Whole Language vs. Phonics

The Reading Wars

Phonics vs. Whole Language.

Generally, I liked this article. It demonstrated the ways in which education can become a political issue at times when reform is necessary. It also the many viewpoints surrounding education and best teaching methods, and the processes which determine how students learn from the earliest ages. In terms of “sides” I would say that I am a fan of the phonics approach- not just because of the way I learned to read, but also because of what I’ve noticed and learned as a result of my experiences in teacher corps thus far.

One of my most vivid memories as a child (believe it or not) was working in my phonics books in first grade. I had been reading kids books and stories since I was 3 or 4-my mom was always a big proponent of reading and I loved it from an early age-but phonics was something different. As one elementary school principal was quoted in the article, “it was like breaking a secret code”. It was fun! I remember racing through the books (which were color-coded by difficulty) in an attempt to be the first one to finish them all. Not only did you receive stickers each time you finished a book, but you also got more stickers the better you did. I was always in 1st or 2nd place in my class, and it was my mission to beat the one kid in my class who occasionally finished before me. As a 6-year old, I enjoyed phonics. It wasn’t “mindless drilling”. It was work- work that made it easy to understand new words, and gave me the skills to attempt words that I had never seen before.

Sixteen years later, as a teacher, the most frustrating thing for me is when children don’t try to read words simply because they’ve never seen them before. As an eastern hemisphere history teacher, we come across many words from different cultures and times periods with which the students have very little familiarity. The fact that they don’t even possess the skills to try to read words by sounding them out, is a constant hurdle in my class. I’m constantly being asked, “Ms. T how do you say this?”, “How do you pronounce that”, “What’s this m-word?”, and when I respond, “Try to sound it out”, I’m often met with blank stares.

While the whole-language theory may proven effective in some cases, I think it is only most beneficial when used simultaneously with or after mastery of the phonics theory. Yes, it is important to becomes familiar with different words and their meaning as a whole, but their are few people on this earth who know even 75% of words in the english language, let alone 100%. How can whole-language teaching prepare children to tackle words they have never seen before? The truth is it can’t. Although I was able to read Dr.Seuss books before I learned phonics, rhyming can only take you so far. Had I not learned phonics at an early age, I would not possess the skills to memorize and “decode” larger more complicated words later in life. Even words that are used on a daily basis don’t have rhymes. Nothing rhymes with “important” or “difficult”, and their are no ways to know how to say “acupuncture” or “papyrus” (both vocabulary words from my course) without having some knowledge of phonemes. Whole-language teaching is important in increasing one’s vocabulary, but it cannot stand alone. Phonics is necessary to excel in reading, not only in your earliest years, but also later in life when one’s vocabulary is much more advanced.