Reading can be defined as the mental interpretation of written or printed symbols.
Ability in reading is a critical aspect of educational development, and teaching this fundamental skill is the principal intention of elementary or primary education.
It was not until the time after the invention of the printing press in about 1450 AD that it became seen as important for normal people to have the ability to read and it was after this time that reading and interpretation of the bible was a requisite of the Protestant Reformation.
Before these events it was only clergy and some members of the upper classes who were able to read.
There are still some parts of the world where there are widespread problems with illiteracy and very little reading help for kids, however, most countries in the developed world have introduced laws to govern childhood education that ensure children are taught to read, some of whom will be lucky enough to learn to read with phonics.
Research into the physiology and the psychology of reading has shown that as we read our eyes are making a sequence of fast movements along the line of text, each tiny movement for about a quarter of a second; these movements are termed 'fixations'.
During each fixation the eyes read and decode more than one word, and in fact very competent readers are capable of registering more than three words per fixation, provided the material they are reading is relatively easy.
When the difficulty of the material and the pace of fixations is taken into account, a competent reader can decode and comprehend between two hundred and one thousand words in a minute.
Educationalists have been debating the optimum methodology for teaching children to read, and there exists many different opinions.
Consensus around the end of the twentieth Century seems to be that the combination of the whole language method, which places the emphasis on meaning, and phonics, which focuses on sound, is the best way to teach reading.
There is also widespread agreement that extra corrective help needs to be provided for those pupils who are falling behind for either physical (faulty eye movements, poor vision), developmental (dyslexia, ADHD) reasons, or indeed problems caused by incorrect or poor teaching.
Phonics teaches that there are two inter-related elements involved in reading, firstly the sounds of spoken language known as 'phonemes'.
A phoneme represents the smallest ingredient of spoken language.
The English language 'recipe' is made up of around forty-one separate phonemes.
The combination of phonemes forms syllables and words.
Secondly the representation of those sounds by writing and spelling which is termed 'graphemes'.
The pupil who has been taught to read using phonics is able to recognize familiar words and to interpret or 'sound out' unknown words, by using their understanding of those relationships.
Learning about the connections between sounds and letters, and then how go on to utilise this learning in both reading and spelling is the basis of for how children learn to read with phonics.
Ultimately, as phonics teachers trying to provide reading help for kids, we are attempting to facilitate our pupils' understanding of the predictable and regular relationship between written or printed letters and spoken sounds or words.