Edpsy 399 OL - Spring 2000

Tom Anderson, Instructor

Leonard Fretzin

Forum 8 - Lesson 8

Date: Sun April 1 2001

Subject: Lesson 8 Required q2

Phonics & Whole language

I begin this assignment with trepidation. Because I teach chemistry and physics in high school I have absolutely no background in the theory or implementation of reading instruction for young children who are learning to read. I have never taken a course concerning the subject and have never been involved in teaching reading. However, in teaching the regular track students in chemistry and physics I have observed that a significant percentage of my students have difficulty reading, to the extent that only a minority of my students, to my belief, actually read the assigned textbook.

Whatever I know of the phonics vs. whole language debate comes strictly from my own reading, which has been especially extensive this week. My impression is that if I am seeing in my classroom the results of phonics or whole language instruction, then both systems have not lived up to expectations.

Phonic reading instruction involves breaking down language into its smallest sound units that are joined to form words. Students so trained will evidently be able to pronounce an unfamiliar word when they encounter it, but will not necessarily know its meaning, which is essential to reading comprehension.

Whole language learning emphasizes the meaning of the word that is read, which is crucial to understanding the meaning of language. It seems, offhand that the phonics methodology and the whole language methodology should compliment each other, and would be most effective if taught together.

Its been stated that children fall exclusively into categories of being either visual or auditory learners. The auditory learners would, according to this theory, benefit by the approach of phonics, which emphasizes the sounds of words, whereas visual learners would benefit from the whole language approach. (Introduction to Phonics and Whole Language approaches)

The last time I looked, most children had two eyes and two ears, and although some may use their eyes more than their ears and vice versa, I can't imagine classifying children as strictly visual learners or auditory learners, unless the former are deaf, and the latter are blind.

Other programs, such as Reading Recovery provides individual tutoring every day to the lowest 10-20% of young first grade students, which may be effective but is certainly expensive.

Shanahan and Barr's 1995 review Reading Recovery: An Independent Evaluation of the Effects of an Early Instructional Intervention for At Risk Learners found "...that Reading Recovery leads to learning....It is less effective and more costly than has been claimed, and does not lead to systematic changes in classroom instruction, making it difficult to maintain learning gains. This is discouraging given program claims and its great expense" (Reading recovery: An evaluation of benefits and costs)

In my own naïve way, I advise my high school students to read aloud whenever possible; to increase the time they spend reading each day; to read at first what they find interesting; and to always have a dictionary with them to immediately stop and look up words that they do not understand.

I guess that this would put me more in the school of the 'whole language' approach. Its hard to judge whether my advise has any positive effect since I am convinced that it falls largely on 'deaf ears'.

The principle topic to be addressed here is from the question posed by Professor Anderson, namely what is the relevance of the phonics vs. whole language debate when the students are reading from a computer screen.

When I first read this question, my initial impression was 'why should it matter?', after all, isn't reading material printed on a piece of paper exactly the same in its symbolic context and linguistic meaning, as reading material which is converted to electronic impulses and projected on the phosphorescent screen of a computer monitor?

I think that the question posed here is whether computer instruction in phonics or whole language learning programs can produced a result that is different from ordinary class instruction. Based on research studies, computer instruction is effective for improving a wide variety of writing and reading skills. Computers can teach and remediate reading skills. Experts conclude that computer instruction in reading is most effective when students work on the meaning of words and texts in conjunction with the structural analysis of phonics. Computer programs can be great supplements for teachers who use a combination of phonics and whole language in teaching reading and writing to young students.

The programs used on the computer should promote and stimulate the involvement of the student, in their own learning process, giving them some freedom in selecting and controlling the computer programs that they use. Students should be faced with a wide variety of text structures in order to refine their comprehension skills. Students should have opportunities to write with the computer. Computer instruction in reading should also make use of a wide range of subject areas and other areas of the overall curriculum.

At Kenwood Academy, we have a program called "Reading across the curriculum" in which all teachers are required to make up reading and writing activities in their classes. It would be smart to find some way to coordinate and evaluate this program.

Anderson, Tom - Phonics and Whole Language Approaches to Teaching Reading.

Bruning, R. H., Schraw, G. J., & Ronning, R. R. - Cognitive Psychology and Instruction,

Chapters 10 & 11; 3^rd Ed. (1999) Merrill, Englewood Clift, NJ

Simic, Marjorie R. "Guidelines for Computer-Assisted Reading Instruction", April 2000.