As more research brings to light the advantages
of phonics and phonemic awareness instructions have over whole language
teaching methods, more parents are becoming aware of teaching using
phonics and phonemic awareness skills. Many parents today are concerned
about the method that is being used to teach their children how to read,
and rightfully so. The whole language method is more of a method of
"word memorization", where the child is taught to look at printed words
as whole configurations, much like looking at Chinese characters.
Teaching phonemic awareness skills involves the
break down of words into individual sounds (phonemes), and then joining
the parts to form, or sound out the words. By contrast, whole language
learning stresses the flow and meaning of the text, where "sounding out"
words is not used, the words are decoded through its larger context,
and word memorization plays a key role. What would you rather do,
memorize hundreds or even thousands of words based on shapes, or learn a
systematic way of reading?
English is not meant to be memorized as shapes
and sight objects. It becomes very difficult to learn to read by
memorizing and recognizing shapes. Phonics and teaching phonemic
awareness skills requires you to memorize the letters and the sounds
they represent, and with this method, children as young as two years old can learn to read successfully,
and comprehend what they are reading. Try teaching a young child with
the whole language learning method, see how successful he or she will be
at memorizing shapes. Teaching by using phonics will routinely produce
successful readers.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that
phonics is clearly a superior method of teaching children how to read.
In the USA, over 30 million adults (14%) are considered functionally
illiterate, and are unable to perform simple everyday literacy
activities. [1] This however, should not
be surprising since over one third of all children cannot even achieve
basic reading competency by the time they are in grade four. This is a
finding from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Are
these children failing at literacy because they are dumb? I I hardly
think so, but perhaps it is a result of the poor reading instructions
they receive.
It has been proven time and again, that teaching
phonemic awareness skill produces superior reading and spelling
abilities than whole language teaching methods. Thousands of studies
have confirmed this, and the National Reading Panel has also made a
clear statement about this.
While most teachers will probably say that they
teach using some phonics, the truth is that many teachers are not
knowledgeable in the basic concepts of the English language. No, I'm not
making a random statement. In a recent study, the researchers stated:
"many in-service teachers are not knowledgeable in the basic concepts of
the English language". Their study found that even though the teachers
may be well versed in children's literature, but they do not know how to
address the basic building blocks of language and reading. In their
survey of instructors conducted, the researchers found that the teachers
performed poorly on the concepts relating to morphemes and phonemes. In
another second study, over 80% of the interviewed instructors agreed
that phonics is a desirable method to use for beginning reading
instructions. [2]
Some argue that a child will acquire a knowledge
of phonics on his or her own after learning to read using whole language
methods. While this may be true for some children, it is hardly the
case for the other children with reading difficulties. When a child is
taught to read using a whole word approach, they develop a habit of
looking at all the words by their whole configurations, and this
prevents the child from seeing the phonetic structure of the words. Real
readers who learned to read by learning phonemic awareness skills do
not need clues or cues to help them recognize shapes - they develop an
automatic ability to decode the letters and words.
Ultimately, it is up to the parents to decide the
path for which to teach their children to read. They can either simply
leave it up to the education system, and hope that their child does not
end up being one of the 38% grade four students which do not develop
even basic reading achievement, or they can take the initiative and make
the decision to help their children develop phonemic awareness skills
early on before even starting kindergarten. Research on phonemic awareness has shown time after time that phonemic awareness skills predicted reading and spelling success of children in school.
Don't leave your children's reading success up to chance. Click here to learn about a simple, step-by-step teaching method that will catapult your child's reading abilities - a learning process so simple, that even two year olds can learn to read.
Notes:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy
2. J Learn Disabil. 2009 Sep-Oct;42(5):392-402. Epub 2009 Jun 19.
Why elementary teachers might be inadequately prepared to teach reading.
Joshi RM, Binks E, Hougen M, Dahlgren ME, Ocker-Dean E, Smith DL.
Texas A&M University, USA.
Why elementary teachers might be inadequately prepared to teach reading.
Joshi RM, Binks E, Hougen M, Dahlgren ME, Ocker-Dean E, Smith DL.
Texas A&M University, USA.
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