NP - "What's the question about your question that you dread being asked?

[Monte Davis]

As good a short outline as I've ever seen -- with one caveat. This is the
early -21st-century U.S.A., so "we spent years and years in debate about
[X]" is properly followed  by "until we massacred them and sowed their
fields with salt," not some wimpy-ass compromise.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Bekah
Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2013 11:39 AM
To: Prashant Kumar
Cc: pynchon -l
Subject: Re: NP - "What's the question about your question that you dread
being asked?

Studies have shown that about 70% of the common English words are
phonetically regular.  This means that 30% are not.   Phonics is nice for
"sounding out" new words and for spelling,  but its use is very limited when
it comes to deriving meaning.  Phonics also falls short of helping with
those 30% of words -  
(These are words like:  eight,  read (past tense),  could,  said,  climb,
you, light, tough, school, etc. and homonyms (foul/fowl,  to/too/two,)  more
and more as you go up the grades.)  

Eventually the real point of both methods is to have thousands of words
memorized for just plain old sight reading with comprehension.  The problem
is how to get there.  

What happened was that in the 1970s and '80s researchers found that phonics
was not enough,  so the swing to whole language was too far (it started at
the university teacher-training level).  Then more research (done by
publishing companies mostly) found that  whole language was not enough (and
older teachers and parents agreed).    The swing back was almost reactionary
(and political and based on $$ in text book publishing) and imo,  went too
far.  Taken to their extremes and alone,  neither one is preferable - imo.  

I think phonics is a good start,  but not enough - elements of whole
language are also needed for getting those 30% of words which are not
phonetically regular as well as for learning to get meaning from the text.
(I could also say that whole language is a good start but elements of
phonics are also needed for those who struggle with "new words"  -
"unmemorized"  words.)    

Whole language tends to work best for kids who are pretty bright and have a
good basis in oral language skills.  These kids can figure out quite a lot
and make sense of decoding skills almost on their own (my son did).    K ids
with a very good memory can memorize those new words very quickly (and
that's the end point),   but kids who don't have such a good memory have to
"sound it out" or (figure the context) over and over.   Kids who aren't
quite so cognitive have a very hard time figuring out why every time they
"read" (repeating and following 'memorized' text) the word "rat" it starts
with an "r."  

 Also,  the kids who don't have a solid basis in oral English have a hard
time with whole language because they're not so skilled at using context to
help determine what the unknown word is.   ("Read that again - does that
make sense?")    

Phonics is an incredible tool, but it doesn't make meaning from the text and
the early textbook stories can be seriously stupid in terms of
comprehension.  Otoh,  whole language is an incredible tool but it can be
overwhelming for a learner without a LOT of reading readiness skills (being
read to,  memorized texts,  solid language base, etc.) 

A good teacher will use the best of each method and try to use a bit of each
as appropriate.  This is feasible using small group instruction - direct
instruction - but new methods want whole group instruction to get more
teaching time in for all the kids.    The serious whole language people
liked indirect (environmental) instruction  -  so that's also a problem.
Whole language done well takes a LOT of time - it's better - imo - overall
- in the long run - if it has phonics included (why ignore that invaluable
tool?)   -  but it takes time!  

Hope that helps -  (?)  We spent years and years in debate about it.  The
best reading programs (imo)  now use both,  but the focus tends to be on
phonics these days again.  


Bekah