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How do children read irregular words?

Phonics instruction is a key practice when it comes to teaching children how to read.

But what happens when children come across words that don’t follow phonics rules?

ACU literacy expert Dr Signy Wegener has been awarded a $453 981 Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) grant to find out.

Dr Wegener, of ACU’s Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy, will investigate how children adjust their mispronunciations when they read words that do not follow phonics rules.

“It is well known that the ability to sound out or phonologically decode written words using phonics knowledge is a key foundation of learning to read,” Dr Wegener said.

“However, English presents a particular challenge to learners because many common words are irregular as they do not follow phonics rules.

“When phonics rules are used to read irregular words, this leads to mispronunciations. For example, the word tongue would be sounded out as “TONG-OO” using phonics rules, which is incorrect.”

Dr Wegener said while phonics alone did not work for irregular words, not enough was known about how children learn to read such words.

“Reading instruction is an issue of national concern. Approximately one in three children in Australia failed to perform at the expected standard on national assessments in 2023 and recent NAPLAN results from 2024 show that pattern is continuing,” she said.

“The aim of this program of research is to systematically investigate the factors that could help children match their initial mispronunciations to correct pronunciations as they learn to read new words.

“Findings of this program of research will allow the development of a new theory of this pronunciation adjustment mechanism that can be used to improve the teaching of irregular words in the primary school years.”

The three-year project will involve more than 500 primary school students in Years 1 to 5.

Dr Wegener said the research represented the next important step towards boosting the early reading achievement of Australian children.

Find out more about ACU’s Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy