- In Brumer’s article, what does she feel led to the back-to-basics backlash; and, what events precipitated this backlash? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the whole—language and phonics approaches, respectively?
- And, what would an amalgamation of the two seemingly disparate approaches look like?
The back-to-basics backlash was provoked by the results of the 1994 National Assessment of Education Progress reporting that 56% of California’s fourth graders were reading below grade level after the California Department of Education proposed a literature-based program focusing not only on worksheets, but on critiquing and writing stories as well. When the 1994 results came out, phonics-first advocates criticized the whole-language approach stating that the de-emphasis of phonics was detrimental to learning to read. However, when fourth-grade teachers in both whole learning and phonics-first classrooms were asked to assess their students’ reading proficiency, the results were almost identical.
ReplyDeleteBoth whole-learning and phonics-first approaches have their benefits and pitfalls. Phonics-first helps students to decode the alphabet and sound out words in order to learn how to read – in sorts a bottom-up processing approach to reading. Once students are capable of reading, then can spell and write. However, one of the largest pitfalls is when you come across a word that cannot be sounded out, such as “eight.” When this happens, then students do not know what to do. Phonetic rules can only help to sound out about half of English words. Many whole-learning advocates have deemed phonics-first to be checking off skills on a list with no real human touch to reading. Whole learning, on the other hand, encourages learning as an active process – to learn to read, one must be read to, read with someone, and read independently. It encourages students to learn syntax and infer the word they do not know by looking at the words around it. It believes in understanding the idea of the piece and getting phonetic instruction through listening. However, many teachers end up letting children just read on their own and abandon teaching phonic methods, incorrectly implementing whole-learning. In addition, phonics first proponents argue that children should not write before they fully grasp the letter-sound correspondences.
A good way to combine these two rules would be to teach phonetic methods while still encouraging students to read, even if a little below grade level, as reading more will help improve reading skills.
- Kathy Shen
In Brumer’s article, she says that the political debate on literacy led to the back-to-basics backlash. This controversy started when California Department of Education published a revolutionary framework for English/Language Arts, in which children would learn the basic skills of phonics, spelling and grammar in the context of reading and writing the classics of children’s literature. But the low standings of the fourth grade children in California, 56 percent of whom scored below basic reading comprehension levels, sparked a more powerful debate to move back to the basics.
ReplyDeleteStrengths of the whole language approach is that immerses children in the natural way of speaking by giving them normal literature, and this teaches them to read while understanding the context and the meaning behind the words they are sounding out. A weakness of the whole language approach is that it does not train them and does not have give the children the systematic training they need when they are first learning how to read.
A strength of the phonics approach is that children are taught to sound out the words, decode how to read it so that they can then move on to focus on the meanings. They learn how to crack the “alphabetic code” and they don’t skip any letters in learning through phonics. A weakness of this approach, however, lies in the fact that there are so many anomalies and exceptions to the rule in the English language. Teaching the sounds of individual letters and patterns can get them through the bulk of the language, but cannot begin to capture all the words that don’t fit the pattern. Moreover, drilling the sounds using books that only focus on that one letter or sound is not natural or the way we speak English everyday.
An amalgamation of the two would probably be the most effective for the children. It would be a two-step process: first, introducing the rules, patterns and phonics drilling exercises to give them the basics; then, moving into whole language reading in which they could decode parts of the big word they are trying to read and also using the context to figure it out.
I agree with both Stephanie and Kathy above. I sincerely do believe a perfect combination of both phonics and whole-language learning will be the most effective way to teach a child to teach. The perfect combination however that will be most effecting for teaching reading and promoting literacy involves an emphasis on phonics learning. Perhaps I am bias because I was taught this way, but a lot of learning is done when taught the material and then there is follow through to see if the material as retained. I learned by sounding words out after I learned phonics, consonants and vowels. But then I was read to, either by the teacher or by listening to a cassette and following along.
ReplyDeleteThat word recognition and sound recognition slowly becomes ingrained in the child's head. Brumer states that "reading is not a natural process" and that it needs to be taught, the problem is that it isn't being taught correctly and that teachers can't decide on which way is better for their students. Some have chosen to abandon phonics learning altogether because they feel it is tedious and not actually working, others don't execute the practice of whole-learning well enough to make an impact in their students' lives, so now what are we left with? A generation of students whose literacy rates have plummeted because of their inability to "decode."
For some reason "decoding" using phonics and sounding out vowels and consonants has been deemed a poor way to learn how to read, but you have to learn how to take apart something before you can put it together. Like in college, it is when we internalize what we are reading or learning, break it down, and regurgitate it in discussion or teach it to someone else that we can say we truly understand the material. Like reading, it needs to be broken down, piece by piece, sound by sound, and once they can put it back together into one complete sound, whole-language learning should step in.