From: paula@prc.unisys.com (Paula Matuszek)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: "Whole Language" teaching concept
Date: 16 Apr 92 12:58:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: gvl.1992Apr16.125837.9715
Organization: Paoli Research Center - Paoli, PA

There are two general approaches to teaching reading:  phonics and 
look-say/whole word.

The idea of phonics is that you teach individual letter sounds and how
to sound out a word, allowing the reader to figure out any word from
the sounds.

The idea of look-say is that you explicitly teach the reader to
recognise each word, generally by using "basal readers" that start out
with simple, common words and working up from there.

Ultimately a good reader will be reasonably skilled at both
approaches.  The chances are that you're not sounding out any of the
words in this post--except maybe "Matuszek".  But the chances are that
you could in fact do so if you needed to.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each.  Phonics allows you to
approach any word, and doesn't have to be introduced using limited and
excessively simple vocabularies.  It's sort of a general algorithm for
tackling the task of reading.  On the other hand, it's slow, and
English does NOT always lend itself especially well to an approach
that assumes more or less constant letter sounds.  (I'll bet if you
DID sound out Matuszek you got it wrong!)  It also requires a
certainly amount of learning the underlying skills before you actually
get as far as reading much.

Whole-word allows a child to start reading pretty much immediately,
and is teaching directly the approach that everyone will mostly use
for reading eventually.  It doesn't mean spending a lot of time
learning prerequisite skills like letter sounds.  On the other hand,
it's limited in the materials that can be used, and it requires a lot
of memorization early on.  It's the opposite of a general
algorithm--more like learning a specific solution to each possible
case of a problem.

Phonics vs whole-word is an issue that has been around the reading
community for at least fifty years.  It's well researched, and there
isn't much of anything new on it, no matter what an enthusiastic
teacher/parent/radio ad tells you.

So which is better?  Overall, it's a wash.  That's why it's still an
issue :-) Most kids will learn to read equally quickly by either
method, and by about third grade you probably can't tell how they were
initially taught.

Some kids will fail to learn to read, with either method.  The most
relevant thing to know about the whole issue is probably that
DIFFERENT kids will fail with the two methods.  Phonics requires good
auditory discrimination, good auditory sequencing skills, good short
term memory.  Whole-word requires good visual discrimination and good
longer-term memory.  A child who can't remember what letter 1 was by
the time he gets to letter 4 will have trouble with phonics.  A child
who has more than the average difficulty telling b from d and p from q
will have trouble with whole-word.  My ten-year old at age 6 couldn't
HEAR the difference between, for instance, "baf" and "bath", or
"power" and "bower".  This was not a problem with auditory acuity--we
had it checked.  It was a problem with auditory discrimination.  She
didn't really start to become a good reader until we told her she
didn't HAVE to sound out words, she could just read them if she
wished.  But other kids may have a lot of difficulty distinguishing
and remembering the shapes of different words.

A good school and teacher use both, because both teach useful skills
and because different kids have different abilities.  Occasionally a
teacher or school or whole district will go off the deep end in
enthusiasm for a new program and loudly proclaim at PTA meetings and
such the enormous value of this "new" reading program they're
implementing.  That's the time to watch carefully.  In their
enthusiasm for the program (which is overall a good thing, not a bad
thing :-)) they may lose track of the fact that for some kids this
approach is not the better one.  But I've seen parents wage enormous
battles--to the point of getting a principal transferred!--over the
issue of "this terrible reading program which is ruining our kids"
when the issue they SHOULD have been fighting is "Look at MY child and
HIS/HER needs here.  How can those needs be met within the current
system?"  Kids are individuals; you've got to treat them that way and
get your answers one by one.  There's never any single best
answer--life just ain't that easy.

Whole-language sounds, from one poster's description, like a much more
general apprach to language instruction; if it's implemented with
reasonable flexibility it probably works fine.

And if your primary interest is in making sure YOUR child is a good
reader, several people have already given the best advice--read to
them.  LOTS.  Desire to read and love of reading are much more
important determinants that reading method for almost all kids.

--Paula Matuszek
  paula@prc.unisys.com