Firstly looking into the Phonics form of teaching reading, since it is the most oldest and established form out of the two. Phonics can be defined as a form of teaching to cultivate the understanding and use of the alphabetic principle, that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes (the sounds in spoken language) and graphemes, the letters that represent those sounds in written language and that this information can be used to read or decode words,(ref). In other words, emergent readers and writers need to develop a functional command of what is commonly called phonics. It can be seen that phonics is based upon code emphasis and thus holds the view that reading is developed in certain stages. Wragg et al (1998) provides a definition of the code-emphasis method, as to "reading is [seen as] the uncovering of the writer's meaning and that in learning to do this children go through different stages: they begin by learning the alphabetic principle, then apply this to enable them to decode words so that, after practice, they can comprehend the text”. (Wragg, et al 1998:28). It can be seen that this method is in dependence upon teaching methods which emphasise phonics and word recognition.
Therefore it is essential for the code-emphasis approach to stress the importance of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence (GPC) knowledge in order for the children's success in reading. Underwood and Underwood, (1986) explain this (GPC) idea to be a set of rules, where the graphemes, individual letters or groups of common letters for instance, ‘b’, ‘ou’ and ‘ght’, and then pronounce them jointly together to read as the sound represented by ‘bot’, which rhymes with 'port', this can be said to have used the GPC rule, (Underwood and Underwood, 1986: 34). Whilst phonics can be viewed as an unnatural way of reading through the decoding system, on the other hand the look and say approach or whole word method regards reading to be something natural.
As the whole word methodology bases its belief that children can become literate in much the same way as they learn their first oral language, though of course the processes are not exactly the same. So there does not emphasis to teach children phonics rules if they are given plenty of guided opportunities to learn letter/sound patterns (Smith & Elley, 1995). Stanovich and Stanovich (1995) have observed that; meaning-based (look and say) written language learning with oral language learning... that learning to read is just like learning to speak (ibid.: 92), while code-emphasis or phonics approaches consider that "reading is not acquired naturally, in the same way as speech" (ibid.: 93), and that learning to read is "an unnatural act" (Gough and Hillinger, 1980). It appears that for most children (about 75-80 percent), phonics and phonemic awareness are learned and used when taught in the course of learning to read and write.
Meaning based approaches to reading (look and say) is primarily based around the work of Noam Chomsky (1965, 1976) who emphasised “the autonomous nature of the child’s construction of language” (Wells, 1986:15). Meaningful learning is based upon meaning-based learning, as this approach focuses on that humans had an innate structure to understand language, language question device (LAD). As Kenneth Goodman (1967) saw reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game, where the children predict the words in which they think they will find, As reading is selective and predictive process, the reader goes through certain stages: The reader chooses graphic cues from the text in which they are reading, which is stored in their short term memory, Then the reader makes tentative decisions regarding the identity of the words, which are then placed into the medium term memory, also the reader selectively samples the text and also places this in its medium term memory. Then the reader goes through and collects the accumulated meaning in which is ready held in the medium term memory. And finally if the information fits in with the prior expectations in a suitable grammatical way, then the meaning is placed within the long term memory.
As it can be seen, that whole word approaches stress the importance of encouraging children to read and use picture books with context cues and highlight the importance of enjoyment within reading, (rrrr) thus making reading something ‘fun’ rather than dull. Another theorist or supporter for whole words approach to reading can be seen as Smith, Smith (1971) claimed that the teaching of phonics is unreliable and unhelpful due to its undependable decoding system and the lack of emphasis upon meaning, (Wray, 1994). Smith viewed that the key to a fluent reader is not through identifying each letter and each word and how to articulate each letter; rather this slows down the reading process, (Smith 1971). Smith’s hypothesis was based around the idea of “learning to read is not a matter of mastering rules” (Smith, 1973:184). Nor is it to discover and learn phonics but rather mastering rules of grammar and just as children look for rules whilst learning to talk, this same method applies to reading, (Smith, 1971).
From the above paragraph it can be seen that the whole word method to reading and the contributions of Goodman and Smith can be said to look like a by product of Chomsky’s theory, more however an extended version. It can be seen that the whole word approach does not make much sense, as it is not as structured as phonics.
Also the approach of Goodman and Smith stress the importance of learning to read through identifying whole words, but children’s abilities to read vary from child to child, although this approach may be benefiting for good readers, but poor readers mostly depend on context to try to derive meaning, as poor readers lack in effective word recognition, (Juel, 1995).
Therefore It can be clear from describing each method at its extreme that they are both at each end of the spectrum, where these two methods to reading are quite different, having no or very little similarities. The great debate had brought to awareness the competition of phonics vs. whole words, and it is quite natural for questions to arise regarding which approach is better. However it has become widely accepted that the mixed approach of combining phonics with whole word work best to help develop children’s ability to read and recognise words. Adams (1990) through her research had expressed her views of how children should be taught how to read, Phonics instruction by itself is not enough, however. To support skilful reading, the information in all the processors must be richly interconnected. To learn to read skilfully, children need practice in seeing and understandings de-code able words in real reading situations and with connected text. (pp. 93-94). Therefore the balanced approach tends to help in the reading progression.
Look at current reading: new approaches to reading: stanovich and current reading theory.
Tuesday Paragraph 4 300
Way in which current reading theory influenced the national curriculum and national literacy theory. ( directed teachers who used both) new approaches- make a judgement –after national curriculum and then national literacy strategy.
Wednesday Paragraph 5 500
Look at national LS draws about Stanovich, Goodman model useful for reading-less useful for writing.
Conclusion:
Talk about the approaches- view you opinion concerning relative merits of both
Phonic: difficult to teach but defiantly linked to process reading
Look and say- easy to teach but not foundation to a good teacher
Which way is the best? Ab or c? blended approach phonic is prime and its context or vice versa
Signal some preference of which one, requirements of more research on this area,
Which emphasis on phonics and some on context
Support your point of view
Whole word Goodman and smith theorists, guessing game
Real books connected to look and say, whole word and whole language
Whole word started off approach whole language developed afterwards
Conclusion can use 1st person or impersonal can use NLS to support your view.
The literacy strategy has been seen as helping bring phonics back to the classroom, but is now believed to be out-of-date.
Wray observes that meaning-based approaches have come to denote approaches in which:
“Children begin with meaningful units of language, either sentences arising from their spoken language or whole stories, and only later have their attention focused on the individual elements of these units” (Wray)
