… aka meaning-emphasis vs code-emphasis approaches.
Just found this article, which doesn’t go into the “war” but provides a good explanation of the differences in philosophy.
http://www.education.com/reference/article/debate-code-emphasis-vs-meaning/
IMHO, and maybe I am just being oversensitive, but it seems to me that “meaning-emphasis” versus “code-emphasis” are loaded terms which prejudice the debate, in about the same way that “pro-life” and “pro-choice” prejudice the debate over abortion. To call whole language approaches “meaning-emphasis” in contrast to “code-emphasis” implies that those who use synthetic phonics to teach reading don’t really care about teaching meaning, or about teaching kids how to read by using meaningful texts. That is, of course, completely silly. I taught my 2-year-old to read primarily using phonics cards (http://www.mediafire.com/FleschCards), and YBCR at the same time. But we were also reading a lot. Of course, I am constantly explaining the meanings of words to him.
Similarly, the term “code-emphasis” to me at least subtly implies that the child is being taught that words are “cryptic” and that they need to be “decoded” rather than read and understood. I am sure that many kids have trouble learning phonics, especially if they follow a bad program or have a bad teacher, but FWIW my kid no trouble learning phonics at age 2, and has always read whatever is in his level with excellent facility. The notion that he’s merely “decoding” and not getting the meaning is insulting and, again, just silly.
If you look online for actual, careful empirical scientific studies comparing the success rates of teaching of reading using synthetic (intensive) phonics versus anything not using synthetic phonics (whatever it is called), you’ll find that synthetic phonics has proven to be the superior approach, time and time again. You’ll find terrific amounts of theorizing and passionate rhetoric on the other side, but precious little in the way of hard data that contradicts this absolute flood of empirical support for synthetic phonics.
If Doman kids do well (and not all of them do, it seems) with a whole word method, I think that might simply be because most tiny kids are excellent at guessing the phonetic code. This ability seems to be lost by the time older kids start to learn to read, and too many of them struggle with whole language methods – until they turn to phonics methods as a solution!
I really would caution Doman advocates against becoming whole language advocates just because of the apparent success of Doman’s methods. You’re doing no favors to the older kids who suffer through and too often fail using whole language methods. Read up about the hard scientific studies, done not by education professors but by scientifically-trained psychologists and cognitive scientists, and their results.
Obviously, I am a phonics “warrior.” But this is very important, so I make no apologies for my stance, either!
Children coming from high literacy households who are read to on a regular basis tend to learn to read well regardless of the teaching approach used. I suspect, however, that a balanced approach incorporating both methods would probably produce the best results. The English language does not always have a one-to-one sound symbol relationship and about half the words in the English language cannot be pronounced correctly using commonly taught phonic rules. Differing dialects encounter problems with a phonic approach.
I used the Doman method successfully with my three children who were all able to read independently prior to their third birthdays. My children intuited the rules with ease and there was no need to introduce phonics.
Chris.
You’re no doubt right that households that feature high literacy will produce a high preponderance of readers regardless of method. Nobody ever said that ignoring synthetic phonics will guarantee failure.
“Balanced literacy” is usually used now as the successor of “whole language.” Indeed, as the public has caught wind of this long-bankrupt method, it has constantly undergone naming changes, like this: look-and-say; whole word; whole language; and now, balanced literacy. If balanced literacy actually means teaching synthetic phonics, I have nothing against it. But it usually does not. It usually means teaching a few phonetic rules here and there, or “in context” (which means, really, that the rule is not taught at all). There’s nothing the slightest bit “balanced” about that. Truly balanced literacy would do both what the phonics advocates want, and what the whole language advocates want. But I’ll let you in on a little secret: this is impossible. Whole language advocates hate synthetic phonics and don’t want kids exposed to it. Phonics advocates do want it; they also, if they are sane, want their kids to read a lot (and to get the meaning of what they read, of course). That’s pretty much the whole dispute. So the whole notion of “balanced literacy” is a canard used by the whole language advocates to make the use of synthetic phonics look “unbalanced,” which it most certainly is not.
Again, I think very young kids using the Doman method are probably frequently different. There are reasons to think that they might very good at inferring phonetic rules. But this is not a reason to think that, for those who begin reading at the normal age of 5-6, intensive/synthetic phonics is not necessary.
I also suspect that Doman parents would probably have success more frequently if they were to arrange the words they flash to their children in phonetic groupings a la Rudolf Flesch. This is just a guess, of course. There are no studies either to back me up or to refute me, but I wish there were.
Wow ! what a wonderful debate. I like what you have to say DadDude.
I am using both approaches or methods and it is working well with us.
Please I would like to hear/read more from both parties.
Thanks
I am also using both phonics and whole words with my daughter. I find however that she is splitting it - when we focus on phonics she seems to “forget” how to read the word - discuss the “f” sound and show her the word “fish” which she can easily sight read and she will just point out the “f” It does seem that the two are separate concepts to her at the moment, but perhaps that is because it is all very new to her. I imagine again that it is yet another “phase” and that she will eventually get it and link the two forms.
Just like I have to wait for her to use proper grammatically correct sentences, I will have to wait for the connection between phonics and sight reading. As long as there is enough exposure to both in some form she will eventually read. As for understanding, we are doing this on many levels - just talking to her, reading stories and discussing them, showing her little reader, pointing out words in the street and shops and using as many synonyms as possible in everyday speech so she increases her vocabulary.
Mostly I want my child to enjoy reading whether she takes joy in reading street signs and shop names, menus, stories, non fiction, instructions etc Whether I am showing her whole words or phonics I want her to find it fun. Phonics has often been associated with boredom in young children, but I do not believe that is necessary - maybe it is because the parents found it boring. To be able to sound out a word is just as exciting as being able to recognise a whole word. I would say that as long as the child is reading and enjoying it and gaining meaning from what they are reading then it really does not matter what method was used to teach them.
Synthetic phonics
• Synthetic phonics does not teach whole words as shapes (initial sight vocabulary) prior to learning the alphabetic code.
• Synthetic phonics does not teach letter names until the children know their letter/s-sound correspondences thoroughly and how to blend for reading and segment for spelling. Often when letter names are introduced it is through singing an alphabet song.
• Synthetic phonics does not involve guessing at words from context, picture and initial letter clues. Children read print (at letter level, word level, digraphs, word level, text level) which corresponds with the level of knowledge and skills taught to date. This means they rehearse what they have been specifically taught and do not need to guess. This text level print is often referred to as phonically decodable text. Repetitive books are not necessary and children can rapidly access books described as ‘real’ because of the effectiveness of the synthetic phonics teaching approach.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_phonics
The GD approach has the virtue of working with a high percentage of babies and it avoids the need to teach visual and auditory abstractions. The system starts with the ‘self’ vocabulary because babies first learn about their own body and progresses to words which name familiar objects such as wall and door.
Words are the units of language and if you teach the alphabet first you might make your baby a slower reader than he would otherwise be. An awareness of the alphabet will result in your baby reading the letters instead of the words. I would avoid teaching groups of words like-hand, hard, hot, hoot, head, hood as these are extremely similar in appearance and defying babies to tell them apart is crazy! It is simpler to discern the difference between the words ostrich and hippopotamus than to see the difference between the words hoot and hood. It should be noted that longer words are often easier to learn because of their unique appearance.
Babies simply don’t need phonics to learn to read but phonics might be beneficial and possibly essential for some older children. Older children probably need all the help that they can get. I suggest that babies introduced to phonics learn to read despite rather than because of phonics.
My children all read with inflection and meaning, in contrast to the average seven-year old, who reads each word separately and without appreciation of the sentence as a whole. Children who learn to read as babies tend to read much more rapidly and comprehensively than children who do not.
Chris.
Thank you Chris1 for the information. Can I ask do you live in the UK?
The web site you provided was very interesting. I like how it broke it donw into section such as this one:What a typical Synthetic Phonics programme consists of.
I was wondering in the UK if you live there, do they pronounce the letter A?
Thanks
Hi Ana3,
Yes and yes-there are also alternative spellings for these sounds.
Sound Alternative spellings
a ai ay ea ei
make complaint day great rein
amiable aim eight
Oh I would of thought
A as in on or Tom.
How about the Z? Is it pronounced Zed?
Thanks
German is, with very few exceptions, a totally phonetic language, once you have learnt the sound values of each letter you can read German.
http://www.germanlearnteach.com/pro.aspx
I can see why you expected A as in on or Tom. A in WAS sounds like an o
Pronunciation tips: Z as requested http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/con_voiced_7.shtml
Chris
I hate to quibble…oh, who am I kidding? I love to quibble! But this is not necessarily true. The “strictest” phonics proponents might insist against introducing sight words, but it would not make a program that is otherwise a systematic, careful presentation of phonics somehow non-phonics if a child were to memorize 100 of the least phonetic dolch words.
• Synthetic phonics does not teach letter names until the children know their letter/s-sound correspondences thoroughly and how to blend for reading and segment for spelling. Often when letter names are introduced it is through singing an alphabet song.
In whose opinion? Some phonics programs teach the letter names. They just also emphasize teaching the letter sounds, too.
So far, I didn’t use a phonics program on either of these counts. But…I did.
• Synthetic phonics does not involve guessing at words from context, picture and initial letter clues. Children read print (at letter level, word level, digraphs, word level, text level) which corresponds with the level of knowledge and skills taught to date. This means they rehearse what they have been specifically taught and do not need to guess. This text level print is often referred to as phonically decodable text. Repetitive books are not necessary and children can rapidly access books described as 'real' because of the effectiveness of the synthetic phonics teaching approach.
Not always the most reliable source. 
None of the above points actually states what synthetic phonics is all about. The first two points are non-essential. The third simply says that it is not a guess-from-context “whole language” approach.
So, without quoting Wikipedia, let me explain what synthetic phonics is, on my understanding, for those who don’t actually know. It involves introducing word sounds–and, with them, of course, whole words–systematically. First, you might learn consonant sounds plus the short “a” sound. Then you can read “cat,” “bag,” etc. Then you go through the rest of the short vowel sounds. Eventually you work your way to diphthongs, long vowels, “ci” as in “special” and “tion” as in “action.” Throughout, you introduce variants of consonant sounds, digraphs, and so forth. After a child has completely learned and practiced phonics, he can read aloud virtually anything, when many whole language-taught students are stuck looking blankly at a word until someone tells them what it says. In short, synthetic phonics is what people in most parts of the world (with written languages that can be sounded out) regard as learning to read.
If you consider the full complement of phonetic clues, according to Rudolpf Flesch summing up the work of other researchers, English is 87% phonetically decodable. Of course, if you are only learning the most obvious phonics rules, as is the case with “partial phonics” “balanced literacy” programs, then it will look a lot more irregular.
For anybody who wants all the tired old myths about phonics debunked, you can’t do better with Rudolf Flesch’s two books, Why Johnny Can’t Read and Why Johnny Still Can’t Read. And if you wish to learn more about the hard scientific basis for phonics, and why there is virtually a consensus in favor of phonics outside of education schools, see books on the subject by Diane McGuinness, Marilyn Jager Adams, and Mona McNee (for the U.K. side of things).
By the way–the lists of the different ways of writing the long “a” sound? Well, most of those words are either phonetic (if you actually know the rules!) or fall into patterns predictable enough that you can try out one possibility or another and then “get it.” Such examples of the alleged non-phoneticness of English are unimpressive to me. It’s an old canard–debunked by all of the above writers, but my favorite is still Flesch.
The GD approach has the virtue of working with a high percentage of babies and it avoids the need to teach visual and auditory abstractions. The system starts with the ‘self’ vocabulary because babies first learn about their own body and progresses to words which name familiar objects such as wall and door.
I wouldn’t want to deny this (though I sure would love to have a careful scientific study actually supporting it). My point is that hardly anyone has tried (on a large scale) using a more phonetic approach with babies. So maybe the percentage of babies that it would work with would be higher than with the traditional GD approach, eh?
After all, it is admitted by almost everyone that the whole word/whole language method works for most students. It just doesn’t work nearly as consistently as with phonics; and it’s so much more inefficient. Why not think the same would be true of teaching babies to read?
Words are the units of language and if you teach the alphabet first you might make your baby a slower reader than he would otherwise be.
On what basis do you make the latter, very interesting claim?
Often the reasoning for such a claim (when applied to older children) is that children will silently sound out every word, because they have been taught to sound out words. This is wrong. Once a child learns a word, he tends to have it memorized in much the same way a “whole word”-taught child would have it. (It’s just that, since he’s learned the rules, he can figure it out if he has to.) Classrooms that use sound, synthetic phonics produce more fluent readers than whole word classrooms. The reason for this is not hard to understand. The students in whole word classrooms were never taught how to decode words properly. So, if they don’t have the word down cold, they have to rack their brain to remember it, or use context, or whatever, which takes time. They can’t just quickly glance at the contents of the word, the phonetic makeup, and sound it out. So…they…tend…to…read…like…this.
If you want to say that your baby or child has learned to read by memorizing whole words, and he or she is reading very fluently too, I think that’s probably because your baby or child was clever enough to infer the phonetic code when first learning to read. This is what Robert Titzer believes happens with babies, which is why he has the moving arrow under the word: it helps the baby to connect up letters with sounds. There’s no hard proof that this is happening other than analysis of many anecdotal cases, but it makes sense to me.
I don’t think we have a lot of data, and I actually don’t know how much of my own boy’s ability to read came from him just naturally picking up words in the context of reading. Maybe a lot–that does happen. But I do know that when I taught him a new set of words, phonetically grouped (I was doing this intensively about a year ago), his reading ability seemed to improve tremendously. I also noticed that he was able to read new words that followed the new rules. And he reads and always has read very fluently.
An awareness of the alphabet will result in your baby reading the letters instead of the words.
We had no such experience when we taught our toddler to read phonetically, FWIW.
I would avoid teaching groups of words like-hand, hard, hot, hoot, head, hood as these are extremely similar in appearance and defying babies to tell them apart is crazy! It is simpler to discern the difference between the words ostrich and hippopotamus than to see the difference between the words hoot and hood. It should be noted that longer words are often easier to learn because of their unique appearance.
And yet my little guy did learn such minute differences with no trouble at all…go figure. Well, maybe it’s because he was 22 months old instead of 9 months old. Right?
I suggest that babies introduced to phonics learn to read despite rather than because of phonics.
Interesting suggestion. On what basis do you make it?
My children all read with inflection and meaning, in contrast to the average seven-year old, who reads each word separately and without appreciation of the sentence as a whole. Children who learn to read as babies tend to read much more rapidly and comprehensively than children who do not.
Well done! But the average seven-year-old is neither raised in a very language-rich environment nor exposed to systematic phonics. So-called “balanced literacy” (the latest description of what was formerly described as “whole language”) still rules the day, except in those places where a sensible school board or maverick superintendent has bucked the education establishment.
DadDude
There appear to be no systematic rigorous longitudinal studies supporting the IAHP claims, making it difficult to determine the failure rate. My own experience supports their claims but I acknowledge the possibility that a more phonetic approach might increase the success rate.
I would only avoid teaching similar groups of words during the initial stages of the process. I agree that exposure to phonetically grouped words might accelerate the process but that this should only be done after introducing around 150 differing sight words based on your babies world.
It is important to realise that a fluent reader will not necessarily be a good speller. I used phonic word groups to teach spelling with considerable success. My son’s spelling was tested at 7 years of age and was at a level appropriate to a 14 year old.
Why teaching the alphabet first and phonics might make your baby a slower reader than he would otherwise be-in response to your question-hearing each word as you read restricts you to a reading speed based on how fast you can hear words rather than on how rapidly you can see words. Since you can only hear one word at a time you can only read one word at a time. If you learned to read without hearing each word in your mind - only seeing it - you would read much faster.
People who read rapidly generally have better concentration and comprehension because their reading speed is keeping pace with their thinking speed! Once you learn to read by sight only, you will be able to read groups of words, whole ideas with each glance. Babies who learn using the GD method learn to read by sight and if encouraged will be able to read groups of words with ease. Obviously children taught by phonics progress to reading by sight and can be encouraged to not hear each word but old habits are hard to overcome.
What are your thoughts on LR embedded phonics?
Chris
Of course, many of us are going to be somewhat biased by our personal experience, but having tutored older children who learned to read using phonics-based approaches, I can see why that approach would be labeled code-emphasis. If you take a kindergartener at age 5-6, teach them only phonics, and tell them that they must “sound out” “decode” or “break down” every word, they will at a very high rate be bogged down, read slowly, and comprehend possibly individual words but have very low comprehension of, say, the sequence of events in a story. If children are told that it is ok to just read and know certain words, such as “the” “and” or even some nouns and pronouns, things would be easier. I have seen kids at the age of 7 or 8 sounding out the word “the.” I suspect this is because a teacher admonishing the child “Don’t guess!” It is an overwhelming experience to read a paragraph in that manner, then be confronted with comprehension questions that also must be read, never mind writing out the answers. There are comprehension issues that stem from phonics based approaches that can be alleviated by a “balanced” approach. There are issues with uptake of new unfamiliar material that stems from the whole language approach. I think taking common experiences with older children age 4-6 and up, and applying them to children who are being taught to read at age 3 or younger is silliness to me. They learn differently at that age, and moreover have much more time, 3-6 years more time, to incorporate whatever techniques that would be required to gain fluency. It really does not matter much whether a 2 year old reads with comprehension, the comprehension WILL come with age and testing a child that age on comprehension is wholly inappropriate regardless. Now, if a 6 year old is reading with low comprehension, and they are not picking up steam in fluency by age 8 or 9, that is very worrisome and is a totally different problem than what is experienced teaching a baby or toddler. I don’t think there is any need for anyone to be up in arms, offended, or take it personal. I think Glenn Doman says it best, you do not have to be a perfect teacher to teach a baby to read, now teaching a large group of 25 or more 6 year olds to read is a totally different challenge and really is not to be compared. In that case, unfortunately, the teacher must almost be perfect to do justice for her students.