The debate still rages, and the “Reading Wars” are fiercer than ever.

There are those who believe a phonics approach to reading is the solution – that phonics is what children understand and need when first learning to read. And then there are those on the other side, who argue in favor of the whole-language approach to reading: reading that focuses on context and word meaning.

Which is better? What should we be doing when teaching reading to our young students?

The Phonics Approach

Proponents of the phonics approach believe that when you sound out the words you’re reading it gives you the time and stimuli necessary for processing what you’re reading, which provides the basis for comprehension.

A child who uses the phonics approach to reading is expected to be very accurate in how they read and pronounce each word. Attention is given to the proper spelling, pronunciation, and usage of a word, as opposed to its meaning and contextual purpose.

In a phonics-approach classroom, students are explicitly taught the spelling and phonological rules of vocabulary, which they are then expected to apply in the ensuing practice sessions. Ultimately, the student  will master the spelling/sound correspondence for words, and will then be able to attach the meaning of the word to that basic knowledge.

The phonics approach is often labeled as a bottoms-up approach. The learner starts with a deconstructed language: they’re presented with the word “cat,” for example, and are expected to break it down to its constituent parts, or rather letter-sounds (in this case, /k, æ, t/). Although this is a rigorous process in many respects, it fails to take into account how a student is to make sense of a word they can pronounce correctly but don’t know the meaning of.

The Whole-Language Approach

Proponents of literacy instruction through the whole-language approach consider phonics an integral part of the method, but certainly not its focus.

Phonics is simply part of a literacy lesson, rather than a lesson on its own. The student is expected to draw on phonics knowledge to decipher the meaning and spelling of words, is also encouraged to use context and prior knowledge to make out its meaning.

In a whole-language approach environment, the reader pays attention to meaning and comprehension first, instead of concentrating primarily on language precision and usage accuracy. What the instructor is after in this methodology is ensuring that they can equip the students with the critical skill of decoding meaning and appreciating the text, by drawing on what they already know, implementing guesswork, and taking into consideration the story’s context and other cues.

While phonics give students a strategy and repertoire for phonetically figuring out new words they encounter, the whole-language approach equips them with a much more necessary skill: that of deciphering meaning through context.

A student who has perfected the sight/sound correspondence will often still be unable to figure out the meaning of a word unless they ask the teacher for the definition, or look it up. That’s why it is important to encourage vocabulary building once phonics knowledge is in place. Ultimate Vocabulary™ helps students improve and expand their vocabulary with fun and age-appropriate activities and games that promote both underlying phonics skills and the more global comprehension that students need.

A student who is trained using the whole-language approach can more easily figure out the gist of a word based on context and prior knowledge. The student is encouraged to read in chunks and not word by word. This meaning-based strategy is effectively used in 7 Speed Reading™ because it helps children as well as adults learners to move away from the word-by-word method and improve their reading speed.

An Argument for a Balanced Approach to Teaching Reading

Phonics is not by itself enough to handle the inherent complexity of English phonology. The words “though,” “drought,” and “tough” look almost the same, but their pronunciation differs considerably.

Guessing pronunciation and/or meaning in this case will only get a student so far. The phonics approach is limited in usability if used alone. The student cannot move ahead if they stumble upon an unknown word. They might read it out loud correctly, but they won’t possibly know what it means.

People who rely solely on the whole-approach method, on the other hand, often don’t pay enough attention to phonics and how crucial it is for reading comprehension and speaking.

A balanced approach that brings the best of the whole-language and phonics approaches together seems to be the ideal solution for helping students master literacy quickly, and as painlessly as possible.

A balanced method of teaching reading considers synthetic phonics as a segment that has to be explicitly taught but not exclusively relied upon by students. The student should be encouraged to use both phonics knowledge and semantic and pragmatic knowledge to decode meaning

Cross-posted on the Ultimate Vocabulary blog.

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