29/03/2024
You Can Teach a Child to Read Without Teaching Any Letter Names, but You Cannot Teach a Child to Read Without Teaching Letter Sounds
When I teach reading, I always teach letter name and sound together, with emphasis on the sounds. However, most people usually only teach the letter names to their children. So often, with the younger, new students I get, one of the first things the parents tell (brag to) me about is that their child knows all the alphabet letters. Yes, that's great, but...
Knowing letter names does little to nothing in helping children learn to read, unfortunately.
Knowing that "Bee You Tee" makes the word "BUT" does not help a child to decode and read the word "BUT"; however, knowing the sounds made by those letters - /b/ /u/ /t/ - allows a child, or anyone, to sound out the word and then connect the sounds to figure out what the word is.
This is why you can teach a child the 26 alphabet letter names, and it would not offer much to help that child learn to read. When teaching letters, you should always teach the letter name and sound together (with emphasis on the sound), and if you choose to only teach one or the other, for whatever reason, then at least teach the letter sounds, because it's the sounds that matter.
