Differemces of teaching phonemes in isolation and in context

Good for Practice: Once children have learned the basics of phonics, they need a lot of practice – and when they stumble upon issues, they need reinforcement on those issues. This is where embedded phonics is helpful.

Cons

• 
  Guess Work: When students look at context to understand a word, they are guessing rather than thinking about phonetics.
  
• 
  Can’t be Used in Isolation: It won’t work alone – at some point students need direct explicit and structured instruction.
  

Conclusion

The different methods of phonics are differentiated on two axes: contextualization (learning phenomes in relation to words and texts, or as decontextualized sounds) and structured instruction (clear direct lessons vs. incidental learning). Synthetic phonics is the most structured but least contextualized method. Embedded phonics is the least structured but most contextualized method:

Phonics is widely regarded as the best way to teach reading to a child. While most large-scale studies highlight that synthetic phonics is the most effective method, many educators believe all four types of phonics should be used in different contexts in the classroom for an integrated and holistic reading instruction approach. Some children may find that they have that ‘lightbulb moment’ from one of the other approaches. In particular, many believe educators should start with synthetic phonics and introduce other methods (analytic, analogy and embedded) phonics after the basics have been learned.

References

Machin, S., McNally, S., & Viarengo, M. (2018). Changing how literacy is taught: evidence on synthetic phonics. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10(2), 217-41. Retrieved from: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/846338/1/pol.20160514.pdf
Torgerson, C., Brooks, G., Gascoine, L., & Higgins, S. (2019). Phonics: reading policy and the evidence of effectiveness from a systematic ‘tertiary’review. Research Papers in Education, 34(2), 208-238.
Johnston, R. S., McGeown, S., & Watson, J. E. (2012). Long-term effects of synthetic versus analytic phonics teaching on the reading and spelling ability of 10 year old boys and girls. Reading and Writing, 25(6), 1365-1384. Retrieved from: Johnston, R., & Watson, J. (2005). The effects of synthetic phonics teaching on reading and
spelling attainment: A seven year longitudinal study. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive Education Department.
Patrick, C. J. (2018). Developmentally appropriate spelling and phonics instruction and its impact on student level of orthography, decoding ability, and reading accuracy (Doctoral dissertation, Wittenberg University). Retrieved

Glossary Of Terms

Phonics: A way of teaching students how to read. Its focus is on connecting sounds (phonemes) to their graphical representation as letters (graphemes).
Phonemes: The basic sounds that make up the English language.