Phonics is an instructional method of teaching children to read, Phonics involves teaching children to connect sounds with letters or group of letters. Children begin learning to read using Phonics usually around the age of 3 to 6 years. Teaching English reading using phonics requires children to learn the connections between letter patterns and the sounds they represent. Phonics enable the children strategies they need to sound out words. For example they learn that the letter 'd' has the sound of 'duh' as in 'dog'. They learn how to blend letter sounds together to make words like 'Dog'. It's not easy as it sounds, because the 26 letters in our alphabate correspond to 42 sounds. But when your children master it, this knowledge helps them read words at appropriate pace and give them the ability to decode and spell words they haven't seen before.
Ordinary human experience has demonstrated that sound and certian grammatical structures operating as sound bytes enable us to read better. What we read on the printed page is sound. Though what we read appears as something we see, that writing has to be mentally transposed into what we say. Phonics combines these enabling reading the right way. Everything on the printed page, including the necessary stresses; pauses, pitches and some of these sound groups constitue what is called Phonics. It is important for readers to know that the eye may see pneumonia but the 'pn' in similar words like 'pneumatics' and 'pneumogastric' is sounded like just 'n'. Phonics deals with how spelling sounds and the sounds of letter combinations.
The best time to introduce to a child is between 4 to 6 years, however if children above 6 years and upto 9 years have not developed good English reading, speaking and spelling skills, phonics will definetly help.
Research has shown that kids who are able to communicate well in English in the early days of their growing perfom well in their acedemic and actually enjoy success in school. These children are free of any stress at the sub-consciuos level and apart from excelling in studies, also have very high self esteem and self confidence. Children naturally start building a strong acedemic foundation through voraciously aquiring new knowledge. This further helps them comprehend the knowledge and apply the knowledge, helping them face critical exams with a strong will and mind. Such kids have also seem to develop a visibly striking persona (or personality) and are generaly well behaved in public and society at large.