Does Phonics Deserve the Credit for Improvement in PIRLS?
Stephen Krashen
In Margaret Clark (Ed) Teaching Initial Literacy
Birmingham: Glendale Education 2017
England’s 9- and 10-year olds showed a modest improvement on the 2016 PIRLS reading test,compared to 2011 scores. School Standards Minister Gibb has given the credit to an ‘increased
emphasis on phonics’ (Weale, 2017). New Zealand, however, experienced a modest drop inPIRLS scores. The reason, according to New Zealand experts: Not enough phonics (Tuckey,2018). But phonics does not deserve the credit for PIRLS improvement or the blame for thedeclines.
Definitions
It will help to distinguish three different views of phonics: (1) intensive, or heavy phonics, (2)basic, or light phonics, and (3) zero phonics. Basic phonics appears to have some use, but there
are good reasons why intensive phonics is not the way to improve reading.
Intensive Phonics. This position claims that we learn to read by first learning the rules ofphonics, and that we read by sounding out what is on the page, either out-loud or to ourselves(decoding to sound). It also asserts that all rules of phonics must be deliberately taught andconsciously learned.
Basic Phonics. According to Basic Phonics, we learn to read by actually reading, byunderstanding what is on the page. Most of our knowledge of phonics is subconsciously acquired
from reading (Smith, 2004: 152).
Conscious knowledge of some basic rules, however, can help children learn to read by making
texts more comprehensible. Smith (2004) explains how this can happen (p. 152): The child isreading the sentence ‘The man was riding on the h____’ and cannot read the final word. Given
the context and recognition of h, the child can make a good guess as to what the final word is:the reader will know that the word is not donkey and mule. This won’t work every time (somereaders might think the missing word was ‘Harley’), but some knowledge of phonics can restrict
the possibilities of what the unknown words are.
Basic Phonics is the position of the authors of Becoming a Nation of Readers, a book widely
considered to provide strong support for phonics instruction: ‘...phonics instruction should aim toteach only the most important and regular of letter-to-sound relationships ... once the basic
relationships have been taught, the best way to get children to refine and extend their knowledgeof letter-sound correspondences is through repeated opportunities to read. If this position iscorrect, then much phonics instruction is overly subtle and probably unproductive’ (Anderson etal., 1985: 38).
Zero Phonics. This view claims that direct teaching is not necessary or even helpful. I am
unaware of any professional who holds this position.
The Evidence Against Intensive Phonics
Complexity Many phonics rules are very complicated and many don’t work very well. As
Smith (2003) notes, phonics rules are unreliable: ‘There are too many alternatives andexceptions. Every letter of English can represent more than one sound (or silence) and every
sound of English (or silence) can be represented by more than one letter. There are over 300
different ways in which letters and sounds can be related’ (p. 41).

This was demonstrated by Clymer (1963), who analyzed 121 generalizations taught in school.
Clymer reported that the generalizations did not succeed very well in determining thepronunciation of words that appeared in four basal series. Some noteworthy failures: The popular‘when there are two vowels side by side, the long sound of the first one is heard and the second
is usual silent’ (as in ‘bead’) was only 45% accurate, and the ‘final e-rule’, ‘if the first vowel islong, the final e is silent (as in ‘cake’)’ was only 60% effective.
Another obvious argument against the necessity of teaching intensive phonics include the factthat most highly competent readers are aware of only the most basic rules of phonics.
Impact of Intensive Phonics
The impact of intensive phonics is strong on tests in which children pronounce lists of words inisolation. It is, however, miniscule or absent on tests of reading comprehension given after grade
1, tests in which children have to understand what they read. Garan (2002) showed this to be thecase in studies reviewed by the National Reading Panel, and a similar pattern was found in a
number of additional studies (Krashen, 2009; Johnson and Watson, 2005; McQuillan, 2018).
Tests of Reading Comprehension
Study after study has shown that access to books and the amount of self-selected reading done
is an excellent predictor of scores on tests of reading comprehension, both in first and second
language acquisition (for reviews, see McQuillan, 1998; Krashen, 2004).
In a meta-analysis published in 2000, The National Reading Panel concluded that students inskills-based classes did better on tests of reading than those in whole language classes. The NRP
averaged the results of all reading tests, however, including those in which children pronounced
words in isolation.
When the analysis was restricted to tests of reading comprehension, children in classes inwhich more reading was done did better than those in skills-emphasis classes (effect size, d = .7),
and even when the amount of reading done was not reported in studies, students in whole
language classes did better (d = .17) (Krashen, 2002).
And Now, PIRLSPIRLS is a test of reading comprehension, given to ten-year-olds in 50 countries. Students takethe PIRLS in their home language. It is not a test of decoding, not a test of pronouncing words
out-loud presented out of context.
Consistent with other research on tests of reading comprehension, access to reading material(school libraries in this case) is a significant and substantial predictor of reading comprehension
on the PIRLS test (Krashen et al., 2012; Krashen et al., 2017: chapter 7). Multiple regression
analysis revealed that the impact of libraries is independent of the effect of poverty. Also, theimpact of access to a library was substantial: the effect of the library balanced, to at least someextent, the effect of poverty. This result was present in analyses of PIRLS 2006 and 2011, and I
discovered the same relation in PIRLS 2016 (as yet unpublished). There was also very littlerelationship (sometimes none) between the amount of reading instruction children received ingrade 4, which may have included some phonics, and PIRLS scores in 2006, 2011, and 2016.
The same was true for early literacy instruction: There was either no correlation or a negative
correlation between letter-recognition, and the ability to read and write ‘some words’ before
entering school and PIRLS performance in grade 4 (PIRLS 2011, in Krashen et al, 2017: chapter7; PIRLS 2016, unpublished).

Conclusion
The case against intensive phonics is easy to summarize: (1) Some of the rules are very
complicated and don’t work very well. (2) Those who study intensive phonics only do better on
pronouncing words presented out of context. (3) Intensive phonics does not contribute toperformance on reading comprehension tests. (4) High performance on tests of reading
comprehension, such as PIRLS, are the result of doing lots of pleasure reading, which requires
access to books.
Backing heavy phonics is backing the wrong horse: Children don’t need more intensive
phonics instruction. They need access to interesting books, and a time and place to read them.
This paper is written in the academic style, with academic citations to back up the points made.
For those interested in a more casual (and certainly more comprehensible) approach, I
recommend a short video (under 12 minutes) by Debbie Stone Bruell that makes many of points
I make here: ‘Are schools turning kids off to reading?’ https://youtu.be/wD4IRdeR0tE
References
Anderson, R., Hiebert, E., Scott, J., and Wilkinson, I. (1985) Becoming a Nation of Readers: The
Report of the Commission on Reading. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Education.
Clymer, T. (1963) ‘The utility of phonics generalizations in the primary grades’. The Reading
Teacher. 16(4: 252-258.
Garan, E. (2002) Resisting Reading Mandates. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Johnson, R. and Watson, J. (2005) The Effects of Synthetic Phonics Teaching on Reading andSpelling Attainment. Scottish Government Publications.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/education/sptrs-00.asp
Krashen, S. (2002) ‘The NRP comparison of whole language and phonics: Ignoring the crucial
variable in reading’. Talking Points, 13(3): 22-28
Krashen, S. (2004) The Power of Reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Second edition.
Krashen, S. (2009) ‘Does intensive reading instruction contribute to reading comprehension?’
Knowledge Quest 37 (4): 72-74.
Krashen, S., Lee, S.Y. and McQuillan, J. (2012) ‘Is the library important? Multivariate studies at
the national and international level’. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 8(1): 26-36.
Krashen, S. Lee, S.Y. and Lao, C. (2017) Comprehensible and Compelling: The Causes andEffects of Free Voluntary Reading. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited. ABC-CLIO, LLC.
McQuillan, J. (1998) The Literacy Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions. Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann.
McQuillan, J. (2018) ‘Is Synthetic Phonics Working in England? A comment on the ‘Teaching toTeach’ Literacy Report. (See 4 in this publication).
Smith, F. (2003) Unspeakable Acts, Unnatural Practices. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Smith, F. (2004) Understanding Reading. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Sixth Edition.
Tuckey, K. (2018) ‘Kids battling to learn because of gaps in teaching fundamentals’. The Stuff,January 3, 2018. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/100299410/kids-battling-to-learnbecause-of-gaps-in- teaching-fundamentals
Weale, S. (2017) ‘English pupils improve results in international reading exams’. Dec. 5, 2017.
The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/05/english-pupils-improveresults-in- international-reading-exams