Have you started using Science of Reading strategies in your French classroom? Or maybe you’re thinking about doing so? Either way, there are some very basic concepts you might want to fully understand before diving deep in courses and books about SoR (and spending on resources that say they are SOR-aligned, but really aren’t…) Think of this post as a primer into teaching French phonics, or if you prefer, French phonics 101!
So let’s look into some important definitions.
French Phonics 101: Graphemes and Phonemes
What are graphèmes and phonèmes?
Well, simply put, phonemes are what we commonly refer to, in the classroom, as sounds. Graphemes are the way we write (spell) those sounds.
Grapheme: letters that represent a phoneme in writing. In other words, the way you write a sound. For example, in the word ” bouton”, there are four graphemes, one for each sound: b, ou, t, on.
Phoneme: the actual unit of sound. To follow up on the example above, the word “bouton” has four phonemes: /b/, /u/, /t/, /ɔ̃/.
What about digrammes and trigrammes?
Now that we’re clear on what graphemes are, it’s simpler to understand digrammes and trigrammes.
Digrammes are 2-letter graphemes and trigrammes are, I’m sure you guessed it, 3-letter graphemes.
So graphemes such as en, ou, and gn are all digrammes. because they have two letters representing one sound.
Whereas graphemes such as eau, aim and ein are trigrammes.
That was easy, right?
French Phonics 101: decode, sound out, blend, oh my!
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of books talking about decoding, blending, etc.
I don’t think a post would be enough to get into ALL the subtleties and nitty-gritty of what these terms and concepts actually mean. There are also cognitive and neurological mechanisms involved that are complex.
My goal is to give you just enough information so you can:
- understand what books and other teachers are referring to.
- decide if a resource you find will help you do what you want it to.
- gain a foothold from where you can start down on your Science of Reading journey.
With that in mind, here’s a simple way to understand these words.
- SOUND OUT: this is exactly what it sounds (no pun intended!) like. When students sound out, they verbalize graphemes by saying the phonemes they represent. In the context of decoding and blending practice, this is where students point to a grapheme in a word and utter the sound (phoneme) that grapheme represents.
- DECODE: there’s a reason the word “decode” includes the word “code” in it. When students decode, they’re trying to find meaning in the letters they’re seeing. They’re trying to “break a code”. This code is, of course, that graphemes represent phonemes and thus make a sound when the words are read aloud.
- BLEND: after decoding and sounding out the graphemes in a word, students are ready to actually read the word. There’s one last step missing and that’s where blending comes in. Blending is to put the sounds (phonemes) in a word together and say the word out loud fluently.
Now what if you could have some decoding/blending cards to help your students improve those skills?
And that all it took you was print and cut them out?
Well, I’ve created some printable transparent and non-transparent word cards that might interest you.
Click the images or links below to check them out on TpT!
BUNDLE OF ALL CARDS: French Decoding CV Word Cards to Practice Sounding Out, Blending, and Reading
Teaching French phonics is complex and the concepts here are just a few, but it’d be difficult to venture into SOR territory without being familiar with those terms.
So, let me know in the comments: what other concepts or definitions would you like to know about?
I’m asking because I plan on writing a series on French phonics.
As always, thank you for your time and attention!
Merci 😊
Lucy
