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Literacy training
Whole language vs phonics debate
Literacy training program
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Phonics Vs Whole Language
There is a battle going on elementary schools across the Globe. This battle is not a malicious battle fought with armies and weapons of mass destruction, but rather a tactical battle where the two opponents are known to us by the simple phrases, phonics and whole language. These two opponents use very different styles, but those who use a certain style swear by it almost religiously. Seriously, though, one might be asking the question which is the best method for teachings young students how to read? Honestly, there is not a simple answer; education specialists have been arguing over the issue of phonics vs whole language for years and a definite answer still has yet to be determined. Literacy has a plethora of aspects that really depend upon the student's learning style, and since no student learns exactly the same it really is impossible to think that one particular style is superior to the other. Hopefully by reading this paper and gaining information on both methods one will be able to conclude which style he or she prefers.
The first method to be discussed will be that of phonics. Phonics provides students with the understanding that there is a relationship between phonemes and graphemes, and that letters represent sound in written language (Brooks 36). Basically, this means that teachers focus students more on learning the individual sounds that letters make and then learning how arrange these sounds to form words and thus read words. The English language has 44 phonemes that can be combined to form words ( Books, Melanie 273). This seems like a lot of information for a young student to remember, but phonics has always and will always be a bottom-up process.
The DeFord Theoretical Orientation to Reading Profile, developed in 1985 by Diane DeFord, is a way to measure the philosophy and belief systems associated with instructional practices in the beginning of reading. The three systems include phonics, skills, and whole language (Vacca et al 2006). The bottom-up beliefs systems, associated with Behaviorism, place emphasis on letters, letter-sound relationships, and the understanding that the student, in order to comprehend the selection, must recognize each word in a text. There is importance placed on decoding, and skills are taught in a systematic and sequential format.
First off, in terms of education in grades K through 3 it seems that students are introduced to the basic concepts of learning, reading, and writing. For example, young children begin to comprehend the sounds of speech in terms of being able to read while also practicing how to correctly write common words used in everyday language. Furthe...
Doctor Morgan of Sussex, England, published the first case of what is now known as dyslexia in 1896. Dr. Morgan wrote about Percy F, a 14-year-old boy who was intelligent, bright, quick with learning games, and the intellectual equal of his peers. He fell behind, however, in his inability to learn how to read. Today, as in 1896, most people associate intelligence with the ability to read, but Percy F and the experience of millions of people with dyslexia breaks down the relationship between reading and intelligence (1). But, researchers were left with the question, "What causes dyslexia if intelligence is not the marker?
Reading is an integral aspect of succession in life and is required to complete the simplest of tasks. Therefore the teaching of reading, which in England is done mainly through a programme of systematic synthetic phonics, is of great importance in all primary schools. The word phonics, “describes the letters or symbols used to encode a language’s spoken components” (Venezky, 1999. Cited in Mesmer and Griffith, 2006) and the “importance of systematic phonics instruction in relation to the teaching of reading has been increasingly recognised by English-speaking countries” (Wyse and Goswami, 2008). This is most likely due to as Venezky (1999) states, because English as a language is made up of an alphabetic code.
Migration has been a constant factor in England, especially since the late 20th Century, there are about 13.5% of primary school populations distinguished as learners of English as an additional language (National Statistics, 2007). Many researchers have studied the association between working memory capacity and reading, on English as a Second Language (ESL) learners through the measures designed by Daneman and Carpenter (1980, Cited in Alptekin and Ercetin, 2009). Lesaux and Siegel (2003) stated that there is an ongoing developmental processing with reading skills, especially in English, which is heavily relied upon phonological processing as it is assumed that this cognitive process play a significant role on a child’s reading skills.
Beginners who could not decode new words but would invent partial sound spellings were assigned randomly to three groups. A mouth treatment group was trained to position pictures to depict the order of articulatory gestures in words. An ear treatment group was taught to position blocks to represent the order of sounds in words. No special instructions were given to a no-treatment control group. The results demonstrated that the two techniques of phonemic awareness instruction were valuable in teaching phonemic segmentation and in improving participant’s ability to spell the sounds in words despite the fact that letters were not used during the activity. On the other hand, only articulatory instruction improved processes improved participants reading ability. The findings show that that awareness of articulatory gestures enhances the activation of graphophonemic connections that aid children to identify written words. Instructors can begin with Elkonin boxes lesson and have children to stretch a few words out into their different sounds. Elkonin boxes have a positive effect on early elementary grades as they aid children in building their phonological awareness by subdividing words into separate sounds or syllables. They help students know how to count the number of phonemes in a
Developmental dyslexia is classified as a learning disability, particularly focusing on impaired language-based learning. It is a syndrome with a neurological origin and it exists on a spectrum with varying in severity and symptoms. The neurological basis of dyslexia is not well understood, however, research has demonstrated its origin in the left perisylvian area. (Ramus 2003, Eden et al 2016) Children with dyslexia struggle with processing writing (orthography) and sound structure of words (phonology) of languages.
To overcome the reading disability different methods are used like auditory analysis,phoneme blending,teaching letter-sound association, word build...
Balanced Literacy is an approach for teaching literacy that is widely used in classrooms across the country. It involves several methods of teaching and learning reading and writing, whole class instruction directed by the teacher with independent work in reading, writing, and oral language. By integrating a variety of approaches, a balance is achieved in which students learning to understand text (from a whole language approach) as well as how to read text (from a phonics approach). Effective phonics instruction focuses children's attention on noticing the letter/sound patterns in initial consonants and consonant clusters and in rimes.
As indicated by Ziegler and Goswami (2005), reading is the process of understanding and making sense of speech or written down thoughts. The initial goal of reading is to gain access to the meaning of sentences. To achieve reading student must learn the letters used by their society for representing speech or thoughts as series of visual symbols and they also found that the critical characteristic to develop reading depends on phonological consciousness. Ziegler and Goswami (2005) focused on the psycholinguistic grain size theory, reading acquisition and...
Phonological awareness (PA) involves a broad range of skills; This includes being able to identify and manipulate units of language, breaking (separating) words down into syllables and phonemes and being aware of rhymes and onset and rime units. An individual with knowledge of the phonological structure of words is considered phonologically aware. A relationship has been formed between Phonological awareness and literacy which has subsequently resulted in Phonological awareness tasks and interventions.This relationship in particular is seen to develop during early childhood and onwards (Lundberg, Olofsson & Wall 1980). The link between PA and reading is seen to be stronger during these years also (Engen & Holen 2002). As a result Phonological awareness assessments are currently viewed as both a weighted and trusted predictor of a child's reading and spelling and ability.
Phonemic Awareness and Alphabetic Principle in addition to Phonics and Decoding Skills provide students with early skills of understanding letters and words in order to build their reading and writing skills. Students will need to recognize how letters make a sound in order to form a word. While each word has a different meaning to be to format sentences. While reading strategies for Reading Assessment and Instruction, I was able to find three strategies for Phonemic Awareness and three strategies for Alphabetic Principles which will provide advantage for the student in my research and classroom settings.
The FLaRE (Florida Literacy and Reading Excellence) Center has published a professional paper entitled “Phonemic Awareness” of which I will be presenting a critical review. Phonemic awareness is one of the five essential components of reading identified by the National reading Panel (Learning Point Associates, 2004). Phonemic awareness can be defined as a person’s understanding that each word we speak is comprised of individual sounds called phonemes and that these sounds can be blended to form different words (Learning Point Associates, 2004). The article was intended to give a synopsis of phonemic awareness and the vital role it plays in a literacy program. I found the article to be very clear and concise presenting valuable tactics that can be applied in the classroom.
Reading is a complex process that’s difficult to explain linearly. A student’s reading capabilities begin development long before entering the school setting and largely start with exposure (Solley, 2014). The first remnants of what children are able to do in terms of reading are built from their parents and other people and object around them as they’re read to, spoken to, and taken from place to place to see new things (Solley, 2014). As kids are exposed to more and more their noises quickly turn into intentional comprehensible messages and their scribbling begins to take the form of legible text as they attempt to mimic the language(s) they’re exposed to daily.
Phonological awareness and phonics are closely connected in teaching young children, firstly we need to understand what phonics is. Phonics is a method of the teaching smallest unit of sound in the English language, not only repressed by one letter but also between patterns and sound-letter relationship. Phonics is the sound that