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 Phonics vs Whole Language

“It has been said that the alphabet ranks alongside fire and the wheel as a basic tool of civilization, fostering giant leaps beyond picture-writing by expanding the capability to express abstract ideas such as hope and freedom. The alphabet, of course, was invented for only one purpose: to encode the sounds of language. With knowledge of an alphabetic code, a person could be taught to read virtually any written material. This is not to disparage cultures that use a different writing system, but the advent of the alphabetic system definitely permitted a wider range of written expression and a means other than sheer memorization for figuring out the pronunciation and spelling of unfamiliar words. In the mid-1800s a man by the name of Thomas Gallaudet (for whom a college for the deaf, Gallaudet University in Washington D.C., is named) began experimenting with a sight-memory method of teaching deaf persons to read. Since deaf individuals cannot recognize sounds in the usual way, Gallaudet ignored the sounds of language altogether, in the mistaken belief that the concept of sound was not useful to them. More recent research has shown this assumption to be wrong, and Gallaudet’s original reading primer is gone. But the first line of that primer took on a life of its own: “Frank had a dog. His name was Spot.”

Renowned educator and author Samuel L. Blumenfeld has traced reading instruction methods since our Colonial period. He and other experts have chronicled how Spot had his ups and downs through the rest of the 1800s, then remained mostly dormant until 1931, when the friendly pooch was suddenly revived and launched into America’s so-called progressive schools via the Scott Foresman series by William S. Gray and the MacMillian series by Arthur I. Gates. These were the familiar “Oh! Oh! Look! Look! Dick and Jane see Spot run!” beginning (“basal”) readers that discouraged sounding out words in favor of memorizing whole words strictly by their appearance. This was a task of visual memory. It allowed children no supportive connections to spoken language. But it was the new, progressive way, and the phonetic approach to reading was suddenly out.

The absurdity and non-effectiveness of sight-memorization, points out Blumenfeld, is obvious when one examines the escalating repetitiveness in reading pre-primers over the next few years: In 1931, 68 sight words were taught in 39 pages of story text, with one illustration per page and 565 words total. The word “look” was repeated eight times, “oh” 12 times, and “see” 27 times. But by 1951, the same reading pre-primer had been expanded to three books totaling 172 pages, 184 illustrations, 2,316 words. The word “look” was repeated 110 times, “oh” 138 times, and “see” 176 times   all to teach a sight vocabulary that was now down to a mere 58 words, ten words less than in the 1931 pre-primer! This teaching method became known as “look-say”.

The books were boring; the task required of children ridiculous. Why did the education establishment stick with it?

They stuck with a pedagogic flop because certain unscrupulous members of the publishing and education community had stumbled into a financial gold mine. Charles M. Richardson, a former electrical engineer-turned educator, columnist, and director of a learning clinic in New York, describes how these publishers and professors worked together to turn out a plethora of remedial texts for the new “special education” market   a market founded on an artificially created illiteracy. Not only that, there emerged an even larger market for ever-simpler texts in the basic subjects   texts “dumbed down” for youngsters whose only fault may have been the inability to memorize the appearance of every single word in the English language!

…Ridiculous though the material may have been, the markets for such “dumbed down” texts became so lucrative that those less principled among the education and publishing community saw advantage to controlling what prospective teachers were taught about reading methodology. “Look-say” was touted despite all the negative evidence against it until it became an article of faith….

The label “look-say,” however, was changed frequently to avoid appearing old-fashioned   first, to “meaning-emphasis,” then to “comprehension-oriented,” "holistic” (meaning “universal” and "comprehensive”), “psycholinguistics” (which means “guessing”) and finally to “whole language,” which is the buzz-word for it today…”

B. K. Eakman author, Cloning of the American Mind, columnist, and Executive Director of the National Education Consortium. 

(Could the new math be an attempt to extend the success of whole language to the field of mathematics?)

Attempting to teach reading, without phonics reduces an alphabetic language to a pictorial language. Little wonder that the public schools are failing.

Education researchers have identified hundreds of phonics rules, most are useless, and in the totality, actually counter productive. There are, however, a couple of dozen phonics rules that are very useful. The use of these phonics rules work for over 85% of the words in the English language, most of the rest were imported from other languages. Accelerated Achievements Phonics instruction concentrates on those rules that are of most value, and includes more than a dozen activities to teach:

•  The basic sounds.

•  Long and short vowels.

•  Consonant Diagrams.

•  Diphthongs.

•  Silent Letters.

•  Substitution letters and combinations etc.

And, a very effective game that gives children practice reading, and teaches grammar at the same time. My children play it just for fun.

The following is the first Phonics activity from our product. This activity is actually three bundled into one. 

•  Phonics Activity 1

•  Picture Cards

•  Learning The Sounds

•  Consonants and Short Vowels

Directions:

There are three sets of cards with this activity. The first set of cards has both pictures and letters. The second has pictures only, while the third has letters only. Print each set of cards on a different color of card stock.

With the “picture and letter” cards, separate the consonants from the vowels. Place two consonant cards face up, with a vowel between them to create a consonant   vowel   consonant combination. Say the sound of each letter aloud. Blend the three sounds together. Some letter combinations will make a word, some will not. It doesn’t matter. Making nonsense words can be great fun. At first you will need to participate in this activity with your child. After two or three 10 to 15 minute sessions, your child will know the sounds, and will be able to “build” their own three letter words. 

Example: 

(See how it works)

=cat

 Try turning over one vowel, and run through all the consonants with that vowel, before turning over another vowel.

Once your child knows the sounds of each letter, use the remaining two decks for a matching game. Place the cards from both decks, face up on a table or the floor, and match the letter to the picture. A variety of other matching games may also be played.

Print out as many copies of these cards as you need.

Note: Avoid putting an “a” sound at the end of “b”, “t” and other consonants. Since the letter “Q” never appears without the letter “u” in English words, these two letters appear on the “Q” card in this product.