Talk:Systematic Phonics/Why use systematic phonics

As with other aspects of phonics, the idea of breaking words into syllables is a distraction from learning to read. We learn to read by associating written words with spoken ones. In some cases, the word gives us a clue to its pronunciation, because some letters represent few sounds or just one. An example is "k". If a word contains letters which represent many sounds (such as all vowel-letters and many consonants such as "c", "t" and "g"), one needs to learn what the letter is doing in that word. One of the things which a letter could be doing in a word is nothing: for example, the "b" in "numb" and the "e" in "syllable". In other cases, a letter could be being used with another letter to make a single sound, such as many instances of "th" (which can actually represent one of two sounds). Sadly, most words include letters which can make several sounds.