For children with learning disabilities and learning a new language for reading or accessing information, phonics as as a method of teaching reading is used.
In phonics method of language teaching, the instructor, trained in phonics, begins teaching students the letters of the alphabet and their sounds first rather than the letter names.
Teachers making use of phonics method emphasize the letter sounds not the letter names,i.e., mmm not em, sss not es, fff not ef, as suggested by experts. Spellings of words are also through letter sounds.
Once, that is done, students are taught to blend the sounds phonetically to form words.
Thereafter, the age-grade appropriate vocabulary is build.
In the last, reading and speaking are emphasized from specially designed textbooks to enhance fluency of reading, articulation and comprehension skills.
Essentially, in this method, the certified teacher establishes relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters or groups of letters (graphemes) or syllables of the written language through the Alphabetic codes.
The method is said to be effective for disgraphic and dyslexic children who are visual-verbal learners. And, learning material is needed to be special designed since spoken language is used therapeutically.
After recognition of the alphabets reinforced through a specially designed primer, the vowel sounds are mastered first.
Wikipedia, through references, suggests that for English language learning through phonic method at least 40 sounds are to be mastered before graded reading exercises.
For short, long and r-controlled vowel sounds, teachers have been suggested the following examples by Wikipedia
Short vowels examples: a - mat, half; e - bed, head; i - fish, gym; o - on, father, saw, faucet, chalk, caught; u - up, onion, touch; oo - look, push, should
Long vowels examples: a - cake, play, maid, break, eight; e - bee, eat, funny, she, scene, key; i - bike, find, night, my, tie; o - pony, rope, bow, boat, toe, dough; u - cube, uniform, few; oo - room, flu, suit, soup, grove; ow - house, clown, plough; oy - toy, oil.
R-controlled vowels examples: air - chair, care, very, carry, pear, where; ar - art; ear - fear, steer, here; er - butter, word, bird, color, turkey, earth; or - sort, roar, floor, core, four, quart; ure - cure, tourist
Evidence:
Once the mastery over vowel sounds is achieved, one can switch over to normal books available since no word is complete without a vowel sound.
My own experience of teaching spoken English for dysgraphics and adults has shown that a 50-100 hour course through worksheets with micro-learning approach becomes an effective readiness course for visual-verbal learners.
After learning vowel sounds reinforce first-letter sounds of English alphabet with the listed words given in the adjoining table taken from Wikipedia.
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