Phonics: A Large Phoneme-Grapheme Frequency Count Revised

Journal of Literacy Research, Spring 2004 by Fry, Edward

This study is a summary and simplification of a very large phoneme-grapheme frequency count done by Hanna et al. (1966). Although the results and data from the original study have implications for teaching phonics and spelling, they were presented in a complicated and unwieldy manner. Moreover, the original study is out of print. This study, then, presents a succinct and simplified summary of the Hanna et al. results for researchers and teachers of reading and spelling.

Although phonics has been identified as an essential element of successful literacy instruction in the elementary grades (National Reading Panel, 2000), details about the nature and content of effective phonics (and spelling) programs have not been fully articulated. Questions regarding the content and sequencing of phonics instruction still exist. One approach to questions regarding the content and sequencing of phonics instruction is to examine the phoneme-grapheme content of words used in instructional contexts. Hanna, Hanna, Hodges, and Rudorf (1966) conducted such a study, examining and counting every phoneme-grapheme correspondence in a 17,310 word vocabulary (Thorndike & Lorge, 1944). The current interest in phonics has made this nearly raw basic research data very relevant to today's teachers, researchers and curriculum developers in the areas of reading, spelling, and linguistics. Unfortunately, these valuable data are reported in a U.S. Office of Education document spanning 1,716 pages that has long been out of print. Another complication is the unique coding system used by the researchers, which focused on such factors as separate counts of the phonemes in stressed and unstressed syllables, and the location of the phoneme in each syllable.

The present study has reanalyzed those basic data to simplify the original report and make it more useable. It addresses the following questions:

What are the most useful (highest frequency) phoneme-grapheme correspondences?

What are the most frequent ways of spelling those phonemes?

Answers to these questions could lead to better phonics and spelling instruction and could improve the phonics content of both commercial and teacher-made curriculum materials for reading and spelling instruction.

A similar set of questions was posed and answered (Fry, 1964) based on an earlier Stanford phoneme-grapheme research project (Moore, 1951) that used a 3,000word count. The Hanna et al. (1966) report used a much larger (17,000 ) word corpus and a much more sophisticated coding system.

Earlier work in this area has focused on determining spelling generalizations. For example, a recent study by Abbott (2000) used the large Hanna et al. count to identify reliable spelling generalizations. Her spelling generalizations were based on Clymer (1963). Another generalization study by Johnston (2001) used her own 3000-word corpus plus data from Burmeister (1968) and Clymer. The research reported here is not based on generalizations, but rather it is a strict phonemegrapheme correspondence count.

The Hanna et al. study was one of the largest studies funded by the U.S. Office of Education up to that time. The corpus of words used in their study consisted of 17,310 different words selected from the Thorndike-Lorge Teacher's Word Book of 30,000 Words (1944). Hanna et al. omitted foreign words, trade names, slang, and rare words. They placed each phoneme into a 22 vowel and 30 consonant classification system according to the pronunciation given in a Mirriam-Webster dictionary.

Vowel Classification

Hanna et al. began with the Merriam Webster dictionary's vowel classification system involving 33 vowel sounds. They soon found it unworkable and simplified it to a 22 vowel system to facilitate their computerized algorithms. One of the original goals of their study was to determine how well a computer with many algorithms (rules and phoneme-grapheme information) could correctly spell each word, given the dictionary pronunciation guide. The short answer is about 50%.

The present study has a different purpose - to provide teachers and curriculum developers with usable and scientifically-based information for developing phonics and spelling instructional programs for beginning or remedial readers and spellers, presented in a comprehensible manner. It is a compromise between the tens of thousands of little facts in the giant Hanna et al. study and the realities of the classroom. After examining the data in this study, a teacher or curriculum developer should be able to more precisely determine phonics information that is rather useless and other information that is valuable. At either end of the phoneme-use spectrum, there could be causes for disapproval; linguists and phoneticians may find this study too simple, while some classroom teachers may find it too complicated. But it does unearth and bring to light some basic data that has long been buried in a difficult scientific report (Hanna et al., 1966).

The present study further simplifies the Hanna et al. vowel classification system to 17 categories or classifications as described below and seen in the tables. This was done to make the system more comprehensible and usable for teachers.