Reading Practice
How should reading be taught?
By
Keith Rayncr a Barbara R Foorman
A
Learning to speak is automatic for almost all
children, but learning to read requires elaborate instruction and conscious
effort. Well aware of the difficulties, educators have given a great deal of
thought to how they can best help children learn to read. No single method has
triumphed. Indeed, heated arguments about the most appropriate form of reading
instruction continue to polarize the teaching community.
B
Three general approaches have been tried. In one,
called whole-word instruction, children learn by rote how to recognise at a
glance a vocabulary of 50 to 100 words. Then they gradually acquire other
words, often through seeing them used over and over again in the context of a
story.
Speakers of most languages learn the relationship
between letters and the sounds associated with them (phonemes). That is,
children are taught how to use their knowledge of the alphabet to sound out
words. This procedure constitutes a second approach to teaching reading –
phonics.
Many schools have adopted a different approach: the
whole-language method. The strategy here relies on the child’s experience with
the language. For example, students are offered engaging books and are
encouraged to guess the words that they do not know by considering the context
of the sentence or by looking for clues in the storyline and illustrations,
rather than trying to sound them out.
Many teachers adopted the whole-language approach
because of its intuitive appeal. Making reading fun promises to keep children
motivated, and learning to read depends more on what the student does than on
what the teacher does. The presumed benefits of whole-language instruction –
and the contrast to the perceived dullness of phonics – led to its growing
acceptance across American during the 1990s and a movement away from phonics.
C
However, many linguists and psychologists objected
strongly to the abandonment of phonics in American schools. Why was this so? In
short, because research had clearly demonstrated that understanding how letters
related to the component sounds in words is critically important in reading.
This conclusion rests, in part, on knowledge of how experienced readers make
sense of words on a page. Advocates of whole-language instruction have argued
forcefully that people often derive meanings directly from print without ever
determining the sound of the word. Some psychologists today accept this view,
but most believe that reading is typically a process of rapidly sounding out
words mentally. Compelling evidence for this comes from experiments which show
that subjects often confuse homophones (words that sound the same, such as
Jrose and ‘rows5). This supports the idea that readers convert strings of
letters to sounds.
D
In order to evaluate different approaches to
teaching reading, a number of experiments have been carried out, firstly with
college students, then with school pupils. Investigators trained
English-speaking college students to read using unfamiliar symbols such as
Arabic letters (the phonics approach), while another group learned entire words
associated with certain strings of Arabic letters (whole-word). Then both
groups were required to read a new set of words constructed from the original
characters. In general, readers who were taught the rules of phonics could read
many more new words than those trained with a whole-word procedure.
Classroom studies comparing phonics with either
whole-word or whole-language instruction are also quite illuminating. One
particularly persuasive study compared two programmes used in 20 first-grade
classrooms. Half the students were offered traditional reading instruction,
which included the use of phonics drills and applications. The other half were
taught using an individualised method that drew from their experiences with
languages; these children produce their own booklets of stories and developed
sets of words to be recognised (common components of the whole-language
approach). This study found that the first group scored higher at year’s end on
tests of reading and comprehension.
E
If researchers are so convinced about the need for
phonics instruction, why does the debate continue? Because the controversy is
enmeshed in the philosophical differences between traditional and progressive
(or new) approaches, differences that have divided educators for years. The
progressive challenge the results of laboratory tests and classroom studies on
the basis of a broad philosophical skepticism about the values of such
research. They champion student-centred learned and teacher empowerment. Sadly,
they fail to realise that these very admirable educational values are equally
consistent with the teaching of phonics.
F
If schools of education insisted that would-be
reading teachers learned something about the vast research in linguistics and
psychology that bears on reading, their graduates would be more eager to use
phonics and would be prepared to do so effectively. They could allow their
pupils to apply the principles of phonics while reading for pleasure. Using
wholelanguage activities to supplement phonics instruction certainly helps to
make reading fun and meaningful for children, so no one would want to see such
tools discarded. Indeed, recent work has indicated that the combination of
literature-based instruction and phonics is more powerful than either method
used alone.
Teachers need to strike a balance. But in doing so,
we urge them to remember that reading must be grounded in a firm understanding
of the connections between letters and sounds. Educators who deny this reality
are neglecting decades of research. They are also neglecting the needs of their
students.
Questions 1-5
Reading Passage has six sections, A-F.
Choose the correct heading for sections B-F from the list of headings below.
Write
the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet. List of Headings i Disagreement about the reading
process ii The roots of the debate iii A combined approach iv Methods of teaching reading v A controversial approach vi Inconclusive research vii Research with learners vii Allowing teachers more control ix A debate amongst educators
Example
Section A ix
1..................... Section B
2..................... Section C
3..................... Section D
4..................... Section E
5..................... Section F
Questions 6-10
Do the following statements agree with the
information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 6-10
on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the
information FALSE if the statement contradicts the
information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
6..................... The whole-language approach relates letters
to sounds.
7..................... Many educators believe the whole-language
approach to be the most interesting way to teach children to read.
8..................... Research supports the theory that we read
without linking words to sounds.
9..................... Research has shown that the whole-word
approach is less effective than the whole-language approach.
10..................... Research has shown that phonics is more
successful than both the whole-word and whole-language approaches.
Questions 11-14
Complete the summary of sections E and F using the list of words, A-G,
below.
Write
the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 11-14 on your answer sheet.
In the teaching community, 11..................... question the usefulness of research into
methods of teaching reading. These critics believe that 12..................... is incompatible with student-centred
learning. In the future, teachers need to be aware of 13..................... so that they understand the importance of
phonics. They should not, however, ignore the ideas of 14..................... which make reading enjoyable for learners.
A
the phonics method
B
the whole-word method
C
the whole-language method
D
traditionalists
E
progressives
F
linguistics
G
research studies
Solution:
|
1. iv |
8. FALSE |
|
2. i |
9. NOT GIVEN |
|
3. vii |
10. TRUE |
|
4. ii |
11. E |
|
5. iii |
12. A |
|
6. FALSE |
13. G |
|
7. TRUE |
14. C |
PASSWORD: REALEXAM22
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