Phonics is the most common impediment to reading. The reason many children struggle with phonics is that their auditory processing is not accurate or fast enough to hear the phonemes.
If |bad| and |dad| sound the same to you, it doesn’t matter how many times you repeat them.
The solution is to first speed up your child’s processing. Then the sound differences will be clear. This is called “phonemic awareness” – it’s the crucial pre-phonics skill.
At least half of the exercises in Fast ForWord Foundations 1 (and Elements for older children) are about improving phonemic awareness as a gateway to mastering phonics. They present sounds in different ways – some pure sounds, others in language syllables – starting slow and then speeding up with correct answers.
Here is an article on phonemic awareness, Fast ForWord and how it boosts phonics.
The Fast ForWord Exercises That Boost Phonics
Sky Gym works on auditory processing speed.
Moon Ranch uses syllables that repeat but then change to build phonemic awareness and phonics.
Ele Bot is a syllable match exercise – aimed at phonemic awareness and phonics.
More on the Foundations I exericses here
