Learning To Read - Methods of Teaching Reading - Alphabetic Languages

Alphabetic Languages

Educators have argued for years about which method is best to teach reading to children. For the English language, there are two major methods, Phonics and Whole Language, within which there are subtypes Synthetic Phonics and Sight word respectively. Each method is employed at differing rates depending on the country and the specific school division. Some educators are beginning to use the two methods in conjunction to maximize the benefits of both methods. Phonics is a teaching method that stresses character-sound correspondences, specific rules and their use in reading and spelling. This helps beginning readers understand how characters are linked to sounds (phonemes), patterns of letter-sound correspondences and spelling in English, and how to apply this knowledge when they read to sound out words. Phonics teachers present the spellings for different sounds in a specific order, introducing the simplest (or most useful) patterns early on; these patterns are then practiced. A disadvantage to phonics is that in some languages like English, there is a complex letter-sound correspondence and this causes confusion for beginning readers.

Traditional phonics instruction has marked benefits. Early reading often involves significant expansion of a child's mental lexicon, which includes all the words the child has been exposed to and their meanings. By focusing on the principle of linking specific sounds and characters, the child has the ability to recognize new words and derive meaning from them. Being able to adapt what they know about language to new words they experience is crucial to expanding their mental lexicon; this allows for productive reading that is the ability to read new words. It also produces higher achievement for beginning readers and the difference is the greatest for those at risk of failing to learn to read. While some children are able to infer these rules on their own, most need explicit instructions on phonics rules. Overall, children who are directly taught phonics are better at reading, spelling and comprehension.

Traditional phonics instruction can also have the unintended consequence of promoting dysfluency. The difficulty lies in the coarticulated nature of speech; speech sounds are overlapping, while print is discrete and sequential. This can be appreciated if one shapes the mouth in position to begin to produce the word cat compared to the word cot. The initial hard c is colored by the subsequent vowel even before speech begins, i.e., the smiling position as one prepares to say cat, and the more limp position as one prepares to say cot. As early readers work from left to right, beginning with the onset consonant, they typically do not yet know the vowel with which it must be coarticulated. The vowel sound itself cannot be known until the remaining rime (the portion of the syllable beginning with the vowel and extending to its end: e.g. ight in right) is fully encountered. For these reasons, teaching reading through orientation to rime first and then adding the onset (ought-bought) can be helpful in promoting fluency through supporting the phonological problems of coarticulation. Emphasis on the rime also supports the development of an intuitive, and therefore more fluent, awareness of orthographic patterns.

Synthetic Phonics is a method that is endorsed by the governments of the United Kingdom, Australia and Scotland. It also has considerable support in the U.S.A. and Canada. In Synthetic Phonics, the student first learns to say the sounds (phonemes) that are associated with the character(graphemes) in isolation before the sounds are "synthesized" or blended together to make a word. (e.g. /a/, /k/, /t/.) Then, when reading a word, he learns to say each sound in the word (e.g. /k/ - /a/ - /t/); and to "blend" these sounds into a pronunciation of the word (e.g. "cat").

Synthetic phonics does not teach whole words as shapes; and does not involve guessing at words from context, picture and initial letter clues.

There are other types of phonics, such as Analytical phonics, that differ in their approach based on how a "chunk" within the word is defined (i.e. individual phonemes, syllables, or non-blended units).

Whole Language is widely used in the U.S.A. and Canada. It is a reading and learning method that trains students to focus on words, sentences and paragraphs as a whole rather than letters. This method aims to make reading fun and keep children motivated, which is beneficial because learning to read depends heavily on what the student does and not the teacher. While the child is typically very engaged in this method, many children struggle to infer the specific rules of the language on their own, which causes the child's comprehension and spelling to suffer in the end.

One subtype is Sight word, which is sometimes called the "look-say" method. A sight vocabulary of 50-100 words is first memorized and subsequent words are learned as wholes, often by seeing them used repeatedly in the context of a story. It tells children to find meaning by guessing, by recognizing whole words they have memorized, by looking at the pictures, and by creating a context based on surrounding words. It encourages students to "construct their own meaning" (with guidance from peers and facilitator of consensus process). It relies heavily on the child's experience with language as a whole. The following are some features of the whole language philosophy:

• Children are expected to learn to read and write as they learned to talk, that is gradually, without a great deal of direct instruction.
• Learning is emphasized more than teaching; it is assumed that the children will learn to read and write, and the teacher facilitates that growth.
• Children read and write every day in a variety of situations.
• Reading, writing, and spoken language are not considered separate components of the curriculum or merely ends in themselves; rather they permeate everything the children are doing.
• There is no division between first learning to read and later reading to learn. (adapted from Weaver, C. 1990)

Which style use in teaching reading has divided educators for years. It is now known that using the two approaches together is more powerful than either program alone. The technical skills learned through phonics is important for many children when it comes to learning to read, spell, and general language comprehension but the engagement of children with language in the whole-language style is also important to keep the children motivated and excited to learn. While many teachers and schools acknowledge this and say that they use both methods to teach children to read in their schools, when asked explicitly it has been seen that many teachers still prefer to use only the whole language method and ignore the phonetic component.