Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing of the English language by developing learners’ phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes—in order to teach the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them.

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Pronunciation means how we say words. Most people speak the dialect of standard English with an accent that belongs to the part of the country they come from or live in. Learners of British English commonly hear RP (Received Pronunciation), which is an accent often used on the BBC and other news media and in some course materials for language learners, but it is also common to hear a variety of regional accents of English from across the world.

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How we use spoken stress and rhythm is also an important part of pronunciation. For example, it is important to know which syllables in a word are stressed and how different patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables are pronounced. There are also common patterns of intonation in English which enable us to give special emphasis to particular words, phrases and sentences.