The purpose of explicit instruction is not to teach children everything there is to know about English orthography. Its purpose is to provide just enough knowledge for children to begin teaching themselves. Once children can connect speech and print, every word they read, write and hear becomes an opportunity for further learning.
 

As Mark Seidenberg explains:

"The goal isn’t to teach as much about as many properties of print and language as time allows, appropriating more of the school day to get it all done. Rather, it is to enable the child to start acquiring the relevant knowledge as they engage in reading, writing, and spoken language activities." (Seidenberg, 2026)
 

This view reflects the principle behind Guided Self-Teaching (GST) The aim is not to reduce expectations or provide less support. The aim is to reduce the need for continual explicit instruction by ensuring children have access to the information they need to learn independently.

Children require explicit instruction to understand how speech and print connect, but they do not need an adult to explain every word, every grapheme, every correspondence or every exception. Once the code is visible and understandable, the brain can begin to recognise patterns, strengthen orthographic knowledge and build a growing mental lexicon through repeated encounters with words.

As Seidenberg writes:

"Explicit instruction is necessary to clue the child in to what there is to learn; they also learn enough basic facts (e.g., about spelling-sound correspondences) to allow new patterns to be assimilated with less reliance on explicit instruction. But the goal is to obviate the need for extensive instruction, freeing the child to focus on reading itself." (Seidenberg, 2026)

This is why we promote less explicit instruction and more guided self-teaching. Rather than increasing the amount of teaching, we should improve the quality of the learning experiences available to children. When speech and print are made transparent through technologies such as MyWordz®, powered by Ortho-GraphiX®, learners can see which letters are graphemes and their sound values for every word. Instead of relying on explanation, memory or rules, they can observe the code directly and use it to teach themselves.

The role of the adult therefore changes. Rather than being the continual source of knowledge, they become the person who knows when and how to Show the Code, enabling children to become increasingly independent learners.

Seidenberg summarises this objective succinctly:

"The goal of instruction is to get in, get out, and move on: teach enough of the code so that children can begin to learn from other experiences, including their own reading." (Seidenberg, 2026)
 

The future of literacy instruction is not more teaching. Far from it. More and more children are struggling in a one-size-fits-all school system and, despite doing what researchers claimed would eradicate illiteracy, i.e. teaching phonics systematically and explicitly using whole class phonics programmes, we can see from the data in England that this is not working for at least 1 in 4.
 

Far too many children are struggling from term 1 of Reception, yet parents who try to help, or who pull them from the system to home educate, are often ill-equipped to teach them to read and spell, especially if they are among the 1 in 5 at risk of being later diagnosed as dyslexic because the adults around them do not understand what is needed from birth to seven to prevent this. Their parents need to know how to Show the Code, and the tech teaches them alongside their child. 
 

It is better teaching that creates the conditions for self-teaching. The sooner children can independently acquire new orthographic knowledge from their own reading and writing experiences, the sooner they become confident, lifelong learners of orthographic knowledge.
 

Adults cannot facilitate that while trying to 'teach' English orthography. English has an opaque orthography. Trying to explicitly teach it all is a futile and frustrating task. It is why phrases like 'silent letters' are still being used today, and why so many rules continue to be taught. It is time to retire these practices. Brains don't learn to read and spell that way.
 

MyWordz® technology is built on a complete set of rules that merge the IPA and phonics, developed by Emma Hartnell-Baker, capable of mapping every word in English into its graphemes and phonemes, powered by the proprietary Ortho-GraphiX® algorithm.
 

Join us in funding free dyslexia risk screening when every child turns three, before they are taught phonics, and help spread the word about MyWordz® technology that Shows the Code, because it is as valuable to those supporting children as it is to the children themselves. 
 

References

Seidenberg, M. S. (2026). The "Too Much Phonics" Question. Seidenberg Reading.

Seidenberg, M. S. (2026). Recalibrating Phonics and Other Basic Skills Instruction. Seidenberg Reading.