Phonics or What?

There is a lot of confusion of how to teach reading these days: phonics, intense phonics, natural phonics, phonics only, see-say, whole language, etc. Many people are very passionate that their way is the only way.

Researchers that were neutral on the issue wanted it settled once and for all. They examined every program out there and came to the conclusion that there are really only two ways to teach reading- phonics and see-say (many teachers will argue that whole language is a third option. The researchers found, though, that whole language is really just see-say with a thin icing of incidental phonics.).

Phonics is teaching the letters of the alphabet and their sounds, then teaching how to blend those sounds into words, then sentences, then paragraphs. See-say is teaching children to memorize the shape of each word.

Every honest test ever done has shown phonics to be the only way to consistently, successfully teach reading.

Some say English is not a phonetic language. This is simply not true. Another set of researchers entered every word in the English language into a computer and had the machine analyze them. Out of some 300,000 words, 90% were phonetically correct. The only reason they all weren’t was because English is the largest language the planet has ever seen and our alphabet only has 26 letters. This makes for a few weird combinations.

To sum it up: there are some 300,000 words in the English language, but only 44 sounds. These 44 sounds are all spelled with 26 letters, governed by around 200 rules (with just a few exceptions). Learn the 26 letters and the 50 or so most common rules (and the few exceptions) and you can decode the entire English language.

Comprehension is a different subject than reading. If you can decode the language you will be able to read all the words in your vocabulary. If you find you can’t understand reading material, it means you need to increase your vocabulary. Read the dictionary. Buy “English from the Roots up.” And go through the 100 roots in it. Stretch yourself.

To illustrate: if I were to tell you that the shoulder dystocia was caused by ceval/ pelvic distortion you would probably not know what I am talking about. You do not comprehend what you just read even though these are words used by many members of our society everyday. You could still READ it, you just didn’t understand. If you got a dictionary out (a medical one would be best) and looked up each word you would understand; your vocabulary would be increased and thus your comprehension.

READING is decoding the funny squiggles that make up our written language.

COMPREHENTION is understanding what you READ.

To teach reading
First teach the child (or adult) the alphabet. I find it best to use flash cards with both the capital and lower case letters on the same side and no pictures. This allows the child to associate the two symbols for each letter and to not be distracted by the puppy dog or elephant.

Anyone mature enough to look at an animal in the field and say “cow, Mooooo” is old enough to look at a flash card and say “A, aaaaaa (the sound at the beginning of the word apple).” If a child can follow a read outloud story, they have the comprehension ability to read.

Once the student can recognize each letter and its major sound (really, the letter “a” makes six different sounds, but the child only needs to know its name and the short (apple) sound to get started), he is ready to learn to blend the letters into words. Begin with the word “at.” Then add “cat” “hat” “bat” etc. Once all the “at” words are readily recognized, change the t to a n. Then change the a to an o. Keep going until they are reading nearly every three letter word they run across. You can read story books (Cat in the Hat, for example) and let the student read the words they know while you fill in the others.

After this, introduce the idea that when there are two vowels in a word, the first is USUSALY long (says its name) and second silent (this is true a little more than half the time.) Teach the “h” blends (th, sh, ch, wh,) and any other common blends you run across. Then just gradually increase the difficulty of the words. Give the child lots of practice reading out loud. That’s it.

For comprehension, read. Read out loud to your child every day for at least an hour. Pick books beyond his reading level. Pick some little kid books and some that will challenge him. If he asks what something means, tell him. Also, talk to your child in adult language. Use big words (and explain them).

Go on daily nature walks discussing the things you see. Go to new places and ask for a tour (fire station, fast food restaurant, grocery store, doctors office, etc.) Discuss everything you see using the proper words so the child remembers them. Let them listen to adult conversation whenever possible (don’t let them interrupt or become obnoxious, however.)

And of course you can add the recommendations above of reading the dictionary and using vocabulary expanding curriculum such as “English from the Roots Up,” a list of 100 Greek and Latin words and their meaning and English derivatives.

The fact is that teaching reading is easy. Relax and have fun with it.