The phonics debate

Early Learning Teaching Your Child to Read
61

This is exactly how I learned to read when I was little. I remember that I first learned the words for common objects that I saw naturally in my environment such as “mom”, “dad”, “dog”, “cat”, “house”. After I saw what probably amounted to about 10 words, I was able to fill in the rest of what I read from watching Sesame Street and learning the sounds to each of the letters and combinations of letters. No one specifically taught me how to read. I was read to a lot as a child, howevever, no one ever told me that “this is the word for mouse” or “this is the word for ball.” It would have helped me to have words actually pointed out.

If my sons have the same learning tendencies that I have, they might find that the more words that they know by sight, the more words and generalizations they can figure out on their own just like I did when I was in preschool. This is why I like Doman’s method so much. I would have thrived in this kind of environment and learned so many words and would have had so many insights into the world at a younger age.

I think that, in general, children feel that reading is above them. I felt, as a child, that reading was something that adults do and that I couldn’t learn to read until I was older. I felt the same way about learning cursive and about doing multiplication. If I were given more motivation and was given the feeling that I could indeed read on my own, write in cursive, and do multiplication, I really feel like I would have blossomed earlier.

There are many proponents to using phonics such as Marva Collins (an African American teacher from Chicago for started her own school). Collins says, “I saw that if a child knew the rules for syllabification, and the exceptions to the rules, then that child could pick anything and read it.” I do feel that some students would learn better learning the sounds of letters individually just as I had preferred to learn words in their entirety. Parents and teachers should implement whatever they feel would work best for the child and most likely that would be a combination of the two methods. That being said, we will eventually be doing both phonics and whole-word learning.

62

After reading all the responses for this debate I have drawn the concluson that both methods are valid. My only issue with teaching ‘the rules’ of phonics is that in the English language there are so many exceptions to the rules. For example you have the words ‘chocolate, chain, chime, etc’ all starting with ‘che’ sound then you have a word like ‘chiropractor’ making a ‘ki’ sound.

So i was wondering if you could teach phonics and whole words at the same time by doing words that rhyme for example at, hat, mat, cat, sat, or mine, lime, time, so they learn the whole word and the sound? Argh im confused!

What is your opinion?

63

Here’s what I posted on another thread:

In a nutshell, phonics is VERY VERY important and CANNOT be left out. Having said that, we firmly believe that we can start by teaching whole words at very early ages because it’s much more difficult to teach phonics at those early ages.

What we would recommend is this, esp for very young children:

  1. Start by showing whole words. Expose your child to words, and foster the love of reading.

  2. Slowly introduce whole words in such a way as to help them intuit phonics rules (eg., cat, bat, hat, fat). The “B words” Category in LR is also designed to do that.

  3. When your child can speak reasonably well, shift more emphasis to phonetic teaching.

Unfortunately, due to the irregular/inconsistent nature of the English language, we cannot wholly escape the whole word method, hence there will always be words that need to be memorized, like “one”. And that’s also a reason why it cannot just be the phonics method.

and in a clarification:

what I meant by phonetic teaching is where you start by teaching the alphabet, then the pronunciation of each letter, and then how you would piece the different parts together to sound out a word. Yes, I would NOT start by teaching a baby that! :slight_smile:

I WOULD absolutely show a child word groups which help show the phonics rules in action, and that can be at very young ages. My personal preference would be start the learning process by showing more ‘enjoyable’ material, like animals (with all the pictures, videos, etc.) to get the child interested in the entire reading process, and then gradually introduce phonics sets, and then as soon as a child can start enunciating, to move on to the type of phonics lessons I mentioned at the beginning.

The above was posted on this thread:

http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-to-read/why-did-france-prohibit-the-'whole-word'-teaching-method-in-2006/

64

Thanks for the clarifications, KL.

Well, my opinion is that “ch” (and “tch”) is read “chuh” usually, a lot more than “kuh” as in some Latin-sourced (or is it Greek-sourced?) words or even sometimes “sh” as in French-sourced words, and the fact that it is read in other ways shouldn’t blind the reading teacher to this fact. You simply begin with the most common variant. Later, you can introduce the other pronunciations, so the reader learns that the letters can mean both. But actually–I just checked–Flesch introduces the “chuh” sound in word list 21, and never teaches the “kuh” or “sh” sounds of “ch”. There are important words that use the “kuh” sound, but they are easy to memorize and most of the most common words, the Anglo-Saxon words, use the “chuh” sound. Such, rich, chin, chat, check, much, match. If you aren’t familiar with the general rule, which applies to most of the most common English words, you might well end up more confused because you don’t understand that the exceptions are in fact relative exceptions.

That, by the way, is why phonics helps make good spellers. Perhaps this is why I won my school’s seventh grade spelling bee…unlike most of my classmates, I went through that phonics workbook when I was five or six!

So i was wondering if you could teach phonics and whole words at the same time by doing words that rhyme for example at, hat, mat, cat, sat, or mine, lime, time, so they learn the whole word and the sound? Argh im confused!

If you’re teaching phonics properly, you do teach whole words at the same time you teach phonics. That is, you don’t (merely) teach abstract rules, you teach whole words that strictly follow one particular rule, all together.

Maybe it will help to say that you never really teach “phonics,” per se, unless you’re trying to teach the absurd, unnecessary word theory of the sort patreiche was criticizing. You teach, instead, flashcards, or sounding out words, whole words grouped phonetically (and ordered systematically–that can be important if you want to do it right). In short, you teach kids to read, by paying some attention (not an unnecessary amount) to the letters that make up the word. You don’t withhold this crucial information. If you know what you’re doing, you won’t confuse them, you’ll enlighten them.

65

An interesting piece of research to add to the debate:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000680

(Thanks, Twinergy!)

Excerpts:

Research in object recognition has tried to distinguish holistic recognition from recognition by parts. One can also guess an object from its context. Words are objects, and how we recognize them is the core question of reading research. Do fast readers rely most on letter-by-letter decoding (i.e., recognition by parts), whole word shape, or sentence context? We manipulated the text to selectively knock out each source of information while sparing the others. Surprisingly, the effects of the knockouts on reading rate reveal a triple dissociation. Each reading process always contributes the same number of words per minute, regardless of whether the other processes are operating.

This was reported in:
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=28191

Where it was said that:

Pelli and Tillman’s results show that letter-by-letter decoding, or phonics, is the dominant reading process, accounting for 62 percent of reading speed. However, both holistic word recognition (16 percent) and whole-language processes (22 percent) do contribute substantially to reading speed. Remarkably, the results show that the contributions of these three processes to reading speed are additive. The contribution of each process to reading speed is the same whether the other processes are working or not.

66

Just remember, how adults read does not necessarily determine how we should teach kids to read, any more than how mathematically adept adults do arithmetic should determine how we teach kids to add.

67

Dear DadDude,

It may sound weird to ask you some simple question such as:

What is systematic, intensive, explicit phonics?

Is there any Simple Phonetic Program that I could buy and follow the book?

I live in Brasil and went to an International School since kindergarden. I learned first to read in english and later in portuguese. I do speak native english, great pronunciation but many times I lack some vocabulary knowlege because I live in Brasil and not in the United States. That is why I am making the above simple question. I am doing so because you sound to be an expert.

I haven´t taught my 3 years old to read yet because I was confused in how to start whole word x phonetic. I was scared of messing up with my little girl brain. Also I was confused if I should start with english or portuguese. I do speak in english with her but not a daily bases as I do portuguese. At first I thought doing English because is not her native language. But then I lost myself in so many questions of right or wrong and basically I lost precious time. I am to skeptical, which it can be good at some points but most of the time I loose the timing.

Thanks
Adriane
P.S. my husband speaks chinese to her, daily bases. It is his native language.

68

I’m sure I’m not saying anything that hasn’t already been said here, but I think phonics is a better use of time for reading in school, for children who will be getting little other enrichment elsewhere. Meaning, young kids whose only reading consists of school readers. I don’t think sight reading, alone without any phonics, in school is an appropriate way to teach children ages 6 and up to read. The 6 year old brain is just not, on average, as elastic and sticky as a 3 year old brain, and this could result in an overly abbreviated vocabulary as well as a lack of confidence, and later on lower reading comprehension levels. For children who are read to a lot at early ages with very involved parents, then sight reading will help them build greater fluency more quickly. So, for me, I think the question of when (what age?) and where (in school in an overcrowded classroom, or at home with Mommy/Daddy/sibling?) the teaching reading is happening is critical.

69

That’s actually a very good question, and I’m not sure I understand perfectly myself. It might help to begin by saying what it’s not. It is not phonics that is presented only or mainly “in context” of literature (e.g., it’s not just sounding out hard words as you read a book with the learner). It’s not half-hearted or half-way, i.e., it does not present only “the main” rules or “the most important” rules. It’s not disorganized in which rules are presented when.

Now, there are many ways to do this, some of them no doubt ineffective and some of them very effective, but systematic phonics is more like this: you figure out all the ways that English spelling maps onto English sounds. You derive rules from these “mappings.” Then you teach the learner how to decode words based on the rules, from the simplest rules (e.g., consonant-vowel-consonant, where the vowel is a short A, like CAT and PAM), to the most complex. You don’t move onto a more advanced rule until the simpler rule is mastered.

This is a very abstract, vague description. There are many ways to do this. There are systematic phonics workbooks, software, etc. There’s also the flashcard method I happened to have used (still am using) with my boy (http://www.mediafire.com/Fleschcards).

Also, please don’t fall into the silly error that some people make, that advocates of systematic phonics are somehow opposed to reading to children, or using literature. Teaching to read using some method of systematic phonics is perfectly consistent with lots and lots of reading.

Is there any Simple Phonetic Program that I could buy and follow the book?

I’m sure there are. But I’m afraid we just used the word lists at the back of Rudolf Flesch’s Why Johnny Can’t Read, and while I’ve heard of many phonics programs, I can’t recommend any because I don’t have any experience with them.

I live in Brasil and went to an International School since kindergarden. I learned first to read in english and later in portuguese. I do speak native english, great pronunciation but many times I lack some vocabulary knowlege because I live in Brasil and not in the United States. That is why I am making the above simple question. I am doing so because you sound to be an expert.

I’m no expert, I’m just opinionated on the subject and I’ve read some books.

I haven´t taught my 3 years old to read yet because I was confused in how to start whole word x phonetic. I was scared of messing up with my little girl brain. Also I was confused if I should start with english or portuguese. I do speak in english with her but not a daily bases as I do portuguese. At first I thought doing English because is not her native language. But then I lost myself in so many questions of right or wrong and basically I lost precious time. I am to skeptical, which it can be good at some points but most of the time I loose the timing.

Sorry…I wouldn’t dare give you advice especially about older kids. I don’t know you, and I know nothing about the sort of situation you describe. My advocacy for phonics is very general and I don’t claim to be infallible or have all the answers.

70

Hi there everyone,

Please read the research behind:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Or rather…

According to a researcher (sic) at Cambridge University, it doesn’t matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/

  • Ayesha
71

Indeed this is a very old argument and doesn’t carry much water. It is one thing to say that we read “whole words,” or that experienced readers can decode the nonsense text you copied in. It is another thing entirely to say that children learn best by learning whole words. That simply does not follow, logically speaking. That’s like saying that, since adults can walk at five miles per hour, toddlers should learn how to walk by walking at five miles per hour. The claim is self-evidently silly and it is also obvious that it does not follow logically.

Doman Mom says, “Did you ever wonder why there were so many words that you have read a hundred times but you do not know how to spell?” Maybe I’m unusual, but no, I do not have this problem and I never did, not even as a child. I learned to read using phonics, and this made me one of the best spellers in my class–I won the 7th grade spelling bee at my school, I vaguely recall. If you learn to read by decoding a word–by taking it apart and seeing how it is put together–then you intuitively learn all the “tricks” that go into spelling. You also more naturally pay attention to spelling. So I know that you pierce a steak with a fork, but the philosopher’s name is Peirce. When you get down to it the battle between phonics and the whole word method comes down to the question whether it is necessary to teach children systematically and consistently to match up the contents of a word with what a word sounds like. Granted, some children don’t need this spelled out, but a heck of a lot of other children do, including some very smart ones. We all know frighteningly intelligent people who are puzzlingly bad spellers and slow readers; those people were not taught using phonics, or were taught late, after they picked up bad habits that they were never able to unlearn.

I wish I knew how to convince you all that Doman was wrong about the phonics vs. whole word debate. He was right about some important things, but that didn’t make him an expert, and right, about everything he had opinions about. In particular, you do not have to defend the whole word method of teaching reading in order to defend the Doman method of baby reading.

72

DadDude,

Thank you for your thoughts. I was actually more interested in the research cited from Cambridge, that DomanMom had quoted from. And It turns out to be an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation from the late 70s.

The link:
http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/

explains with great analytical detail:

I’ve written this page, to try to explain the science behind this meme. There are elements of truth in this, but also some things which scientists studying the psychology of language (psycholinguists) know to be incorrect. I’m going to break down the meme, one line at a time to illustrate these points, pointing out what I think is the relevant research on the role of letter order on reading. Again, this is only my view of the current state of reading research, as it relates to this meme. If you think I’ve missed something important, let me know [matt.davis@mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk].

I also believe that both phonics and whole words approaches, have their respective places in learning/teaching English, and it is not an “either/or” situation.

While searching for this article:

Science News
Phonics, Whole-word And Whole-language Processes Add Up To Determine Reading Speed, Study Shows
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801091500.htm

I came across another interesting analysis of phonics vs. whole language debate:

The Reading Wars
Phonics versus Whole Language
© Jon Reyhner, Northern Arizona University, Revised December 13, 2008
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/Reading_Wars.html

Thanks again.

  • Ayesha
73

Hey guys,

love this debate which is so circular and on-going…In fact it reminds me a bit of the old argument that keeps re-surfacing about the Suzuki method of Music and reading music.

I mentioned in another thread that my sister taught me to read. She was 8 and I was 1. She taught me by reading to me so I guess I learned whole word but I very much doubt she used any method other than exposing me.

I have read that the people who tend to be more right brained also tend to be quite bad spellers so it may not necessarily come down to the way we are taught but (as always) a combination of factors.

I am a great speller and have never had to sound a word out in my reading memory (though will admit that sleep deprivation since becoming a mother has had its affects on my spelling and grammar abilities from time to time).

I taught my son both, I didn’t set out to teach whole word or phonics I just exposed him to them and let him play with whichever he was interested in at the time.

It comes down to the fact that neither method can serve us on their own…particularly in the English language.

there are a great many words that simply cannot be spelled phonetically. There must come a time when we use our memory and read whole word, at the same time you cannot type or write a whole word but must break it down into its constituent parts so you must use phonics. Of course reading purely phonetically will always be slower than whole word reading.

Any teaching that relies on a child learning to approach a subject through one method only is always going to be less affective than teaching in a more rounded method.

I have been teaching for 17 years now. I teach all styles of dance, acrobatics, singing, several instruments and musicianship. As a young adult I taught reading recovery to IM students in primary school (students with IQs between 70 & 90 aged between 5 & 11).

I truly believe that children should have all information given to them (at the appropriate times) in as many variables as possible. They are quite capable of joining the dots themselves but cannot do so without all the information. It is also our job as teachers to guide our children to make these connections.

It is all fine and well to say that a child will deduce the rules of phonics but if the patterns haven’t been presented then they can’t make any deductions.

I think giving children a rounded education through all the senses and making use of all their different intelligences and mental processes is the best approach, no matter what you are trying to teach.

Fantastic articles Ayesha, just skimmed them but will be going back to have a thorough reading :slight_smile:

74

I do agree, it is interesting research–at least, based on the ten minutes looking at the page that I did.

What I care about on this question is what the scientific method and rigorous scholarship indicate. With all due respect, many education professors are not trained in this type of research at all. Too many educationists are instead mainly interested in fitting reading-teaching methods into a broader teaching ideology. When ideologies go head-to-head, the truth is indeed often found somewhere in the middle. But in this case, we’re talking about a specific and important scientific proposition. The proposition, the one that sparks all the debate, is simply that children learn to read most effectively when they are exposed, from early on, to phonics systematically. This is a clear enough proposition, I think, and to reject it is wrong, and to endorse it is right. There are other issues about the teaching of reading and about pedagogy generally, but this is where the controversy lies, and there really is one right side of this controversy, and one wrong side.

When you say that it’s not an “either/or” situation, you are falling in with a habit of the whole language crowd, which says, rather disingenuously to my mind, that they “do phonics” too, they are just moderate in the amount that they use. Whole language as originally advocated by Goodman has given way to “balanced literacy.” Sure, whole language and “balanced literacy” advocates are proponents of teaching some phonics. (They’re not completely crazy.) But there are many studies that have shown that systematic, “synthetic” phonics is head and shoulders above “some” phonics in terms of making competent readers. Again, the whole issue that the debate is over is whether children should be taught the entire phonetic code systematically, building logically and without skipping steps or skipping around, or not. In coming to grips with the debate, everything else is an irrelevant distraction. For example, whole language advocates go on at great length in favor of “authentic literature.” As you may know, you will not find a greater advocate of authentic literature than me. But this does not make me a whole language advocate, nor does my agreement on this point give me any warm fuzzies about the whole language camp’s rejection of systematic phonics.

If you can find me a single educationist who says that she is a whole language advocate, and yet also supports teaching the entire phonetic code systematically, from beginning to end, I’ll be amazed–and corrected! But I don’t think you’ll find a single person that fits this description.

On the other hand, I believe I agree with most other tenets of the whole language philosophy, as far as I understand it. I think it is crucial to read a lot to children. I think it is important to use “real literature,” and to have them read from “real literature,” instead of from contrived readers. I like doing lots of reading in many disciplines, not just in literature (we are big nonfiction readers, and even have fair number of books about math). I am generally opposed to phonics worksheets and software programs that emulate worksheets. I hate boring my little boy with needless repetition and busywork. I have nothing against teaching children some Dolch words by sight, if necessary (at least, the ones that really don’t follow any common phonetic rules like “the” and “were”; some so-called “Dolch” words actually do). And I dislike teaching children words that they cannot understand. I want what they read to be meaningful to them, because they’ll be bored by what they can’t understand, and if they’re bored, they’re being turned off to reading and learning generally.

75

Hey DadDude,

I find your arguments intriguing…

Do you think the age at which children learn reading affects the type of learning best suited to them? I believe trying to teach the whole word approach would fail with a six year old or at least be slow and tedious for both student and teacher. I have taught reading recovery to low IQ students before and can vouch for the fact that they had great difficulty with the whole word approach, but they also had trouble to a lesser degree with the phonics.

I taught my son to read as he was acquiring language because to me it made sense. Reading is language and it is almost like teaching language through another sense. Since I don’t try to introduce grammatical concepts to my son in a logical order but through everyday experience I assumed the rules of phonics to be the same.

Previously I have said that I taught my son phonics, however I should correct that. When I really think about it I taught him his alphabet, not the sounds the letters make. Yet he reads words I have not taught him, he doesn’t appear to sound them out - at least not out loud - but there is a momentary deciphering look on his face.

I wonder if a child who is slowing down in their language acquisition would not then find it harder to decipher the phonics code by themselves?

76

In other words, might it be the case that babies and toddlers can learn better with the whole word method than older kids can? Maybe, I wish we had studies of this. But I see some (not all) mommies here and on TeachYourBabyToRead (Yahoo group) complaining that their children are stuck with the words they’ve memorized. If they had learned the phonetic code through the whole word method, then they would not be limited to the words they’d memorized.

I taught my son to read as he was acquiring language because to me it made sense. Reading is language and it is almost like teaching language through another sense. Since I don't try to introduce grammatical concepts to my son in a logical order but through everyday experience I assumed the rules of phonics to be the same.

Again, I am not saying you’re wrong–I don’t know–but off hand, I don’t know why the analogy holds. It’s one thing to learn the grammar of a language; that’s crucial to being able to understand the meaning of the language in the first place. It’s another thing to learn phonics by induction; as many children taught the whole word way have demonstrated, it is possible to learn to read (at least, at a rudimentary level) without being able to decode new words phonetically. Besides, while getting meaning from grammatically structured language is 100% natural in the sense that our brains are “wired” for this, learning how to sound out words from their spelling is not at all natural. Writing and reading are relatively recent inventions (evolutionarily speaking) and, I assume, did not affect our evolutionary development. It is a very rare child who cannot understand spoken language after a few years. But it is not at all rare for a child who has been exposed to a lot of written language not to be able to read.

Previously I have said that I taught my son phonics, however I should correct that. When I really think about it I taught him his alphabet, not the sounds the letters make.

Simply teaching him the sounds the letters make is only the very first of many steps, by the way.

Yet he reads words I have not taught him, he doesn't appear to sound them out - at least not out loud - but there is a momentary deciphering look on his face.

I wonder if a child who is slowing down in their language acquisition would not then find it harder to decipher the phonics code by themselves?

That would be my guess (if I understand you right). In other words, a child who is generally slow in language learning would also be slower to decipher the phonics code by himself. But I think it is really a crapshoot, as they say–some slow kids pick up phonics right away, and some very bright kids don’t get it except after careful explanation.

77

Interesting…

I think that it comes down to the brain’s ability to decipher codes - not just grammar or phonics but even maths. It is an argument (well debate) I have had with people for many years.

People will say they are bad at maths but at a very deep level if they were bad at maths they would not be able to function. Catching a ball, crossing the road in traffic, overtaking another car. All these things require the subconscious brain to do quite high level mathematics extremely quickly. Much of this subconscious maths is learned in early development and hence we are unaware of the processes. So perhaps it is not that they are bad at maths at all but that their conscious brain is bad at maths. I have always believed this to be the methods in which maths was taught.

Richard Feynman (maths and physics extraordinaire and general all round genius) was horrified at the methods taught to teach children maths and felt these methods contributed to so many children struggling. He believed they should be able to work the rules out, use varying methods of approaching the same problem etc. Instead of the closed and rigid way maths has been taught in the last few generations.

I believe the brain to have the ability to memorize the words bug, bed, big and work out what sound ‘b’ makes because, well it’s obvious and babies’ brains are geared up to this kind of deciphering particularly in the first few years.

Having said that if you don’t expose a child to enough examples of the same letters making the same sounds etc it will not be possible for them to make these connections as they don’t have enough information to come to any sort of conclusion about anything.

When you come right down to it there haven’t been enough studies on whether children can truly decipher these codes, because too many people are still funny about teaching children at all let alone experimenting with the methods of teaching children. There is no way my son would be part of an experiment that denied exposure to phonics - what if they were wrong???

I personally will explore every avenue of learning I can expose my child to as I don’t think it will hurt him, but not teaching one could. I am a big believer of teaching through exposure and guiding students to conclusions rather than telling them as I believe a self-drawn conclusion to have more “stick”. I have always found students who could tell me their own corrections could also make those corrections much more easily.

By the way I completely agree with you that Phonics should be taught, but I also think it should be taught in conjunction with the other methods and once again through guided exposure allowing the child to draw their own conclusions from what they have been presented.

78

I can not believe this thread is going to be years old almost next month.
It is so exense that i am really confused.
I read carefully tatianna’s explanation why she would not use Phonics to her kids and most of the others agree that it is not whole word or phonics and it dependes on the age your kid is and how much he/she is reading.

Commenting on TmS quote:

I think Phonics is not really ‘taught’ to children (especially starting babies). While viewing words using whole word approach, they will deduct phonics rules and so it will not be taught in that sense.

79

Yes, exposure is what I mean.

I like to feed information in and let the brain do the computing and I believe if the information is put in at the right time then the child can draw the conclusions for themselves, if it is left too late then perhaps phonics need to be “taught”

80

I certainly agree and that is why maybe tatianna said she do not ‘teach’ phonics because he expose childre with whole word at an early age and they assimilate phonics rules by themselves. That is a benefit of reading atn an early age.