some English sounds will be new, though, and children may hear two English sounds as one. These are patterns reported in the research, not rules about every child:

The best fix is playful listening: "thumbs up if you hear ship, thumbs down if you hear chip". Do not drill a child until they sound "native". Any accent is fine as long as the sounds stay different from each other. In England's Year 1 phonics check, any accent is accepted too.

A 15-minute phonics routine for EFL classes

1. Sing (2 minutes). A sound song or rhyme everyone knows. It settles the group and warms up listening.
2. Revisit (3 minutes). Flash the sounds learned so far. Children say each sound with an action.
3. New sound (3 minutes). Say it, show it, give an action. Then three or four words children know that start with it, with pictures.
4. Blend (4 minutes). Robot talk first ("d-o-g"), then the same words with letter cards. Use only words children understand.
5. Spell (2 minutes). Say a word, children say its sounds and build or air-write it.
6. Use it (1 minute). Put one word in a sentence: "The dog is big."

Short, daily practice suits young children better than one long block. If you see the class only twice a week, keep this short block in every lesson.

Word finder: what can your class read and understand?

Tick the sound groups your class knows. The finder shows everyday words that use only those sounds, chosen because they are easy to show with an object, a picture or an action. We wrote the list ourselves; the groups follow the common Letters and Sounds (2007) order, so your programme's order may differ.

Five common mistakes

1. Letters before English. Starting phonics before children know any words they could read. Build a spoken word bank first.
2. Letter names first. "See, ay, tee" does not blend into cat. Sounds first, names later.
3. Alphabetical order. A to Z, one letter a week, is slow and leaves out half the sounds.
4. Reading aloud only. A child who reads every word aloud may understand none of it. Always ask a simple meaning question: "Point to the dog."
5. Dropping songs and stories. Once phonics starts, keep the daily songs, rhymes and stories. They grow the vocabulary phonics needs. Our songs, rhymes and stories guide has a ready routine.

Frequently asked questions

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