What is the alphabetic code or alphabetic principle in the context of teaching children to read and spell? Although there are different ways of explaining the alphabetic principle, at present most definitions only describe the relationship between sounds of the spoken language and the spellings conventionally used to represent those sounds (Stanovich, Progress in Understanding Reading, 2000, p.163). As the principle is foundational to phonics-based teaching approaches, we need to expand the definition to become synonymous with the conceptual framework outlined by Professor Diane McGuinness.

McGuinness’s conceptual framework can be understood in terms of its orientation, which is firmly sound-to-print. Her reasoning for this is that all alphabetic writing systems are based on the spoken sounds in the language. Because there are a limited number of sounds in English (about 44, depending on accent), the limited number of sounds provides us with an anchor for teaching the spellings.

So, what are the elements comprising McGuinness’s framework?

[Note: sounds are indicated inside forward slashes and spellings are indicated inside chevron brackets.]

Concept 1: The English alphabetic writing system, like other alphabetic writing systems, such as German and Spanish, is written from left to right one sound-spelling correspondence at a time across the page.

Concept 2: Spellings in English can contain one, two, three or four letters. For example, there are three single letter spellings in the CVC word ‘sat’: < s > < a > < t >; in the word ‘shop’, the two-letter spelling < sh > represent the single sound /sh/; in the word ‘sight’, the three-letter spelling < igh > represents the sound /ie/, as in ‘tie’; and, in the word ‘eight’, the four-letter spelling represents the sound /ae/, as in ‘stay’.

Concept 3: All sounds in English are spelled in more than one way. Here’s an example of a vowel sound and the different ways in which we can spell it. The sound /ee/, as in the word ‘see’ can be spelled ‘me‘, ‘sea‘, ‘green’, ‘grieve’, ‘receive’, and, more obscurely, ‘people’. The next example gives a number of different spellings of the consonant sound /sh/, as in ‘shop’: ‘shop’, ‘chef’, ‘schedule’ (UK English), ‘station’, ‘optician’, ‘mission’, ‘cushion’, ‘suspicion’, ‘alsatian’, ‘crustacean’.

Concept 4: Many spellings represent more than one sound. For example, the spelling < o > can represent the sound /o/ in ‘hot’, /oe/ in ‘no‘, /oo/ in ‘to‘ and /u/ in ‘monkey’.

Concept 4a: Three one letter-spellings represent two sounds. Most commonly, the spelling < x > in the word ‘six‘ represents the sounds /k/ /s/; the spelling < u > represents the two sounds /y/ and /oo/ in words like ‘unicorn’; and, the spelling < o > represents the two sounds /w/ and /o/ or /w/ and /u/, depending on accent, in the word ‘one’.

As has been often observed, the complexity of the spellings system in English, i.e. the fact that there are so many different ways of spelling sounds in the language and that many spellings can also represent more than one sound has confused educators for centuries. However, to mitigate against the obvious complexity of the code, McGuinness advised teachers ‘to make sure that children understand the direction of the code: from each sound in speech to its spelling’ (Early Reading Instruction, p.75). She also made the obvious point that if we ‘anchor the code in the finite number of sounds in the language’ (c.44) and not in letters, we can teach a transparent, reversible code.

To achieve this, however, necessarily means that teachers need to have a clear understanding of the relationship between the sounds of English and the way in which the spellings represent those sounds.