Phonics and Phonetics?

The term “phonics” is often used interchangeably with the term “phonetics” – but each term is different. 

Phonics is concerned with spoken sounds. It is the correlation between the sound and the letters of the English alphabet. It is a simple tool that is taught to children to help them read and eventually to write. Written language can be compared to a code, so knowing the sounds of individual letters and how those letters sound when they’re combined will help children decode words as they read.

So if a child knows the sound of ‘p’ and the sound of ‘at’, she should eventually be able to combine the two sounds to read ‘pat’.

Phonetics, on the other hand, is a series of symbols that correlate to the sounds of the English alphabet. This is a more scientific classification of speech sounds and include the physical aspects of their production through the vocal organs. The spelling of words in misleading in English. One sound can be represented by several different combinations of letters. For example, all of the following words are spelt differently but contain the same vowel sound: he, believe, Lee, Caesar, key, amoeba, loudly, machine, people, and sea. 

The discrepancy between spelling and sounds has led to the formation of the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA.) Each symbol used in the IPA represent a unique sound in the English language. So there will be no inconsistencies. All good dictionaries show the phonetic symbols next to the word. Thus, armed with phonetic knowledge, anyone can ascertain not only the meaning of a particular word, but also the pronunciation in Standard English.