1. PHONICS VERSUS WHOLE-WORD APPROACH
Learning to read …
PHONICS
VERSUS
WHOLE-WORD APPROACH

2. Controversy …
There is a long standing and sometimes heated debate in educational circles about the best way of teaching reading.
Most recently: a strong emphasis has been placed on the phonics-based approach in the ‘Literacy Hour’ introduced in English primary schools.

3. Phonics approach
Systematic teaching of letter (graphemic) and phonemic correspondences.
Moves gradually from straightforward (d=/d/) to more complex variations (gh=/f/ in ‘rough’).

4. Whole-word approach Also called ‘look-and-say’ approach.
Exposure to written texts with heavy pictorial support.
Child gradually learns to identify shapes of words without breaking down into component phonemes/graphemes.

5. Phonics advantages …
Children learn to understand how written words are built and spelt.
Enables them to decipher new unknown words. ?

6. Whole-word advantages …
Older readers do not depend solely on phonemic decoding.
This approach allows children to develop experience of using contextual and textual clues to assist reading.

7. Phonics disadvantages …
Early written vocab may be limited to words with basic phoneme/grapheme correspondences.
English spelling system is extremely complex and full of irregularities.

8. Whole-word disadvantages …?
No real system to the learning process.
Is spelling caught or taught?

9. Phonics research …
Children DO need to acquire understanding of phonics to achieve literacy.
1996: Essex schools study: children taught using phonics achieved reading ages 6/7 months ahead of children not in scheme.

10. Whole-word research …
Some research suggests that children acquire phonics in the same way they acquire speech.
Smith and Elley (NZ):Less by formal instruction than by exposure to guided reading.

11. Whole-word research… Tunnell and Jacobs:
Some research even points towards the phonics approach being detrimental.

12. Phonics methods … Graded flash cards. Graded readers.
Systematic teaching of correspondences.
Breaking down individual words.

13. Whole-word methods…
Exposure to texts that might include a wider variety of structures at an earlier age.
Encouragement to become familiar with shapes of words by frequent exposure.
However: rhymes, tongue-twisters and alphabet books aim to allow children to acquire phonic awareness as they read.