Teaching Reading: Whole Language and Phonics - Phonics

Phonics

Phonics is seen to be an improvement on the previously used method of learning the approximate sounds represented by letters (b=buh) first and then blending them with other sounds (bl=bluh) to decode and encode words in written form. This newer method attempts to eliminate the extraneous "uh" sounds which were unavoidable in the older method. Children also learn strategies to figure out words they don't know.

Phonics is considered an "analytical" approach where students analyze the letters, letter combinations and syllables in a word; in an effort to "decode" (1) the speech-sounds represented by the letters and (2) the meaning of the text. The advantage of phonics is that, especially for students who come to schools with large English vocabularies, it enables students to decode or "sound-out" a word they have in their speaking vocabulary.

Phonics proponents led by Rudolf Flesch in his book Why Johnny Can't Read attacked the whole word approach because (1) it did not get students into reading children's stories that did not have carefully controlled vocabularies and (2) it theoretically required the students to memorize every word as a whole.

Phonics advocates focus their efforts on the primary grades and emphasize the importance of students having phonemic awareness, that is an understanding of the alphabetic principle that the spelling of words relates to how they sound when spoken.

A problem with teaching the reading of English with this analytical approach is that English words do not have a one-to-one speech-sound to symbol relationship. If they did have a one-to-one relationship, reading would be easier. In general, with a few common exceptions, the consonants do have a one-to-one speech-sound to symbol relationship but the vowels do not. For instance the letter "a" represents one sound in the word "say", a second sound in "at", a third sound in "any", a fourth sound in "are", a fifth sound in "all", a sixth sound in "about", a seventh sound in "father", an eighth sound in "orange", and a ninth sound (silence) in "bread". The speech-sounds are sometimes influenced by (a) the letters surrounding the target vowel, (b) by the sentence containing the word and (c) the stress, or lack thereof, given to the syllable containing the letter.

Almost any combination of three letters with a central "a" can reasonably be pronounced in a number of different ways. For instance the "a" in "pag" could be pronounced as in "page" (long "a"), "pageant" (short "a"), creepage (short "i") or decoupage (short "o" as in "dot"). It therefore follows that beginning students will have a difficult time picking the appropriate sound when sounding-out words which are not in their speaking vocabularies.

Fortunately, most readers quickly develop a subconscious word sense which helps them fluently pick the right sound based on the structure of the word and how that structure is related to other similar words they know.

Some very common words do not fully follow common phonic patterns, so those words have to be memorized. Some books refer to these words as "sight words", but it is probably better to refer to them as "memory words" because some books refer to sight words as those words which are so common they do not have to be analyzed or "sounded-out". It does not seem like a good idea to have "sight-words" mean two different things when "memory-words" is available.

The many homonyms in English such as to, too, and two create difficulties for students, even at the university level in regard to spelling.

Drawbacks:

• For those who learn to speak by learning the whole sound of a word, phonics is not an ideal form of reading instruction, because these learners do not naturally break words into separate sounds.
• Some phonics programs use low-interest reading material and too many boring worksheets. Those "drawbacks", of course, are not unique to a phonics program.