Phonics vs. Whole Word

[abcwritestartread]

PS TC is Teachers College Reading and Writing workshop by Lucy Calkins. It is now being used as the prevailing method and its simply a repackaging of the failed whole language method. Waste of time garbage in our schools. NYC forced it on all schools Diana Lam was friends with Lucy Calkins the author so they cut a deal.

[abcwritestartread]

How many times have I had to tutor or teach ( reteach) kids who can't read due to whole language. 1000's of students have come my way. If the schools were to use direct, systematic phonics everyone would be better off. Ask any teacher in NYC our kids cannot read with TC.

[faville]

Ahhh, googling "50,000,000 functional illiterates" gives me a much better idea of where you are coming from. I should have been able to guess purely by the tone of your rhetoric.

[faville]

Hard to get past the crappy music choice and the decision to relate whole language to criminals within the first forty seconds. Also, what is this "education establishment" you are referring to? You do know that every individual town's school systems get to choose how they teach things, and there is no Grand Overlord saying "You Must Teach Whole Language," right?

[MoonshineNL]

By the way, your religious overtones are quite apparent, evidence of a....

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

@MoonshineNL Viewed it again; can't see religious overtones. Main flaw is that some numbers are inflated: "Whole Word aims for a mere 800 words a year." Maybe that was true many decades back. Reality was that most kids couldn't reach even 200 sight-words a year. Many kids never reach 1,000 total! That's why we have 50,000,000 functional illiterates.

[MoonshineNL]

@BruceDeitrickPrice i really don't care about phonics or whole word... i didn't learn english through either. you seem to think there are only two possible ways of learning english. anyway, if you believe that phonics is good then thats all good with me. if you want to prove to other people that phonics is better you might want to be less bias.

[NewYorkFlavour]

I have no doubt that the removal of phonics from the education system has contributed directly to the rapid spread of the cot-caught merger over the past few decades.

[alfievsgoo]

stop clogging youtube with this bias garbage. its reading not a 9/11 conspriacy. waste of time.

[GrokAntipathy]

it's just common sense that whole word alone would not be helpful to children

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

@GrokAntipathy

Common sense???....It’s important to remind ourselves just how insane this theory was in its pure form from 1935 to 2000. That’s 65 years when the official dogma was that children should learn to read by memorizing the graphic shapes of words, the same way we memorize currency symbols, electrical symbols, flags, etc.....

That is, Whole Word alone.

[omigrad]

VERY well-done video. Extremely clear and long overdue.

Our school focusses heavily on phonics, but with a twist - we encourage whole word reading GOALS. At some point, fluent readers no longer look at the individual graphemes of a word, but instead see shapes (whole word), clusters and blends (bl, str, ough...) and primarily initial/final graphemes to decode words. This, of course, comes with a heavy dose of predictions skills. So far, so good. I'll try and keep you posted. Cheers!

[OneWingedShark]

@omigrad "This, of course, comes with a heavy dose of predictions skills."

The only way to have good prediction-skills is to have a wealth of prior experience to draw on. In order to get this experience the person must read the words; this is why the phonetic-method is excellent, it associates the base-components together an an elementary level and allows the clusters and blends to become apparent in due course [the human brain is VERY good at pattern-matching].

Whole-word ignores patterns.

[omigrad]

@OneWingedShark Besides adding an "s" to prediction, I actually made another mistake above. I meant to write "Whole Language Goals." Sorry about that.

Whole Language goals focus on content - the meaning and the message of text. These goals cannot be accomplished without the ability to read, of course, and phonics is the only way to attain this ability for most learners.

The question becomes how much (phonics) for whom? Finding the right balance for each learner is the key. Cheers.

[micprn]

this is what lolcats is for

english alternitave

[TheJacolyte]

Also, it seems like you're largely basing your argument on the notion that /you/ personally feel that it's too hard.

Memorization is required, regardless of which system you're using. If you've never seen an English word before, the best you can do is pronounce it, but you still have no idea what it means. Memorization is inevitable.

[OneWingedShark]

@TheJacolyte "If you've never seen an English word before, the best you can do is pronounce it."

There are some words which can be 'decoded' without the external reference. Let's assume you know that cephalopod means "head-feet" in the original greek and used to describe octopi and such; you also know that bi-pod refers to having two legs/feet, and that pseudoscience is a False-Science.

You have all the information upon encountering the word "pseudopod" to decode its actual meaning.

[TheJacolyte]

@OneWingedShark You could say the same thing with Chinese. They make composite words from simpler symbols.

But, I don't really get why we're even discussing this, because I haven't really heard anyone of significance suggest that we use completely obscure symbols in place of English.

The phonetic aspect of English will probably always exist, but just taught with more importance placed on understanding the meaning of the word, rather than pronouncing it.

[TheJacolyte]

I'm not seeing any numbers, purely opinion and dogma. Your video is useless without numbers.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Video has many numbers. The only one I should correct occurs at 2:46 when it says Whole Word aims for 800 words a year. An early goal that everyone now knows is absurd. Many kids can't manage 200 words a year. QED: Whole Word is even dumber than this video suggests.

I've since added "42: Reading Resources" to Improve-EducationDOTorg. This is a good entry point for learning more about reading.

[blazinup247]

whole word is child abuse? wtf....no one teaches whole word, whole word comes naturally to the person after you learn the phonetics, fuck this video. and what about chinese or japanese where the children bite the bullet, stop bitching, and actually learn different symbols for everything? They do it...get real.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Whole Word, then known as Look-Say, was officially taught in most public schools starting in 1932. This wrong-headed idea survives in Balanced Literacy in various Dolch Lists and Sight Word lists. Whole Word is taught every day. Unfortunately. (For more info, Google "40: Sight Words--The Big Stupid.")

[OneWingedShark]

@blazinup247 Japanese, not so much. They have a syllabary which they must use for particles and conjugation [it cannot be done w/kanji]. These provide important and needed clues as to sentence-meaning... and even then the Japanese treat kanji differently than the Chinese: they use the kanji character to stand for certain sound-combinations of the syllabary (kind of like acronyms); but the kanji contains info on the word when there are homonyms involved.

[omigrad]

@blazinup247 Chinese and Japanese are very different languages with very different systems. Japanese uses far fewer Kanji which represent many different readings. And, yes, they do remember (most) of them, but the time and energy required to do so is astounding. Japanese also has kana (hiragana and katakana), a phonetically regular system, which allows children to read without the need for kanji. This allows them to gradually replace the simpler system with kanji as they go along.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

KCAASE perfectly articulates the Dolch Dogma. A good case can be made that this dogma has created 50,000,000 functional illiterates.

[jennybear55]

I am merely saying you need to use both whole word and phonetic. Whole word teaches a sophisticated style of reading for an easier transition into 'adult reading'. And i think 'child abuse' is a bit extreme...

[jennybear55]

The use of whole word is beneficial in helping children to understand the complex english language which consists of many 'foreign' words which cannot be read phonetically. It also helps children to learn to read using context and not solely relying on breaking down words into phonemes. I am not discrediting phonics i am merely stating that it is almost pointless to discredit whole word reading when a mixture of both styles of teaching is the most beneficial method for teaching a child to read.

[jennybear55]

I would be able to read anti-disestablishmentarianism even if half of the text was blurred or missing. Therefore it can be read through recognition of the word's shape not by breaking it down. Yes i agree that when i approach unknown words then i revert to basic phonics to guess at the words pronunciation but when i, as an adult ,read, even long words,through whole word recognition as this is a natural and sophisticated style of reading.

[KCAASE]

Let put this idea to the test. Here is a reality: A recently arrived immigrant child just is placed in a classroom where the expectation of that child is to read at least at the middle of their grade level. Without some knowledge of sight words and other vocabulary words, that will FLUNK for sure. Lol. So "sight words" help kids succeed in school. Yeah.

[omigrad]

@KCAASE "Sight Words" is a bit misleading. From a phonics perspective, sight words are any words which do not follow the rules (the, one, two). You may be referring to high frequency words (up, at, in) which are easily decodable with basic phonics knowledge.

In your example above, the teaching of phonics would also expose the immigrant to the proper phonemes of English, thus doubling as a necessary phonemic awareness activity. Can't go wrong with teaching phonics in this example! :)

[Irisheyes77christy]

I went to school from 1983 (I think, lol) till 1995. I think that I was taught a combination of sight reading and phonics. You have to memorize some words. I use phonics when I don't know a word and I use sight reading for everything I have already memorized.

[bhadji]

correct me if I'm wrong but special children does not need to learn difficult words... sight reading is beneficial for them... make them read functional words is important for survival... sight reading is not that bad!

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Too complex a question. "Special" means 1000 things. ???Personally, I don't think sight reading is good for anybody, unless you're saying somebody is limited to having a vocabulary of only a few hundred words.

See "How Dolch Words Cause Illiteracy and Dyslexia" so at least you'll know exactly what you're asking the child to do. Maybe the same effort could give the child an ability to actually read.

[bedhogsheets]

I am a mom doing some basic research to think about how to teach my son to read, and this video seemed like such a one-sided propaganda piece that it was not helpful at all.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Please also see "Kindergarten Sight Words: Not A Good Idea."

[jennybear55]

If thats the case, how come i would be able to read the words ordinary and ORDINARY if half the text was missing etc if i did not have knowledge of the word as a whole? Many people can read words even if the middle letters are mixed up eg 'giaffre'. You must accept that a mixture of both reading processes is best. i learnt to read through whole word and im fine!!!

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

All the experts agree on one thing: smarter kids will figure it out. They will escape from even a totally Whole Word classroom, and move on to phonics. It's the slower kids who are crushed. The US has fifty million functional illiterates because little children are told to memorize shapes.

[jennybear55]

whole word is how adults read, children therefore by being taught whole word children can read in a more sophisticated style. Plus in an average child speech aged 6-9 there are 211 different phonetic sounds. The most effective way to teach children to read is through a combination of whole word and phonics. Not every British word is phonetic according to its phonemic graphemic correspondances e.g 'said' one of the most commonm words in childrens speech. I feel your view is very narrow minded.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Whole Word is not how adults read. Take an ordinary word such as "ordinary." Print it lower case, print it ORDINARY, then in handwriting. That's three very different word-shapes that you read with EQUAL ease! Do you suppose you have those three designs etched in your memory? Along with 50,000 or 100,000 others for all the words you read? Perhaps one human in 1000 could do such a thing. Please also Google "37: Whole Word versus Phonics" for a comparison chart.

[domtar76]

Whole language readers may have difficulty with unfamiliar words, but phonics readers have problems with understanding the meaning of words. A 2 year old could sound out a word like parliament, but does that convey meaningful understanding?

Moreover, you can use context to figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words, especially when they are encountered repeatedly. As such whole language makes more sense for visual readers.

Why can't we just use the system that is best for the child?

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Children, even in 1st grade, recognize 20,000+ words and names. Children have heard all these words, and know the meanings of most of them. The urgent task is to help children recognize in print what they already know by ear. Phonics does that quickly...

Whole Word, even if it proceeds on schedule, claims to teach less than 10,000 words by the end of high school; probably much less than 5,000. The usual end point is a sad state called "functional illiteracy." Whole Word is an illusion.

[Lydia667]

as a moderatly dyslexic adult who loves reading/seeing this really had no impact on me.I learned to read and learned to love to read because my parents loved to read and read to me long befor I was ever in school.

[dorielementary]

Different people learn different ways. Different teachers teach different ways. There's no room for dogma in education. Educators need to be flexible and adapt to different situations. All teachers should use whatever works. A combination of different methods yields the best results.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Methods should be tested against each other; and teachers should use the winning techniques. Please Google "26: How To Teach History, Etc." which discusses an ergonomic approach to teaching.

[dorielementary]

There is not one way. There is not a single winning technique. You are oversimplifying a very complex topic. You should post fewer videos, speak less and study more.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

I am pleased that you appreciate the wit and wisdom of my work. You will probably also enjoy my main site Improve-EducationDOTorg

[sarahkm2]

my point precisely

[sarahkm2]

Vilifying sight words misses the point. Left-brained learners can do phonics because it involves symbols, sequences, rules, drill. The issue IS that 2/3 of our children learn best with right brained approaches. Do you know that visual learners cannot learn rules, do not respond to drill? They need visuals to learn (right brain) and when they learn, it is instant. Phonics & stylized sight words used together engage both hemispheres of the brain. Google stylized sight words. See child-1st(dot)com.

[crypticlife]

" Do you know that visual learners cannot learn rules, do not respond to drill"

No. I do not know this. Moreover, neither do you.

[sarahkm2]

Excuse me?

[Samanalysis]

You gave a rhetorical question implying that visual learners cannot learn rules and do not respond to drill. This is an absurd comment on its face. You would be rather hard pressed to prove there even is such a thing as "left brain learners" and "right brain learners". Talking about their attributes as though the issue was settled is disingenuous.

[sarahkm2]

and you can prove that visual learners do learn by memorization? or do you not believe in visual learners either?

[cmmndrblu]

I think it's really important to understand that this problem, and spelling in general, is more of a "problem" in languages with frequent irregular spelling rules. A spelling Bee can happen in english for this reason. It wouldn't happen if everything were spelt phonetically. But I think that a love of reading is easier to inspire, if there is more attention from parents. One of my closest friends is dyslexic and she reads more prolifically than I do- and it's because of family support

[rpforliberty2008]

What is all of this "contempt for memorization" business. Memorization is essential in almost any subject as well it should be. If you have contempt for memorization you have no business in education.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Exactly. Which is why so many modern American educators shouldn't be in the field.

[arifreedom]

Ron Paul on education:

Let me tell you, things haven't changed a bit. I also work to save our schools from D.C. interference. Thanks to the feds, new curriculums not only smear the Founders as "racist, slave-owning elitists," they seek to dumb down our students so they will all be equal. "Look-say" reading and the abolition of phonics has the same purpose, and so does the new "fuzzy" math, in which there are no right and no wrong answers.

[dorielementary]

I like Ron Paul. But he is a doctor not an educator. He's wrong on this one issue.  He would probably agree with me however that the federal government should stop unfunded federal mandates.

I won't comment on the math as I have no idea what they are teaching these days. I'm an English teacher.

[arifreedom]

The AFT position:

A carefully crafted approach to the teaching of reading reflecting the research consensus that effective beginning reading instruction must include explicit, systematic, core classroom instruction in kindergarten through third grade on these essential components: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

[rpforliberty2008]

And for the record the US public school system is far superior to the Korean system in almost every way. In Korea 10% get an outstanding education. That 10% trounces our kids on tests. What they don't tell you is that the other 90% perform at much lower levels than American kids. I've taught in both school systems.

[rpforliberty2008]

This video is garbage. Even the word phonetics can't be sounded out. Memorization is key in all subjects.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Everybody seems to agree that children with superior memories can learn to read, after a fashion, with Whole Word. It's the other 95% who are lost; children with ordinary memories become functional illiterates...This comment comes from Korea, where memory is prized and developed; the Korean language is memorized as "sight words." The commenter should allow for fact that memorization, as video clearly explains, is not prized here and not developed.

[rpforliberty2008]

I teach English in Korea. Koreans typically use phonics based systems to learn English and it is largely responsible for their poor English.  I have implemented sight word systems with great success here. In the states I taught at an adult literacy council and used dolch lists almost exclusively with a similar high success rate.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Whole Word has created 40,000,000 functional illiterates in USA. For background on this crisis, please Google my article: "30: The War Against Reading"

[rpforliberty2008]

Bullshit. Negligent parents have created functional illiterates. Any child can read by age 5 if their parents read to them on a daily basis. The problem is most parents these days shirk their parental obligations.

[arifreedom]

Any child can read by age 4 if their parents used "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" by Siegfried Engelmann. Direct Instruction (DI) works with all kids from all backgrounds and it has been proven to improve cognitive skills as well as self esteem.

Many kids simply will not magically pick reading up through osmosis.

[crypticlife]

Koreans, like Japanese, have problems with the phonemes themselves. If you can't distinguish the phonemes, learning will indeed be difficult.

[rpforliberty2008]

You seem to know as little about the Korean education system as you do about the American education system.

[arifreedom]

yes it can. I can sound out phonetics, photon, photo, photosynthesis, photosynthetic, photograph, kinetics, syntax, etc.

[dorielementary]

You can't "sound out" those words using phonics. They are not spelled phonetically.

They would need to be spelled- fotosinthusis

fotosinthetik fotograf kinetiks sintax etc.

[arifreedom]

ph is of the 70 Orton phonograms and makes the f sound. y makes the short i sound in Greek words such as synonym and nymph. It's not so hard!

It is a lot easier to memorize and apply rules to tens of thousands of words than it is to memorize thousands of words individually.

[exceedingreading]

DESIGNED is phonetically correct: de = dee,

sign = ('s' when voiced or said quickly, sounds like 'z', i= eye, ng= nasal phoneme that sounds like 'n') and ed= d sound (can say t or ed depending on vowel/consonant before it). English truly is phonetic and easily taught by trained, experienced teachers.

Great Video Bruce!! I love your new one even more!!

[liz575]

Acdicorng to a rcesearh at Cbmraigde Uinsiertvy, it deson't mtaetr waht odrer the lteetrs in a wrod are in, the olny ipmroatnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat lteter be in the rgiht plcae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can slitl raed it wtiuot a porlbem. Tihs is bceasue the mnid deos not raed erevy lteter by isteslf, but the wrod as a wohle, and the barin fgiuers it out aynawy. Cool!

Reading is a brain function. We read whole words and even whole sentences at once, NOT letter by letter.

[liz575]

Did you ever wonder why there are MANY words that you can read just fine but you cannot spell? You do not have to know the rules of phonics in order to read any more than you have to know the rules of grammar in order to speak.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Liz repeats an old sophistry. What smart, experienced readers can do has no bearing on what children do or how you would teach them. Second, we are able to read the messy words precisely because we do peer at the letters and rearrange them. We most certainly don't read the whole words, as these are nouveau words that could not have been previously memorized.

[rpforliberty2008]

What kids who can read have done is what kids who can't read should have been doing with their parents early on, namely reading books together and working on sight word lists. Show me an illiterate child and I'll show you a parent who shirked their parental duties and left the education of their children entirely to the schools.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Please also see video "No More Sight Words," as well as "Phonics versus Whole Word--Take 2"

[crypticlife]

Aoinrdccg to rrcseeah at Cbgmraiide Usrvtniiey, it dnseo't mttaer waht oedrr the ltrtees [6 words of 4 lttrs or less] important [26 wds of 5 or less lttrs] without a problem. [2] because [6] letter by itself, [9] figures it out anyway.

Note that you made three spelling mistakes and a grammatical mistake.

[crypticlife]

Liz, this "trick" relies on a lot of trickery.

1) The average word length is 5 letters. Your paragraph guarantees a large number of correctly placed letters if you have a 40% correct placement rate, and many of the others aren't particularly misplaced.

2) Your paragraph uses simple words.

[margot980]

French and Spanish and Porguese are phonetic languages. English isn't. The Inglish langwidge isn't. How do you pronounce "gauge". Gwidge?

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Margot's comments conflate non-consistent with non-phonetic. English is old and has absorbed words from many languages. Some of our letters are stretched--they represent two or even three similar sounds. Note the word "sounds." The words are always phonetic. English, it might be said, is 100% phonetic if only 90% consistent. For more on these issues, Google "30: The War Against Reading."

[margot980]

How do you pronounce "designed" phonetically?

deH zigg ned?

This is truly bizarre.

[arifreedom]

gn is another orton phonogram. it says 'n' as in gnat, sign, align, assign, and benign

[OctavioAdams]

Thank you for the video, Excellent!