While the importance of phonics teaching is now universally accepted, the way phonics is best taught continues to be debated. What is agreed, however, is that the teaching of literacy should incorporate evidence-informed practices which include a place for explicit and systematic phonics instruction. As with all literacy learning, phonics instruction should take place within a meaningful, communicative, rich pedagogy, and within genuine literacy events (Hornsby & Wilson, 2011, p.19).
Regardless of which approach is employed, phonics instruction must contain the following:
- explicit teaching of the grapheme and phoneme
- multiple exposures to the grapheme and phoneme through meaningful texts and contexts
- systematic teaching of graphemes and phonemes based on what students need to learn (building on known knowledge)
- explicit links to handwriting and how the upper and lower case grapheme is represented.
As noted by Wyse (2010), literacy teaching involves the use of texts ‘to locate teaching about the smaller units of language including letters and phonemes… [This] contributes to contexts that are meaningful to children and enables them to better understand the reading process, including the application of key reading skills’ (pp. 144-5).
Students with learning difficulties and dyslexia
The Literacy Teaching Toolkit materials (including the phonics resources on this page) are targetted at students within the expected range of abilities.
For advice, guidelines and tools to assist students with learning difficulties and dyslexia see:
Learning Difficulties and Dyslexia
Resources – Online Tools and Applications
The difference between phonological awareness and phonics
While phonological awareness includes the awareness of speech sounds, syllables, and rhymes, phonics is the mapping of speech sounds (phonemes) to letters (or letter patterns, i.e. graphemes). Phonological awareness and phonics are therefore not the same, but these literacy focuses tend to overlap.
As students learn to read and spell, they fine-tune their knowledge of the relationships between phonemes and graphemes in written language. As reading and spelling skills develop, focussing on phonemic awareness improves phonics knowledge, and focussing on phonics also improve phonemic awareness.
Theory to practice and evidence base
An awareness of the links between speech sounds (phonemes) and letter patterns (graphemes) is one of the essential repertoires within the
Four Resources model of reading. When reading, children need to "break the code" of written language, as well as comprehend texts, understand how texts are used, and to critically analyse texts. Including phonics is a necessary part of a rich literacy programme, as argued by a number of experts with differing views on the teaching of phonics including Emmitt, Hornsby and Wilson (2013), Goswami (2010), Stahl (2011), Paris (2005), Konza (2016).
Links to Victorian Curriculum - English
Foundation
Level 1
Level 2
Reading
- Learn some generalisations for adding suffixes to words (Content description VCELA217)
- Recognise most letter–sound matches including silent letters, trigraphs, vowel digraphs and common long vowels, and understand that a sound can be represented by various letter combinations (Content description VCELA218)
Level 3
Reading
- Understand how to apply knowledge of letter–sound relationships, and blending and segmenting to read and use more complex words with less common consonant and vowel clusters (Content description VCELA249)
- Recognise most high-frequency words, know how to use common prefixes and suffixes, and know some homophones and generalisations for adding a suffix to a base word (Content description VCELA250)
Level 4
Reading
- Read different types of texts for specific purposes by combining phonic, semantic, contextual and grammatical knowledge using text processing strategies, including monitoring meaning, skimming, scanning and reviewing (Content description VCELY287)
Level 5
Reading
- Understand how to use banks of known words, syllabification, spelling patterns, word origins, base words, prefixes and suffixes, to spell new words, including some uncommon plurals (Content description VCELA312)
Links to Victorian Curriculum - English as an Additional Language (EAL)
Pathway A
Reading and viewing
Level A1
Level A2
- Recognise all letters of the alphabet
(VCEALL130)
- Relate most letters of the alphabet to sounds
(VCEALL131)
- Recognise a small range of familiar words in different contexts
(VCEALL129)
Pathway B
Level BL
Level B1
- Identify common syllables and patterns within words
(VCEALL288)
- Use a range of cues to support reading and viewing
(VCEALL290)
Key concepts
The English Spelling System
English can be thought of as an alphabetic language consisting of 44 speech sounds (phonemes) which map onto letter patterns (graphemes). Graphemes can be a single letter (graph), or a combination of two (digraph), three (trigraph), or four letters (quadgraph).
For details, see:
The 44 Sounds of English (pdf - 230.7kb)
The 44 Sounds of English (docx - 223.93kb)
Some languages are phonetic in their spelling (e.g. Finnish, Italian), where there is a simple one-to-one relationship between sounds and letters. In English, there are only 26 letters, so combinations of letters (graphemes) are needed to represent all 44 sounds (phonemes). This makes the spelling system (orthography) of English more complicated than languages with more phonetic orthographies.
Another factor that illustrates why English's alphabetic orthography is complex is that some letters make multiple sounds. For example, the letter combination “ough” can be read in at least seven different ways: as in “through”, “thorough”, “although”, “plough”, “thought”, “cough” and “rough”.
Also, In English there are often multiple ways to spell the same sound. For example, the /or/ vowel sound can be spelt “or” as in “horse”, “au” “haunt”, “our” “court”, “augh” “caught” and “ore” “store” to name a few.
Despite this complexity, there are numerous sound-letter patterns (graphemes) that are useful to highlight, so that children can crack the code of written language.
English is also considered a morphophonemic language, which means that its spelling is also made up of various morphemes (e.g. prefixes, suffixes, base words). The morphology of words increasingly becomes important for the teaching of reading and spelling as students progress in their literacy abilities. The morphology of words also adds to the complexity of the English spelling system.
Graphemes map onto phonemes
English can be thought of as an alphabetic language consisting of 44 speech sounds (phonemes) which map onto letter patterns (graphemes).
We have 20 vowel sounds, and 24 consonant sounds. In English we use graphemes to represent these various sounds. Graphemes can be a single letter (graph), or a combination of two (digraph), three (trigraph), or four letters (quadgraph).
| Sound-Letter Pattern | Grapheme | Example Grapheme | Example Words |
| 1 letter making 1 sound | Graph | b a | rub cat |
| 2 letters making 1 sound | Digraph | ch oy |
chop soy |
| 3 letters making 1 sound | Trigraph | dge ere | ridge here |
| 4 letters making 1 sound | Quadgraph | ough | through though |
It is important for teachers to be familiar with the most common and productive sound-letter patterns (graphemes).
For more information and a list of the most common graphemes, see:
Graphemes = Sound Letter Patterns (docx - 124.65kb)
Regular/Irregular, Low/High Frequency
Words can be categorised as regular or irregular (in terms of their spelling). Distinguishing between words that are completely (or mostly) regular or irregular is useful when supporting students to decode quickly and accurately.
Regular words are words that can be decoded using knowledge of phonics patterns (such as
get, well, which, before)
Irregular words are words that do not conform to phonics patterns (such as do, said, could, yacht, doubt)
Words can also be categorised as either low frequency or high frequency, referring to how frequently they are found in texts for students of a particular year level. Overtime, it is expected that students will become proficient and efficient at reading words they encounter the most (high frequency words).
High frequency words are words that students of a particularly learning level encounter frequently (such as get, well, help, because)
Low frequency words are more rare (or not usual) for a student in a particular learning level to come across (such as cog, pharaoh, deleterious)
It can be useful to use lists of high frequency words (e.g. Oxford Word List, Magic Words). However, when you identify the graphemes within these words it is clear that many high frequency words are also regular words.
For more information, see:
Words - Regular/Irregular and High/Low Frequency (docx - 208.63kb)
Word Morphology
Morphology is the study of words and their parts. Morphemes (like prefixes, suffixes, and base words) are defined as the smallest meaningful units of meaning.
All words can be broken down into their morphemes:
| Some words have 1 morpheme | system | system | (1) |
| Some have 2 morphemes | systematic | system+atic | (2) |
| Or 3 morphemes | unsystematic | un+system+atic | (3) |
| Or 4 morphemes | unsystematical | un+system+atic+al | (4) |
| Or more! | unsystematically | un+system+atic+al+ly | (5) |
Other examples of words with multiple morphemes are: roll+er driv+ing under+stand+able class+ic+al
Morphemes are important for phonics (reading and spelling), as well as vocabulary and comprehension. Teaching morphemes is useful, as they are often spelt the same across different words (even when the sound changes), and often have a consistent purpose and/or meaning.
For example, students can learn about the plural -s, and how it can be spelt with an "s" or "es", based on a sound rule. See plural s section for more details.
For more information, see:
Word Morphology
See the
44 Speech sounds video
Phonic sequences
Phonics instruction that is systematic and explicit teaches the major -phoneme – grapheme correspondences in a planned sequence. Using a sequence to guide the order ofphonics knowledge enables early readers to start with a small set of letters which can be combined to make vowel-consonant (VC) and consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. This is an important skill for blending (to assist decoding) and segmenting (to assist spelling).
At the same time as early readers and writers are learning how to decode and segment VC and CVC words, they also need to be introduced to word recognition strategies for reading and spelling high frequency words. High frequency words that contain unusual letter-sound correspondences (for example,
here or
said) require early learners to "store spellings bonded to pronunciations of words" into memory (Ehri, 2022, p. 54). This is known as orthographic mapping and it is an important contributor to accurate decoding, fluency and spelling.
The Victorian
English Online Interview (EOI) assessment includes phonic word items (real English words and non-words) across the 4 modules.
The following phonics lesson sequences aim to provide teachers with explicit information about how to support phonics instruction in Foundation, Level 1 and Level 2. The lesson sequences are examples and are not intended to cover all aspects of phonics.
Additional examples of phonics scope and sequences:
Foundation phonics scope
|
Victorian Curriculum: Phonics and word knowledge |
Foundation |
|---|
| Reading and Viewing | Recognise all upper- and lower-case letters and the most common sound that each letter represents (VCELA146) For example, Recognise the most common sound made by each letter and their symbol (phoneme to grapheme). There is no fixed or set sequence to follow (Hornsby & Wilson, 2011, p.85) but here are two alternatives: - Phoneme: /m/, /b/, /l/, /t/, /g/, /h/, /s/, /k/, /v/, /z/, /p/, /j/, /n/, /d/, /r/, /y/, /f/, /w/ Vowel phoneme (short): /a/, /e/, /i/ /o/, /u/ Digraph: /sh/, /ch/, th/th voiced and unvoiced (Hill, 2015, p. 275)Digraph: /sh/, /ch/, th/th voiced and unvoiced (Hill, 2015, p. 275)
- Stretchable consonants: /f/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /r/, /s/, /v/, /z/ Plosive consonants: /b/, /d/, /j/, /k/, /p/, /t/ Initial consonants: /h/, /w/, /y/, /c/, /g/, q= /k/ + /w/ Short vowels taught in rime -at, -et, -ip, -ot, -un (Hornsby & Wilson, 2011, pp. 87-101)
Blend sounds associated with letters when reading consonant-vowel-consonant words (VCELA147) - For example, blend one syllable words: c-a-t, p-e-g and apply this knowledge when reading.
|
Writing
| Understand that spoken sounds and words can be written and know how to write some high frequency words and other familiar words including their name (VCELA157) For example, - Write consonant-vowel-consonant words by segmenting the sounds. Listen to the sounds heard in the word and then write letters to represent those sounds. (See
Phonological awareness and early writing)
- Teach the spelling of high frequency words (e.g. the, to, go, I, and, look, here). Examination of students’ writing provides easy access to which words to teach (Hill, 2015, p. 189). Refer to word lists such as
Oxford Word List,
High Frequency, M100 words as a guide.
Know how to use onset and rime to spell words where sounds map more directly onto letters (VCELA158) For example, - Start with words from an authentic source and build word families using magnetic letters, word slides or onset/rime cards (hop: h-op, p-op, c-op, m-op, sh-op, ch-op, st-op)
- Begin with single vowel and consonant rimes such as: -ad, -an, -am, -ap, -at, -en, -et, -in, -ip, -it, -op, -ot, -ug, -un, -um (Hornsby & Wilson, 2011, p.102). (See
onset-rime segmentation and
Phonological Awareness Onset-rime video)
|
Speaking and Listening
| Identify rhyming words, alliteration patterns, syllables and some sounds (phonemes) in spoken words (VCELA168) For example, Blend and segment onset and rime in single syllable words and isolate, blend and segment phonemes in single syllable words (First consonant, last consonant sound, middle vowel sound) (VCELA169) For example, - Blend and segment onset and rime - Orally build word families (h-op, p-op, c-op, m-op, sh-op, ch-op, st-op). Start with single vowel and consonant rimes such as: -ad, -an, -am, -ap, -at, -en, -et, -in, -ip, -it, -op, -ot, -ug, -un, -um (Hornsby & Wilson, 2011, p.102).(See
onset-rime segmentation and
Phonological Awareness Onset-rime video)
- Isolate, blend and segment phonemes in single syllable words - Count the phonemes in two and three letter words, identify the first and last sound in words, isolate sounds in words to segment (cup= c-u-p) and blend sounds (sh-i-p=ship) to make single syllable words (See
Blending sounds into words,
Segmenting words into sounds and
F-2 Spelling unit).
|
Level 1 phonics scope
| Victorian Curriculum: Phonics and word knowledge |
Level 1 |
|---|
| Reading and Viewing | Recognise short vowels, common long vowels and consonant digraphs, and consonant blends (VCELA181) For example, - Short vowels - Vowel sounds are usually short when they appear in one-syllable words. A vowel inside a rime has a consistent sound.
- Investigate and decode words which contain long vowel sounds: begin with split digraphs (such as a-e = cake, e-e = these, i-e = vine, o-e = hope, u-e = cute). Follow with common vowel digraphs making a long vowel sound: (such as ai, ay, ee, ea, oa)
Consonant digraphs. Teach: ‘sh’- ship, wish, ‘ch’- chop and much, unvoiced ‘th’- thin and with, voiced ‘th’- then, feather, ‘ph’-phone, elephant, graph, ‘ck’- black, ‘wh’- what, ‘ng’- king, ‘qu’- queen (included here because ‘q’ always appears with ‘u’ after it). (Hill, 2021, p.275) See Phonics lesson:
Consonant digraphs.
Consonant blends. Begin with 2 letter initial consonant blends - bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, pl, lr, sc, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, tr, tw (Hill, 2021, p. 274) See Phonics lesson:
Consonant blends
Understand how to spell one and two syllable words with common letter patterns (VCELA182) For example, - Investigate words with common consonant blends (bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, pl, lr, sc, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, tr, tw) and vowel sounds (a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e, u-e, ai, ay, ee, ea, oa) such as tree, star, be.gin, tea.cher
- Learn an increasing number of high frequency words with regular (and, am, can, get, his, this, up) and irregular spelling (after, all, come, here, my, of, said, saw, some, the, they, was, were, what, when, you). Refer to word lists such as:
Oxford Word List,
High Frequency, M100 words as a guide.
Understand that a letter can represent more than one sound, and that a syllable must contain a vowel sound (VCELA183) |
| Writing | Recognise and know how to use simple grammatical morphemes in word families (VCELA191) - Building word families (for example 'play', 'plays', 'playing', 'played', 'playground')
- Reads and writes one and two syllable words with common suffixes (for example, walk, walked, walks, walking) See
Word Morphology
Understand how to use visual memory to write high-frequency words, and that some high-frequency words have regular and irregular spelling components (VCELA184) - Students use strategies such as look-say-cover-write-check to learn regular (such as and, am, can, get, his, this, up) and irregular spelling (such as after, all, come, here, my, of, said, saw, some, the, they, was, were, what, when, you) of high frequency words. Refer to word lists such as:
Oxford Word List,
High Frequency, M100 words as a guide.
|
| Speaking and Listening | Identify the separate phonemes in consonant blends or clusters at the beginning and ends of syllables (VCELA203) - Students can identify the consonant blends at the beginning (such as bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, pl, lr, sc, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, tr, tw) or ending (such as ft, ld, lk, lp, lt, mp, nd, ng, nk, nt, py, ry, sk, sp, st, ty) of syllables and then the individual phonemes that make up the blend (for example frog = ‘fr’ = f-r or jump=’mp’ = m-p) (Hill, 2021, p.274).
Manipulate phonemes by addition, deletion and substitution of initial, medial and final phonemes to generate new words (VCELA204) - Addition of phonemes: (adding /b/ to ‘in’ to make = ‘bin’ or /m/ to ‘far’ to make = ‘farm’
- Deletion of phonemes: (deleting /s/ from swag to make = ‘wag’ or deleting /b/ from brat to make = ‘rat’
- Substitution of initial, medial or final phonemes (substituting /p/ for /g/ in get = ‘pet’, substituting /o/ for /e/ in pet = pot, substituting /d/ for /t/ in pot =’pod’) See
Deleting and manipulating sounds in the Literacy Teaching Toolkit.
|
Level 2 phonics scope
| Reading and Viewing | Learn some generalisations for adding suffixes to words (VCELA217) (See
Literacy Glossary)Investigate and teach the way words change when suffixes are added (-ing, -ed, -er, -est, -ful, -ly) For example, - add ‘ed’ or ‘ing’ to verb stem e.g. talk → talked, talking
- drop the final 'e' when adding 'ing' e.g. hope →hoping
- if the verb stem ends in ‘e’, just add a ‘d’ e.g. use → used, hope →hoped
- double the last consonant if there is a short vowel before it and then add ‘ed’ or ‘ing’ e.g. plan →planned, planning, hop →hopped, hopping
- if the verbs ends in y, change the 'y' to an 'i' and add 'ed' e.g. worry
→ worried (Derewianka, 2022, p. 24).
- final consonants are not doubled before adding a suffix beginning with a consonant e.g. wonder + ful = wonderful, quick + ly =quickly
Recognise most letter-sound matches including silent letters, trigraphs, vowel digraphs and common long vowels, and understand that a sound can be represented by various letter combinations (VCELA218) Silent letters - students recognise and read words with silent letters e.g. knife, castle, write. Initial silent letters (for example g-gnome, k-knew, p-psychology, w-wrap), medial silent letters (for example h-ghost, l-could, t-castle, w-two) and final silent letters (such as b-thumb) (Hornsby & Wilson, 2011, p.193). See Phonic Lesson-Using a traditional tale to teach phonic elements
- Trigraphs - a group of three letters that are associated with one sound, for example, ‘eau’ in ‘plateau’. Teach ‘ear’ as in ‘wear’, ‘tch’ as in ‘catch’, ‘ear’ as in ‘fear’, ‘ure’ as in ‘sure’
- Vowel digraphs and common long vowels: Revise (a-e, ai, ay, e-e, ee, ea, i-e, oa, o-e, u-e) Then teach: (ie, y, oe, ow, oo, ue) followed by: (ou, oy, oi, au)
- Teach R-Controlled Vowels: ar, er, ir, or, ur
|
| Writing | Understand how to use digraphs, long vowels, blends, silent letters and syllabification to spell simple words including compound words (VCELA226) - Students can write words containing consonant digraphs (such as ‘sh’, ‘ch’, ‘th’, ‘ph’, ‘wh’, ‘ck’, ‘ng’, ‘qu’) and vowel digraphs and long vowels (such as a-e, ai, au, ay, e-e, ee, ea, i-e, ie, oa, oe, o-e, oi, oo, ou, ow, oy, u-e, ue, y)
See Phonics lesson: Consonant digraphs
Students can write words with 2 letter See
Level 1 Phonics Scope and 3 letter consonant blends (scr-, shr-, spl-, spr-, str-) See Phonics lesson:
Consonant digraphs
- Students can write words with silent letters: Initial silent letters (for example g-gnome, k-knew, p-psychology, w-wrap), medial silent letters (for example h-ghost, l-could, t-castle, w-two) and final silent letters (such as b-thumb) (Hornsby & Wilson, 2011, p.193).
Syllables: Students can break words into syllables to hear the phonemes (e.g. button= but.ton = b-u-t. t-o-n) See
Syllabification video and
Level 1 Syllable Lesson that supports the video
- Compound words: See Word Morphology-Compound words
Use visual memory to write high-frequency words and words where spelling is not predictable from the sounds (VCELA227) - Can use visual memory strategies such as: look-say-cover-write-check, knowledge of letter patterns, word shape and possible letter combinations to write high frequency sight words. Read and write all 100 high frequency words. Refer to word lists such as:
Oxford Word List,
High Frequency, M100 words as a guide.
|
Speaking and Listening | Manipulate more complex sounds in spoken words through knowledge of blending and segmenting sounds, phoneme deletion and substitution (VCELA238) - Blend and segment more complex sounds when saying words, for example 'squint' and 'watch'. Include words with 2 letter blends -
See Level 1 Phonics Scope and 3 letter blends (scr-, shr-, spl-, spr-, str- in the initial and final position of a word.
- Deletion of phonemes in more complex words: (for example deleting ‘e’ from ‘bathe’ = bath, deleting the ‘i’ from paint = pant)
Substitution of initial, medial or final phonemes in more complex words (substituting ‘str’ for ‘th’ in thing = ‘string’, substituting ‘ea’ for ‘oa’ in boat = ‘beat’, substituting ‘-tch’ for ‘th’ in with = ‘witch’ See Deleting and manipulating sounds
- Identify all Standard Australian English phonemes, including short and long vowels, separate sounds in clusters (VCELA239) Listening for and recognising different sounds in words during shared reading and read alouds including short vowels (such as 'a' as in can), long vowels (such as 'o' as in pony) and separate sounds in letter clusters (such as 's-t-r' in strap)
The 20 vowel and 24 consonant phonemes make up the 44 phonemes of English. Each phoneme may have multiple spellings (graphemes) and a sample are listed here: see
The English Spelling System: 44 sounds of English
- Short Vowels – ‘a’ in cat, ‘e’ in leg, ‘I’ in sit, ‘o’ in top, ‘u’ in rub and ‘oo’/‘u’ in book and put
- Long Vowels - 'a’ ape, bait, bathe, day; 'e' in eat, see, scene; 'i' in ice, light, buy, hide; 'o' in own, coat, toe, hope, 'u' in use, cute, few (Hornsby & Wilson, 2021, p. 276)
3 R-Controlled vowels – ‘ar’ in car, giraffe, half, ‘er’/‘ir’/‘ur’ in her, were, bird, hurt or in cork, more, sure, saw, war (Hill, 2021, p. 138) - 6 other vowels - ‘ow’/‘ou’ in cow and out, ‘oy’/‘oi’ in boy and void, ‘eer’/‘ear’ in deer and near, ‘air’/‘ere’ in hair and there, ‘our’ in tour
- 1 Unstressed Vowel - schwa in about, broken, pencil, parrot, album (Hill, 2021, p. 139)
- 24 Consonants - p in pet, b in bet, t in tip, d in dip, k/c in kite/cap, m in met, n in net, ng in sing, f in fan and photo, v in van, th in think (voiceless /th/), th in this (voiced /t/), s in Sue, dress and cent, z in zoo, h in hat, j in jump and giant, w in wet, r in rat, y in yak, l in leg, sh in ship, zh in treasure and beige, ch in chain and creature
- Additional Consonant Sounds - x = k + s as in box, qu = k + w as in quit
|
In practice examples
For in practice examples, see:
Sample phonics lessons
For more information see:
Phonics for early childhood educators
References
Derewianka, B. (1998). A Grammar Companion: For Primary Teachers, Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teacher Association
Emmitt, M., Hornsby, D. & Wilson, L. (2013). The place of phonics in learning to read and write. Norwood: ALEA.
Goswami, U. (2010). Phonology, reading and reading difficulties. In K. Hall, U. Goswami, C. Harrison, S. Ellis & J. Soler (Eds.). Interdisciplinary perspectives on learning to read: Culture, cognition and pedagogy. (pp. 103 - 116). New York: Routledge.
Hill, S. (2015). Developing early literacy: Assessment and teaching (2nd ed.) South Yarra, Australia: Eleanor Curtain Publishing.
Hornsby, D. & Wilson, L. (2011). Teaching phonics in context. Port Melbourne: Pearson Australia.
Konza, D. (2016). Understanding the process of reading: The big six. In J. Scull & B. Raban (Eds), Growing up literate: Australian literacy research for practice (pp. 149-175). South Yarra, Vic. : Eleanor Curtain Publishing
Snowball, D. and Bolton, F. (1999). Spelling K-8: Planning and Teaching. York, Maine: Stenhouse.
Stahl, K.A.D. (2011). Applying new visions of reading development in today’s classrooms. The reading Teacher, 65(1), 52-56.
Wyse, D. (2010). Contextualised phonics teaching. In K. Hall, U. Goswami, C. Harrison, S. Ellis & J. Soler (Eds.). Interdisciplinary perspectives on learning to read: Culture, cognition and pedagogy. (pp. 130-148). New York: Routledge.