How is popular/useful Onset Rime word splitting during initial Phonological Awareness training?

Question

We know that English doesn't have regular orthography and all spelling reforms was failed.I am surprised by learning methodology on reading/spelling with using onset / rime word splitting.From http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/onset_rime> The "onset" is the initial phonological unit of any word (e.g. c in cat) and the term "rime" refers to the string of letters that follow, usually a vowel and final consonants (e.g. at in cat). Not all words have onsets. Similar to teaching beginning readers about rhyme, teaching children about onset and rime helps them recognize common chunks within words. This can help students decode new words when reading and spell words when writing.In former Soviet Union English learning tradition we have another system of splitting - after vowel while onset/rime splits before vowel.For example: ма-ма vs m-oth-er. It looks like big-endian or little-endian convention but splitting influence pronunciation advises/rules greatly.Is Onset / Rime word splitting used in education in English speaking countries?It is forced by some educational standards?

Answer 1

It is a very popular strategy and a useful one.

Fluent readers recognize whole words, so we do not sound out each letter or syllable, but emerging readers often labor over each sound. So a young child might see "pig" and have to sound out each letter /p/, /i/, /g/ and then blend them slowly together p-i-g before recognizing the word. But if we can teach the rime "ig," it reduces the amount of thinking and blending a new reader must do each time he sees a word with this rime. Then it is easier to learn big, dig, fig, jig, etc. For the reader it seems like the word contains two sounds instead of three. The burden of learning similar words feels a third easier.

The onset-rime strategy makes the most sense when teaching one-syllable words. In an American school you would see this being used in kindergarten and first grade classrooms. It would come after children are comfortable understanding that each letter corresponds with one sound and before children move on to multi-syllable words. You are correct that "chunks" within multi-syllable words are different. There are better strategies for these situations.