The debate frustrates parents and some educators who believe they have found the answer to teaching children to read. These people believe that there is no one method for teaching kids to read, and that there must be a balance between direct teaching and experience. Many have compared learning complex concepts like learning to read to learning to ride a bicycle.
Balance Direct Teaching and Experiential Learning
In the article, “Entrepreneurship and the Art of Bicycling,” in the March, 2004 issue of Business Times, Ong Yong Hwee acknowledges that one can learn much about bicycles through traditional teaching methods. A student can learn about the pedals, wheels, and handlebars, but he will never learn to ride a bicycle until he gets on one and rides it. If he thinks too much about what he has learned about bicycles, he will not be able to ride one. A biker must maintain a balance between what he has learned about the bicycle and the experience of riding it.
Phonics vs Whole Language Approaches
The whole language approach is based on the belief that if children have many opportunities to use the language through speaking, listening, reading, and writing, they will learn to read as naturally as they learn to talk.
Phonics instruction systematically teaches children to associate sounds with letters and put them together to make words. Teachers say the sounds of letters and ask children to say them. However, the sound of some letters can’t be made without adding a vowel sound. A child might figure out the word bug by saying "buh-uh-guh", but the sounds of the letters "b" and "g" are distorted by the addition of the vowel sounds.
A better way to teach letter sounds is to list or say words that begin or end with a certain letter, for example, take, top, and time all begin with the sound of "t". Students must also be taught many exceptions to phonics and spelling rules. Teachers have to build meaning for words by showing pictures or the real thing.
Reading requires a set of skills that includes not only decoding words, but such comprehension skills as finding the main idea, making inferences, sequencing, making comparisons, evaluating, and drawing conclusions.
Prior Knowledge Connection
The act of reading is, by definition, deriving meaning from the printed word. There has to be a hook, some bit of prior knowledge to which the word can be attached. The teacher has to help the child make a connection between what he already knows and the new word or words. The more experiences a child has had because someone has read to him, talked to him, or taken him places, the easier it will be for him to learn to read.
A successful reading program has a structured approach that systematically teaches letter-sound relationships. A good phonics program teaches those relationships within the context of reading, writing, speaking and listening activities, not in isolation. Drill and practice activities can be helpful, but they should not be emphasized at the expense of meaning.
There has to be a balance between an experiential approach that emphasizes meaning and learning by doing, and a skills-based approach such as phonics that emphasizes decoding and uses drill and practice. The goal should be that students develop lifelong reading habits. They should read because they choose to, not just because they have to.
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