Letter Names or Sounds First? What the Research Says

A Question That Splits Reading Programs in Two

Ask five phonics programs whether to teach letter names or letter sounds first, and you'll get at least three different answers. Some skip names almost entirely at the start, on the logic that "em, ay, tee" doesn't sound anything like mat. Others teach the alphabet song and letter names well before any sound work begins. It's a real disagreement, and it's confusing to parents trying to pick a starting point.

Here's the honest version: both sides have a point, and the research doesn't actually back either extreme.

The Case for Sounds First

Programs that delay letter names have a real argument. Reading requires converting print into sounds and blending those sounds into words - a purely functional skill that letter names don't directly support. Sounding out "em-ay-tee" doesn't get you any closer to mat than saying nothing at all; if anything, it can compete with the sound your child actually needs to produce. Programs built on this reasoning teach the sound a letter makes as the primary, functional fact from day one, and treat the letter's name as a separate label to layer in later or alongside it, not as the thing that unlocks reading (Engelmann, Haddox & Bruner, 1983).

The Case for Names Too

At the same time, letter-name knowledge isn't just decoration. A large synthesis of early literacy research found that how many letter names a child knows before starting school is one of the strongest available predictors of how well they'll read later - a stronger predictor than you might expect, even after accounting for other skills like phonological awareness (Shanahan & Lonigan, 2010). That's a correlation, not proof that teaching names causes better reading, but it's also not a finding you can wave away.

There's a practical reason names help, too: for a large share of the alphabet, the letter's name contains a genuine clue to its sound. The name "bee" starts with the sound /b/ makes; the name "em" contains the sound /m/ makes. For a child who already knows a letter's name, that overlap can act as a built-in memory hook for the sound - one more thing to anchor a new fact to, rather than one more unrelated fact to hold separately.

So Which Comes First?

The most defensible answer, based on where the current evidence actually points, is that the two shouldn't be framed as a strict order at all. The sound should carry the functional weight - it's what a child actually needs to sound out and blend words - while the letter's name gets introduced alongside it rather than dropped or delayed indefinitely. Guidance summarizing current classroom-relevant research on this question describes combined name-and-sound instruction as the practical recommendation, rather than a strict sequence of one before the other (Piasta & Hudson, 2022).

In practice, that can look like this: when a new letter is introduced, the sound comes first and gets the bulk of the practice, since that's the functional skill a child needs immediately to start blending words. The letter's name is still taught - just positioned as a label attached at the end of the introduction, rather than the headline fact or something skipped altogether.

What This Looks Like Day to Day

If you're teaching a new letter at home, a workable version of this balance is:

1. Introduce the sound first, and practice it in isolation until your child can produce it on request.
2. Use that sound right away in real blending practice - short, simple words that use only sounds already taught.
3. Tell your child the letter's name, and mention it again naturally over the next few days, without quizzing it as intensely as you quiz the sound.

This keeps the sound as the working tool your child needs for actual reading, while still building the letter-name knowledge that predicts longer-term reading success.

How to Practice at Home

• Lead every new letter with its sound. Ask "what sound does this make?" far more often than "what letter is this?" in the early stages.
• Attach the name, don't skip it. A quick "and this one's name is em" after sound practice is enough - it doesn't need equal drilling to be effective.
• Watch for letters where the name is a trap. A handful of letters (like h, w, and y) have names that don't clearly hint at their sound, so don't lean on the name as a memory aid for those specific ones.
• Don't stress about a "wrong" order. If your child already knows the alphabet song and letter names before sounds, that's fine - it's not evidence of a problem, since name knowledge is itself a genuine predictor of later reading success.
• Keep new-letter sessions short. A few focused minutes with one new sound (and its name attached) beats a long session trying to cover several letters at once.

This same sound-first thinking carries into which order you introduce sounds in the first place - see our post on the order to teach letter sounds - and into building the listening skills, like phonemic awareness games, that make blending those sounds possible once several are known.

The Takeaway

The letter names versus sounds debate is really a false choice: the sound needs to lead because it's the tool your child uses to actually read, but the letter's name isn't a distraction to avoid - it's a genuine predictor of reading success worth teaching alongside the sound rather than instead of it. For more on how fast to move once you've settled this question, see our post on why letter of the week is too slow for most kids, and our broader guide to how to teach a child to read for the full starting sequence.

Sweet Phonics follows this same sound-first, name-alongside approach: every new letter lesson teaches and drills the sound first, and only names the letter at the very end of the introduction, once the sound itself is already the working fact your child can use.