Get Your Synthetic Phonics Right - VIPKID and Online Teaching

When teaching phonics at VIPKID (or elsewhere) it's the new norm to use what are called, "synthetic phonics." In this approach, you focus on isolating the sound of the letter as much as possible so that the student can more intuitively put them together into larger morphemes and words. The struggle we have as teachers is that we learned with a different system in which we might have said, "B. Buuuh. Banana." We weren't focused on reducing the "uh" sound. It's okay in 'banana' to say 'buh' but what if you said the same thing in blending the word "beat." You would then be saying "buh-eet." If you say that fast it will sound like "bate." Did you try it? Isn't that interesting? This is one of the main issues synthetic phonics addresses. This video provides a quick, easy tip to help you properly isolate the sounds of the English language so you are effectively modeling them for your students during phonetic awareness and literacy exercises. If you're not sure what the synthetic phonic sound is for a particular letter, put that letter at the end of a word and you'll hear it's synthetic sound. For example: What sound does " *note that this tip doesn't work for sounds that are not found in the final position in english (i.e. "h" or "q"