Phonics-based Analyses of the Elementary English Words in the 2022 Revised National Curriculum

This study examined the 800 elementary English words in the 2022 revised national curriculum to provide a comprehensive vocabulary profile that supports phonics education for young learners. Its focus was on analyzing the distributions of sound and letter patterns in first-syllable onsets and final-syllable rhymes, which are central components of phonics instruction. The implications of these sound-letter variations for teaching onsets and rhymes at the elementary level were also discussed. Analysis of the onsets revealed 33 and 30 sound-letter pairs for single-consonant (/k/-‘c’) and consonant-cluster onsets (/st/-‘st’), respectively. For rhymes, 32, 177, and 93 sound-letter pairings were identified for those without a coda (/i/-‘y’), with a single-consonant coda (/ər/-‘er’), and with a consonant-cluster coda (/ænd/-‘and’), respectively. Both onsets and rhymes frequently involved one-to-many relationships between sounds and letters, such as /s/ corresponding to ‘s’, ‘c’ and ‘sc’, highlighting the complexity of elementary English phonics.