In England, Higher Education institutions, together with the schools whose staff they train, are being required to incorporate synthetic phonics as one of the key approaches to the teaching of reading. Yet even if synthetic phonics can be identified as one of the component "skills" of reading, an assumption vigorously contested in this…

This article describes a program at the University of Nancy, for the teaching of introductory phonetic transcription to beginning students majoring in English. The alphabet chosen for this program, the English Pronouncing Dictionary Alphabet, lends itself particularly to use with beginners. Introduction to this alphabet takes place in ten sessions…