By Amaka Agwuegbo
Though the English language has been proven to be the most complicated language with 26 letters and 42 sounds, children stand a better chance of learning to read and write it using the Jolly Phonics, a system whereby children are taught structured blending of words.

Coding is how one works things out from a symbol or words, and due to the complexity of the English language, it really needs to be taught in the simplest style – the art of blending words,

Sue Lloyd discovered that by teaching children to carefully listen to the sounds in the words, identify the sounds and relate them to the letters, pupils who were previously demonstrating difficulty in reading and writing had significant improvements in abilities.

After many years of research, Lloyd, a teacher of over 30 years, was encouraged to compile The Phonics Handbook, a commercial sequential and phonics programme designed to teach children to read at an early age, which was published in 1992 and has subsequently been sold in many countries.

According to Sue, she experienced that children were taught to use memory to learn the words, and though some children did well, a good number of them didn’t. Thus, when they become older, those who are good readers know how to work the words out while poor readers didn’t.

“When I researched to know why they didn’t know how to work the works out, I discovered that their knowledge of phonics was very poor mainly because they hadn’t learnt the letter sounds, so they didn’t know how to do it.

“I decided to teach the letter sounds and how to work words out before they start to read books, and recorded huge improvement. I was further encouraged by a researcher who wanted to try out his programme and his philosophy was that children should be able to hear the sounds in the words. This we have been doing by tuning them to hear the sounds so that they could really hear the word when they say the sounds, they can blend and work out words and can write by listening to sounds so as to know what letters go with the sounds.”

Continuing, Sue says this method gives children a much greater chance of practice because when you ask them to learn from memory, it is always disaster for those who don’t have good memory.

“The most effective method for all children is through the code and this is becoming more acceptable because if you look back 2 decades, the advice from people around the world was that children should not sound out words but learn it all by memory.

“This was the worst form of learning for the bottom group because the top group had the ability to teach themselves the code while children with poor memory end up as illiterates or with limited abilities. The idea is to teach children how the letters work and how they can work words out systematically. I later got to meet the publisher, Christopher Jolly, and that was when the writing started.”

Though the synthetic phonics has been introduced in some countries with recorded improvement in reading and writing abilities of children, a pilot scheme was carried out in Akwa Ibom State with children in public schools now reading and writing from ages 3 and 4.

This is important because all forms of scholarly and intellectual knowledge acquired in the Nigerian educational system is impacted and taught in English language. Thus, children can now learn 42 sounds of the English language rather than the alphabet and are taken through the stages of blending and segmenting words to develop reading and writing skills.

Attesting to the effectiveness of this method of teaching, Executive Director, Tomorrow Leaders’ Foundation, Mr. Patrick Uzu, said the Jolly Phonics method is being introduced to Nigeria to curb the increasing rate of illiteracy.

Speaking at a train-the-trainer programme organized by Stepping Stone Nigeria, in partnership with the author, Sue Lloyd; and the publisher, Christopher Jolly, Patrick said about 3,500 public school teachers from the Akwa Ibom State will be trained on the use of Jolly Phonics, with each teacher getting a resource book, and all the pupils that will register in September will get 2 books that they will use for one academic session.

“This will be replicated in other states, and a pilot scheme is presently being carried out in Delta and Rivers states so as to convince the Ministry of Education and other stakeholders of the effectiveness of the teaching method.

“Most of the participants here are teachers of private schools who are already using the Jolly Phonics who will then train others on how to use it to teach children. This is because we want our children to be privileged to receive this form of teaching at the point of enrolment, which is primary one. My children use it and they have improved tremendously. My wife also uses it on her pupils and it would amaze you that 4 year-olds can read.”

Patrick pointed out that the major difference between this method and what is obtainable in Nigeria is the approach.

“For instance, the average class teacher would use the rote system whereby the teacher says ‘s-i-t sit’ or ‘a for apple’ which makes it more confusing for the kids because a is not apple and the ‘a’ in apple is not sounding ‘a’.

“Using the JP, children are taught to recognize sounds of alphabets and this helps them to read earlier because if they start by knowing the alphabets, they would have problems especially with tricky letters like ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’.”

For Mrs. Naomi Foxcroft, representative of Stepping Stone Nigeria, JP method produces better results than the conventional Nigerian methods of teaching because children are taught English through memorization, thus they memorise hundreds of words daily but there is a limit to what they can remember when their brains are full.

“We trained the kids using synthetic phonics and tested them after one year. The results were amazing because children in the control group made little or no improvements while those who used JP could read.

“This is because with JP, they just have to memorise the 42 sounds and learn how to put together. From there, they can not only read thousands of words, but anything. Also, because it is taught through actions, stories and songs, teachers and the children are motivated because there is never a dull moment as the children will be begging you to do the next sound.”

Foxcroft pointed out that several studies have been carried out world-wide to show how teaching methods affect the learning process.

In the UK, all schools teach with the synthetic phonics because there had been instances whereby students enter secondary school without knowing how to read and write.

“This teaching method has been well received by kids and other stakeholders world over because children who use it spell twice as well as against those who don’t use it.”

“Though some educationists may complain that the method is an English idea and may not work for Nigerian children, Stepping Stone Nigeria will work for one year to adapt the resources and enhance them so that we have stories adapted from the Nigerian stories with pictures of Nigerian children. We want to localize it so as to make it more relevant to children in rural areas.”

Naomi said the successes of the JP method are not without some challenges. “One of the challenges was the lack of support from the various head teachers, and because it was crucial to have their support, they had to be involved in our trainings.

“We also had a problem of people not knowing what to do so we had to create a scheme of work which shows the teachers what they had to do every single day. This sort of gave them support and guidance.”

But for the Jolly Phonics method of teaching to be fully implemented so as to improve our literacy levels by double, the government, head teachers and other stakeholders must be committed to it.