Phonics vs Whole Language Essay

In this article, Moats provides an overview of the whole language reading instruction approach as well as a critique of the approach, its shortcomings in literacy based on scientific studies, how and why it is still pervasive in classrooms today, and how educators can fix the situation. First, Moats presents the reader with the background of the phonics instruction versus whole language instruction “reading wars” debate which led many educators to try to synthesize the two different types of language instruction under what she refers to as “balanced literacy”. Whole language is literacy approach that deemphasizes phonics in favor of meaning; advocates of this approach believe that literacy is similar to natural language acquisition therefore children can acquire skills through exposure to print and teaching modeling without explicit phonics instruction.

Phonics: this is the most known and used method to teach reading skills, phonics teaches children the relationship between letters of the written language and the sounds of the spoken language, it teaches children to use these relationships to read and write. This will teach them the alphabet and how these words are written and spoken which will be predictable, this will help them recognise familiar words and help them with harder ones.

“ Models of the reading process often depict the act of reading as a communication event between a sender and a receiver of information ”(Vacca et al., 2012). Models are developed to describe the reading process and how a reader interprets language and gains meaning from print. Bottom up models of reading “assume that the process of translating print to meaning begins with the print”, where as a top down model of reading, “assume that the process of translating print meanings begins with the reader’s prior knowledge” (Vacca et al., 2012). The bottom up model of reading is driven more by data where as the top down model is more conceptually driven. When using a bottom up model, letters, syllables and words are used in order to initiate reading. The use of letters, syllables and words helps the reader to form meaning. Where as the top down model is based off of a reader’s prior knowledge and experience. With many different literacy programs, a teacher’s belief system helps to determine how students can best be taught how to read. “One way to examine your beliefs about reading and learning to read is to connect them to theoretical models of the reading process” (Vacca et al., 2012). Depending on the teacher, he or she may have a bottom up approach or a top down approach. Teachers, who feel a bottom up method is best, may feel that his or her students must decode letters and words and feel

Gross (2010) state that children should systematically be taught to read through phonics and not by memorising “whole words”; by the late 1970’s teachers were no longer fond of that approach as it was not working because children were still struggling to read, it was dull and repetitive and new words were introduced at a

’51. Having considered a wide range of evidence, the review has concluded that the case for systematic phonic work is overwhelming and much strengthened by a systematic approach’ (Rose, 2006, p20). To further his proposal Rose (2006) proclaimed that the teaching of systematic phonics should be enhanced and active by the age of five; It can be evidence through practice that children as young as five can define the terminology for a phoneme and a grapheme, due to the position phonics has within the English curriculum. There is also a world-wide debate on the various ways educational practitioners can most effectively implement phonics in their practice states Dombey (2010). Due to the impact of the Rose Review, it could be suggested that the value of systematic phonics had increased, meaning that primary teachers have to be confident in their ability to teach and support pupils in their reading and spelling through the use of phonological

Richardson (2014) suggest that the government strongly encourages schools to use reading schemes based on systematic synthetic phonics and this is strongly supported by the evidence found from Johnston and Watson’s Clackmannanshire Study which implied that systematic phonics is a better approach for reading

Systematic phonics instruction is beneficial to children regardless of their socioeconomic status; it helps children from different backgrounds overcome reading difficulties. Different strategies to phonics instruction might be used in the classroom, such as synthetic phonics (children first are learning how to convert letters into sounds, and after they are learning how to blend the sounds together to create words); analytic phonic (children learn words and after analyze letter-sound relationships in these words); analogy-based phonics (children identify unknown words using the parts of word families they learnt before); phonics through spelling (children divide the words into phonemes , and after writing letters for phonemes they are creating words).

Having the teacher read the text aloud first provides an opportunity for the teacher to model fluent reading for the student. Reading aloud also provides an opportunity to demonstrate strategies for decoding words and meanings. Discussing the book and asking open-ended questions promotes critical thinking. The student can apply what is being read from the book into what she already knows in real life. She will make the connection and gain a better understanding of the

There are different aspects to phonics that should be taken into account by teachers. The first is how important phonics is to children. It is said that “both phonics and fluency need to be taught, practiced, and nurtured in the earliest stages of reading instruction and provided to students at

There have been many debates over which literacy instruction produces the most favorable outcomes in terms of test scores. During the 1960’s, teachers favored the phonics approach in helping students become literate because they believed that it made the most

How did you learn to read? Most of us do not put much thought into this question, but learning to read is a difficult task. According to Cervetti and Hiebert, the National Reading Panel identified five essential components that a teacher should use during reading instruction, which gives the student the highest chance of being an effective reader (2015, p. 548). These five essential components are also called five pillars of reading instruction. They are Phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. This paper will describe each of the five pillars, how they are related, the benefits, as well as give some effective methods of teaching phonics and phonemic awareness. It will continue by addressing the relationship between reading assessment and instruction and end by identifying ways to address the needs and different learning styles of a student. This paper will start by looking at a definition of phonics and phonemic awareness, then move onto the role that each play in learning to read, how they are related, the benefits and effective methods of teaching both.

For years there has been an ongoing controversy on whether whole language or phonics was the best approach for teaching beginning literacy. Although, this has been an ongoing controversy one could make the assumption that there are no valid points proving, that one approach is severely superior to the other. Smith’s (2003 p.4) study states that

During our Colloquium class, it was very interesting because there, we learned in many ways how us as new teachers will work in the classroom setting. This week we learned how to teach the students to read. Although, my facilitator showed us a video where they explained to us different ways of reading phonetic alphabets, letter sounds, in this video I learned that the English language has 47 sounds. She also recommended a variety of books that we can use in the classroom that will be helpful for the students to accomplished these standards. For some people, they find it very complicated, she said that there are two ways to teach the children. Our instructor recommended us to teach in the phonetic word and to deny to teach in sight words,

The article I chose to read was "Teaching Reading: Whole Language vs. Phonics." This article explains a small amount of information about each technique and which technique is better. I agree with the article that every child is different and using phonics will be beneficial for some, but not others and vice versa. There seems to be little research on the effectiveness of the whole language method, but a good amount of research on the effectiveness of phonics. The article talks about how some educators have agreed that using both methods can be beneficial. I agree with this because it allows those who struggle with one method over the other to effectively learn in a classroom setting. I learned to read by learning phonics and I remember how

This definition shows that many practices for reading can be called reading method. From the aforementioned reading methods definition and from doing a small amount of research, I decided I would narrow the focus of my research paper to the reading methods of whole language and phonics. I chose to focus on the concepts of whole language and phonics because for many years they have been among the most popular reading methods and because of the ongoing debate surrounding which method is better than the other -- a debate which has caused a constant push - pull trend in these methods. For a while it will pull towards whole language, but then the trend switches to focus on phonics (the current trend). After more research on the concepts of whole language and phonics, I came to believe that this debate between methods the debate between whole language and phonics is an artificial dilemma, and isn’t really about one method or the other when both methods could be combined.