Reading Wars Explained

Phonics vs. Whole Word. Why our educators were tragically wrong. Hard to explain in a few minutes but here's my first try. Bruce Price/Improve-Education.org

See "42: Reading Resources" on

http://www.improve-Education.org

Category:

Education

Tags:

• illiteracy
• Whole
• Language
• communications
• phonetics
• functional
• illiterate
• business

[DrJack55]

Phonetics, like Whole Language, does not work for everyone. The real crime here is that educators don't take the time to learn which method is better for each child. My daughter failed in reading because of the Phonetics method. It wasn't until we home schooled her and taught her via the Whole Language approach that her ability to read blossomed.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

@DrJack55 First, the public schools rarely teach phonics correctly; they're eager to teach it badly and then to lie about it. As Flesch noted in 1981, "we do teach phonics" is one of the top 10 alibis used in public education. So you don't know for sure that your daughter ever learned synthetic phonics. Second, all phonics experts suggest that if progress is slow, back off and do something else. The student will succeed later. That may be what happened to your daughter.

[DrJack55]

Whole Language teaches phonetics in an indirect manner where the reader first memorizes words. As the number of words the reader understands increases, he will begin to see phonetic patterns. These phonetic patterns will then be used to aid in the pronunciation and understanding of words new to them. This is a superior method of learning for some people and should not be thrown out. Some of us learn by just jumping in and doing.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

@DrJack55 if you mean the student is to memorize "sight-words," then please stop and consider that the US has 50 million functional illiterates, and almost every one of them is a product of sight- words. (The latest NAEP scores show that TWO-THIRDS of American kids are below proficient, that is, more or less illiterate.) If a child knows the alphabet and basic phonetic information, than the worst outcomes will be avoided. If the child is memorizing graphic designs, you can expect disaster.

[shaffetm]

You did not explain the reading wars, as you claimed.  You explained one side of the reading wars. Considering only 30% of our language in phonetic, how do you propose the other 70% of our language be taught?

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

@shaffetm The usual figure is 97-98% phonetic. I'd say almost 100%. Inconsistent is not the same as unphonetic. Unfortunately you have accepted Reading's Big Lie.

Suppose there were a sight-word "xghwd" and it was pronounced "volleyball." NOW you're talking unphonetic.

[wiredboy27]

Interesting, this is certainly a battleground. I think the issue here is, like many modern problems, the introduction of cognitive methods in the 20th century. Idioms are quite interesting, they're called Chengyu in Chinese and Yojijukugo in Japanese. Strangely one of the jap ones ("Start, Continue, Change, Conclusion") has a modularity not dissimilar to the modular, phonetic type mentality of today. Weird for poetry imo. Finally, Manfred Clynes, check his videos out here on youtube.

[SleazyNice]

@Jay3fer

"(unless it had an obvious root)."

This applies more to Chinese than English. But I can write every word I hear in English, you friend can't do it in Chinese. Ask him to write down the Chinese character for the word sneeze, a word that any phonetically taught third grader can sound out and write in English. I bet he won't be able to. I could sound off a thousand Chinese words that no Chinese person would be able to write down. Try that with an English speaker.

[shaffetm]

@BruceDeitrickPrice You assume a lot about me from three sentences. There is very little about reading that I have accepted whole-heartedly. This includes the idea that phonics is the end all be all in reading instruction. One thing I do believe is that it should be about teaching readers, not teaching a reading program.