Reading
programs boast that they can teach your child to read in a few months. Professional tutoring businesses guarantee
that they can raise your child’s reading ability one to three years. What is the best way to teach reading?
Phonics and
Whole Language are the two prominent methods for teaching this basic skill. The two systems are complete opposite ends of
a wide spectrum, yet both have been very successful with children and
adults. Heated debates continue in
Teacher’s Lounges and in classrooms all over the world, supporters of each side
holding to his preferred method being the best.
It is not new – the debate goes back over 500 years (click here if you’d
like more about the history of phonics vs. whole language argument). The real difference is the person who is
learning and the way his brain is wired.
Phonics is
a system where each letter is assigned a sound, and some of them, like vowels
and the letter c, are given more than one sound with accompanying rules to
explain the difference. These letter
sounds are then added together to create a word. As the student progresses, he begins to learn
more patterns with letter combinations, such as “when two vowels go walking,
the first one says its name.” The
problem with learning such rules is that the English language has so many
exceptions that it can be confusing to a new reader. In public schools which support this type of
instruction, it is taught from the earliest years, pre-k or Kindergarten, until
about third grade.
Whole
Language instruction, on the other hand, takes a very different approach to the
same skill. This method teaches that the
reader should look at the entire word and memorize the word. This begins with a set of high-frequency words,
such as the Dolch word list, as well as signs placed near common objects in
order for the student to mentally connect the object with its written
word. As the student progresses to more
difficult words, they learn word origins and basic spellings and meanings of
root words (also called base words). Latin,
Greek, and Old English origins are taught so they can recognize these
influences in larger words, which they can break down into chunks of recognized
portions and put together to make new meaning.
They memorize affixes (prefixes and suffixes) and use those meanings to
add to the understanding of the word.
Which is
right? As you have probably recognized,
most reading systems use a combination of the two methods. This is called an integrated approach to
reading, and this is my preferred style of teaching. You will notice in my other posts about
reading instruction that I use the Dolch word list and other whole language
methods to teach automaticity with the language, while I supplement phonics
instruction to be able to sound out the various sounds and letter
combinations. However, the fact is both
styles have been very successful, but the person learning is really the one to
determine the best method.
My
daughter, as hard as I’ve worked for my normal, integrated method, learns
through the Whole Language method. When
I start breaking a word down into phonics, she panics. I recently talked to a mother whose son read
very early, but he had reached a plateau.
He was diagnosed with a form of dyslexia and could not seem to progress
in his ability, which was very frustrating for both of them. She had tried several phonics courses over
the years, and none of them seemed to help.
I suggested she try using more Whole Language. Use sight words on flash cards (or with
technology today, I use PowerPoint). Learn parts of words with their origins,
also teaching affixes. She immediately
recognized that when they did those activities, he had done well, so she was
very excited to try this approach.
Know your
child and help your child learn to read through the method which suits
him. Phonics, Whole Language, and an
Integrated Approach all have the potential of teaching your child to read well
or confusing them to the point of tears.
Find what is best for him.
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