Talk:Teaching reading: whole language and phonics

message: Phonics is seen to be an improvement on the previously used method of learning the letter sounds (b=buh) first and then blending them (bl=bluh). This newer method eliminates the extraneous "uh" sounds which were unavoidable in the older method. Children also learn strategies to figure out words they don't know."
Martirc 18:57, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Phonics

message: All examples in the article are based on the english alphabetic language, requires more input about all the other global writing systems to be a WIKI article.
There are not even comparisons with use in other alphabetic languages
dolfrog (talk) 18:28, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Not a global view

message: First, a disclaimer—I have quite-strong feelings about methods of teaching reading, and found this article helpful.
What's slowly dawning on me is that (apparently), Whole Word regards English as logographic. (The best-known such system is Chinese.) While [Chinese] characters are always written inside a square box, and all boxes are the same size regardless of relative complexity, it seems that Whole Word also treats word construction as having a bounding box, uniform in height (don't forget typographical writing line and x-height, within the box), but having a width matching the word length. 
Although the number of glyphs used in English is perhaps roughly 50 or 60, it seems that pure/traditional Whole Word does not help much in teaching which letters are used, why they are used, and how to use them. However, I do know something (much still to learn) about Chinese character construction to realize that there is a system, and an apparent repertoire of graphic elements. (The very few characters in Unicode belonging to unified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ("CJK") that contain ellipses (ovals) are uniquely-Korean characters, for instance.) As well, the radicals, found in countless Chinese characters, amount to roughly 215 symbols, a small enough (and very widely used) subset to learn with comparative ease.
Most, if not all, traditional Chinese dictionaries are organized first by radicals. Nikevich (talk) 21:07, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pure "Whole Word" apparently regards written English as logographic 

message: It reads like an essay you would write for class...  it does not seem to be objective at all.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.120.200.207 (talk) 04:52, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Go ahead and give it a copy edit, and add some sources - it could certainly do with some tender loving care. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 06:27, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

text: Yup. Alignment with the style and goals of Wikipedia needed more than copy editing.86.36.66.12 (talk) 12:22, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

text: Far worse, it reads as blatant propaganda for the "whole word" method of preventing children from developing the ability to use the phonetic character of the alphabet in order to learn terms (and thus concepts) not spoon-fed to them by pedagogues and other "Thought Police" authority figures. It needs much more than simply "a copy edit."  It needs balance to counter the bafflegab of those who have "flipped the calendar back thirty centuries and tried to devolve English into an ideographic language like ancient Egyptian."   71.251.132.37 (talk) 13:33, 1 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is terrible 

message: Much of the text in the article was copied from . Citing your sources is a must.86.36.66.12 (talk) 12:48, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Much was copied from here ... 

message: With respect to all, it does not do the subject justice and it would be better if readers just referred to the Main Pages. (I would remove it if I could.) There is only one reference and much of it reads like an unsourced opinion piece.
If I have the time, someday I will offer some suggested edits. John (talk) 15:05, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: This article needs a great deal of work

message: I suggest we merge Teaching reading: whole language and phonics with Learning to read. They are opposite sides of the same coin, so to speak, and it would much easier to maintain one page with integrity. Learning to read already has a section called "Methods of teaching reading". I am happy to start this and am open to suggestions. I would utilize material from both articles, of course. John NH (talk) 22:57, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggested merger of Teaching reading: whole language and phonics with Learning to read