Phonics has been around for a long time and is used to teach many languages, not just English. But what is a definition of phonetics? They are the sounds we speak every day represented in the visual form of writing, so when we read the word it should sound the same way it is spoken.
Now the definition of phonics gets complicated because the way we are taught to say the alphabet has very little to do with the way words sound. For example, when we say the word ‘cat’ using the way we are taught to say the alphabet, it will sound completely different than how we say the word ‘cat’ using phonetics.
I personally believe that learning the alphabet, as we all do as children, is an obstacle to learning to read, since there is no relationship between the sounds of the alphabet and the way we read words. María Montessori was right when she only taught her children the 44 phonic sounds instead of, as we do, the 26 letters of the alphabet.
When teaching your child to read, stay away from the alphabet and stick to phonics. So your child will understand that this letter or this combination of letters sounds like that. The main problem with the definition of phonetics is that the same phonic sound can be represented by many different combinations of letters in words. For example, the phonic sound /j/ can be used for these letters and letter combinations j, g, ge, and dge, and they are all pronounced the same way. As in the words ‘j’ in jam, ‘g’ in giant, ‘ge’ in cage, and ‘dge’ in bridge. In those words, the phonic sound /j/ is the same in all the words, even though they are all spelled differently.